In the music jungle
Roli Schmid can now offer 400,000 music tracks in a digital archive in his Jingle Jungle recording studio.
Roli Schmid can now offer 400,000 music tracks in a digital archive in his Jingle Jungle recording studio, and Jingle Jungle recently made it to fourth place in the German-speaking hit parade of podcasts with its own podcast "Plagiate in der Werbung". The latest PodCast talks about the origins of archive music, which date back to the silent film era. A time when film music first had to be invented. But let's take an acoustic look back. It all started in 1989 with a very simple but in this case nevertheless very sustainably recorded sound. The public limited company Jingle Jungle had only been established for ten days when a phone rang to wake Roli Schmid from his sleep. Someone on the other end of the line was trying to explain to him why, after being set on fire by an alcoholic, the freshly furnished recording studio in the basement of a youth center was in ruins. What now? The orders were there - and so Schmid pressed "replay" again and set up an improvised music studio in the basement of his little house in the country.
Since then, his acoustic empire has been set up with four recording studios and three recording booths on Riedtlistrasse in Zurich. 14 permanent employees work here for Jingle Jungle, including six sound engineers, an IT supporter for the highly complex systems and the back office, which also looks after the online casting service for the voice agency "Rent a Voice", which has since been integrated into Jingle Jungle.
Jingle Jungle quickly became big when Roli Schmid and his partner were able to acoustically underlay the entire image for Swiss television with signets in 1990. The good work quickly brought new jobs in advertising. At first, Jingle Jungle only designed sound. Soon the idea was born: "Now we'll also be involved in post-production ourselves. For 10 years, the studio has been operating as an integrated service provider for professional audio dubbing and voiceover services.
As the latest development in the advertising scene, Jingle Jungle is the first in the German-speaking world to offer a fully digitized archive music library with 400,000 tracks in addition to its own compositions. "It blows your mind," says Schmid, comparing it with the previous lengthy process of selecting music from CD. Fetching a basket full of records from the archive, then inserting a new disc again and again, waiting and listening... Today, he enters search terms such as piano, jazz or Japan, dramatic, beach, action or romantic - the technology chirps - and within seconds the customer can make his movie idea in Japan or Brazil seem jazzy, romantic or dramatic, futuristic or classical, depending on what he wants.
"You can let off steam creatively because every film scene can be viewed and changed again unusually quickly with a wide variety of music styles without any effort," enthuses Schmid. The programming and direct connection to the production of this archive, which will only be used by major TV stations in German-speaking countries in the near future, apart from Jingle Jungle and a few selected sound studios, took a lot of effort.
Schmid worked with his son Colin for several months on the development of his digital marvel and then spent nights calculating thousands of files. A job that has paid off so far, at least creatively and for customers with a small music budget: "Good music is almost half the movie. If a movie is bad, it can be saved by the music. Great images with beautiful music really hit the emotions," Schmid is convinced.
This feeling started with him as a teenager. To his mother's horror, he played two pianos to scrap by installing special effects such as rice nails on the felt hammers. Later, he literally learned the marketing side of the music industry from scratch at several record companies. He became a sales representative for various labels and eventually used his contacts to start his own band. But before his duo could give the hit parade a chance, there were already so many requests for soundtracks for commercials that only a studio fire could have saved his career as a musician. But even that no longer worked in this jungle of jingles.
Since then, his acoustic empire has been set up with four recording studios and three recording booths on Riedtlistrasse in Zurich. 14 permanent employees work here for Jingle Jungle, including six sound engineers, an IT supporter for the highly complex systems and the back office, which also looks after the online casting service for the voice agency "Rent a Voice", which has since been integrated into Jingle Jungle.
Jingle Jungle quickly became big when Roli Schmid and his partner were able to acoustically underlay the entire image for Swiss television with signets in 1990. The good work quickly brought new jobs in advertising. At first, Jingle Jungle only designed sound. Soon the idea was born: "Now we'll also be involved in post-production ourselves. For 10 years, the studio has been operating as an integrated service provider for professional audio dubbing and voiceover services.
As the latest development in the advertising scene, Jingle Jungle is the first in the German-speaking world to offer a fully digitized archive music library with 400,000 tracks in addition to its own compositions. "It blows your mind," says Schmid, comparing it with the previous lengthy process of selecting music from CD. Fetching a basket full of records from the archive, then inserting a new disc again and again, waiting and listening... Today, he enters search terms such as piano, jazz or Japan, dramatic, beach, action or romantic - the technology chirps - and within seconds the customer can make his movie idea in Japan or Brazil seem jazzy, romantic or dramatic, futuristic or classical, depending on what he wants.
"You can let off steam creatively because every film scene can be viewed and changed again unusually quickly with a wide variety of music styles without any effort," enthuses Schmid. The programming and direct connection to the production of this archive, which will only be used by major TV stations in German-speaking countries in the near future, apart from Jingle Jungle and a few selected sound studios, took a lot of effort.
Schmid worked with his son Colin for several months on the development of his digital marvel and then spent nights calculating thousands of files. A job that has paid off so far, at least creatively and for customers with a small music budget: "Good music is almost half the movie. If a movie is bad, it can be saved by the music. Great images with beautiful music really hit the emotions," Schmid is convinced.
This feeling started with him as a teenager. To his mother's horror, he played two pianos to scrap by installing special effects such as rice nails on the felt hammers. Later, he literally learned the marketing side of the music industry from scratch at several record companies. He became a sales representative for various labels and eventually used his contacts to start his own band. But before his duo could give the hit parade a chance, there were already so many requests for soundtracks for commercials that only a studio fire could have saved his career as a musician. But even that no longer worked in this jungle of jingles.
Andreas Panzeri
