Austrian KLF fan Walter Werzowa had never heard of Intel when they asked him to compose a 3 second jingle for them. Last year alone, they spent $350m promoting the sound he created in his home studio by paying PC companies to use it in their ads. It's played once every five minutes somewhere around the world. >>Walter has a mysterious and wonderful past. In the late 1980s, he and a friend came up with an idea for an ABBA-vs-yodelling novelty record called "Bring Me Edelweiss". Then they read the KLF's 'The Manual: How to Have a Number One Hit the Easy Way' [full text here]. They followed the instructions in the book, and sold 2 million copies across Europe. That's how he had enough money to live in LA.
>>Walter's friend Kyle Cooper was commissioned to create an ad for Intel and asked Walter to provide some music. In less than three seconds, they wanted "tones that evoked innovation, trouble-shooting skills and the inside of a computer, while also sounding corporate and inviting".
>>He sat in his home studio for a weekend, getting more and more frustrated: "Everything just felt stupid, chopped off and strange," he says.
>>The breakthrough came when he stared at the words 'Intel Inside' and started to sing them. He used 4ths and 5ths, because they're the most common intervals worldwide. It took ten days to record.
>>Walter is a big synth collector (he says he hasn't got 'all of them'). For the Intel sound he used 40+ layers, including a DX7, Oberheim OBX, Prophet VS, Emulator IIIx, Roland S760 and his beloved Jupiter 8, which was the first synth he ever bought.
>>He used lots of marimba and xylophone sounds because they 'sound corporate'
>>He was paid a set fee ("not that much") for the Intel work, but it opened a lot of doors. Now Walter's company Musikvergnuegen (German for 'Love of Music') employs 11 people.
>>Walter has just finished a sound for Samsung that will be used on all their advertising worldwide. He says that listening to tiny bits of music over and over and over is an acceptable occupational hazard.
>>More on Walter in this interview from Mix Magazine.
NEXT UP: WINDOWS 95 AND BRIAN ENO
Posted by Tom Whitwell.
Comments:
Excellent post, one of your best. Way to go on the 'actual journalistic skills' :)
Say, anybody know who did the guitar theme for MTV back in the day? You know, the one with the claymation MTV logo. I've heard it was the Butthole Surfers, but I can't find any reliable source.
Mike Oldfield has noted that these four notes seem awfully similar to the first four notes of Tubular Bells. He has a point -- although, naturally, Intel disagree!
This is very cool. However, I was hoping for a bit of information on the sound upgrade that ocurred, I think, when the Pentium III came out. It might have been the Pentium II, but I think it was the III. The sound changed -- it became a bit more chorused or something. I prefer the old one. I think the MP3 in the article is the old one. Any insight?
Of course, I could research it myself, but this is one of those many things I haven't gotten around to.
They reprinted The Manual not so long ago, after a long period of it being unobtainable. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1899858652/203-8448339-8437552 is where to look! You should read Drummond's other books too, they're extremely good and he probably needs the money seeing as he burnt it all...
Maybe it's just me, but it always drove me nuts how the "Intel Inside" chimes are note-for-note the same as this one scene in the musical Miss Saigon (which was written several years prior). It's somewhere in the second act; there's this scene where the wife of the protagonist is finding out that he's had a son w/ a Vietnamese girl, and there it is -- the "Intel Inside" tune, repeated like 3-4 times in a sung exchange between the characters. Glad he's making bux though! Thanks for driving me up the &*(! wall for the past 10 years!
8hands are having a sound events challenge for a new application and looking for a few short effects for when "things happen" (like "incoming IM message)" they are giving a Theremin to the person who sends the best sounds!
beeps and sounds can be e-mailed to info.8hands@gmail.com
I have loved your blog as a whole... Now I'm reading all your posts...I've found many interesting for myself) and this post is one of the best and most interesting!!!
It is always pleasant to learn something new about usual things. I have surprised that the intel jingle had 40 layers! All of us hear it very often but we don't think who did it and how did he do!
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Austrian KLF fan Walter Werzowa had never heard of Intel when they asked him to compose a 3 second jingle for them. Last year alone, they spent $350m promoting the sound he created in his home studio by paying PC companies to use it in their ads. It's played once every five minutes somewhere around the world.
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