Music & Sound Design: GAS

Matching audio to the visuals of a spot is often a costly and complex process – but it doesn’t have to be, says Gary Hilton, musician and co-founder of GAS Music. He tells Carol Cooper about his new fun, no-fuss model of bespoke, real-time composing for ads, films, TV and gaming. He believes life is easier if you nail the brief right from the start – something that should be music to ad agency ears

Creative outfits often express their creativity via artfully oblique websites that leave you hovering at their digital front door with a frustrated mouse and rising blood pressure. Not so GAS Music, whose easy-access site reflects its simple, playful, can-do approach to the business of making sound.

Faced with 15 coloured tiles bearing a range of descriptive words – from ‘Snotty’ to ‘Spiky’ – curiosity compels you to click on every one to hear what music GAS has created to match the mood. ‘Subtle’ brings you floaty piano and celestial strings; ‘Memorable’ features a distant seashore and children’s laughter; and the lush, soaring vocals of ‘Anthemic’ are classic car-driving-through-stunning-scenery spot. 

When I meet Gary Hilton he doesn’t just hand me his business card, he presents me with a choice of six colours, labeled, like the website’s tiles, with different moods. It’s a trick he uses to kick off composing sessions, generating the kind of free-associations that get clients wandering in a synaesthetic landscape where they can feel what colour tune they want.

“I saw a client yesterday and flung down my cards saying, ‘Think about the music you want and pick a colour.’ He picked a pink card, and I asked why. ‘Well, it’s kind of soft,’ he replied. ‘Soft how? In a feminine way?’ I asked, and he said, ‘No, in an engaging way.’ We went on like this till I got a firmer idea of he wanted.”

Sidelining the sidechain

GAS was launched in November last year by Hilton and fellow musician and Manchester native Steve Southern. In the early 90s they had a band, Moses Gate, with Damon Gough, who went on to become Badly Drawn Boy.

“There were loads of bands around at the time, and a lot of infighting and bickering when I felt we should all be sharing and helping each other,” says Hilton. “With our rich musical history in Manchester, I thought let’s just get together and be one big, happy modern family unit.” It was a while, though, before his dream of creative collaboration came to fruition.

After their second band, called Hilton, split, the duo went their separate ways – Southern moving into animation, filmmaking and music production; Hilton dividing his time between being a professional singer-songwriter and a commercial sales director. But two years ago, after coming across old demos that they realised were rather good, the pair reformed as Modern Family Unit (MFU).

Their former producer, Mercury Prize-nominated Dave Maughan, came on board and they started a new album Religion, a single from which, Mmm mmm mm aah, released last spring, was passed around by industry friends. Legendary Hacienda DJ Dave Haslam recommended it to fellow Factory Records alumnus, producer Mark Reeder who did a remix and radio edit – and who is now also on the GAS roster.

Hilton then took the single to his friend Hugh Todd, then CD at Leo Burnett London (now global CD for HSBC at Saatchi London) and asked for his opinion. “You get an intuitive feeling when something is ‘syncable’ – whether it would suit an ad,” says Hilton.

Todd thought it was indeed very syncable and contacted Hilton when the agency was struggling with a piece of music. “As a favour, we acted as a kind of consultancy,” says Hilton. “They sent us the video of something that wasn’t working and Steve realised the music was out of sync, so we balanced the visuals up, created an audio file and sent it back.” Todd was delighted and asked if they could write some music as well. “We wrote a simple melody, recorded it and sent it back within the hour.”

Hilton saw how he and Southern could help agencies circumvent the often lengthy procedure for creating music for ads. “Normally, a piece of film would do the rounds of creatives, music supervisors, producers, clients etc – a huge supply chain of people.

I thought, why not go back to the source and create the music early on – just nail the brief at the start.” He feels the industry occasionally sees music as an afterthought: “Sometimes people are focusing so much on the branding, copy and visuals that at the end they think, ‘Oh shit, the music!’ But it should be seen as just as important as the other elements – the visuals and audio should be intrinsically linked.”

Another epiphany came when their band was having some music mastered. “Mastering is one of those magical black arts. You pay clever people big money to make your sound better, but it can just end up sounding a bit louder or a bit quieter.” Hilton then bamboozles me with sonic science till my ears bleed, with descriptions of playing music backward, finding gaps between wave forms etc.

The upshot was that he and Southern set about learning to do it themselves. “People talk about sidechain compression and these weird and wonderful things, but we believe if you start off with a crap melody, your sidechain is irrelevant.”

The sweet sound of saving money

Marrying their tech and composing skills meant the pair could provide a one-stop music service. With financial director Jeff Jones, another Factory Records and Hacienda alumnus, joining the team, GAS started to grow.

They set up a record label that’s steadily accumulating artists. “I talked to heads of TV at Saatchi, Leo Burnett, JWT etc, who said a big problem with music is coping with legal and rights issues,” says Hilton, “so we set up GAS Records and anything MFU or any of our acts do is just one transaction. Usually there are so many people involved in getting music who want a cut.”

With Southern bringing in his TV and CGI business to form GAS TV, the company can also offer visual services and has recently worked on a series of 50 short films about the First World War for the Imperial War Museum.

Showcasing his background in sales, Hilton negotiated killer deals with tech companies to kit out GAS’s state-of-the-art studios at Manchester’s MediaCityUK with all the latest audiovisual bells and whistles. Plus, he got discounts on top composing software that they can take to clients who can’t come to them.

Alongside regular work with Leo Burnett, GAS provides audio services for major BBC and ITV shows filmed at MediaCityUK. They collaborated with agency Hoot on a recent National Lottery spot Play Makes It Possible, and the title track from Religion is being re-edited for a Triumph motorcycle spot out of creative agency MWM Associates.

They’re also excited about an idea for a new TV show they’re working on with dock10, the production company that owns MediaCityUK studios: “It’s a great idea, but I can’t tell you about it till you turn the recorder off.” There are some things that Hilton likes to keep in the family.