Spank! Leaving its mark - Audio Today & Tomorrow - Spank! Music & Sound Design is profiled

Post, April, 2003 by Matthew Armstrong

CHICAGO -- The composers who founded commercial sound house Spank! Music & Sound Design (www.spankrnusic.com) viewed it as an opportunity to flex their creative muscles. But as the company grew, the three composers found themselves inundated with the daily business operations, which took away from their first love: composing music.

"We started out as musicians, we aren't MBAs," says co-founder Mat Morse. "When our company began, it was like this little bird that was cute and everybody liked it. Then we got another sound designer, we got other composers on staff and opened a Santa Monica office. So, all of a sudden this cute little bird is an eagle on your arm flapping its wings waiting to be fed."

Composers Steve Shafer; Greg Allan and Morse founded Spank in 1997. They brought sound designer Tim Gedemer on shortly thereafter to augment the musical services. Since then, they have seen many changes within the industry and within their company.

"Chicago was a relationship business," explains Allan. "It was very different than New York or LA in that there weren't any executive producers at any of the Chicago music houses. Here in town clients always wanted to call the composer."

However, this began to change due to increased competition. Past relationships were no longer enough to secure work and instead decisions were made based upon bids and competitive demo submissions. This shift, coupled with Spank's continued growth, forced them to change their business model.

Today the company has a total of eight composers and three sound designers. Another partner, P.J Henke, was brought on in 2000 to head the newly-opened Santa Monica studio. To handle the increased workload, last year Spank formed a relationship with business consultant Rich Spitzer to streamline operations. The company established a clear hierarchy and division of business duties, established nationwide representation and hired two executive producers, Katie Jones and Ken Colasney.

"It used to be that each of the partners would handle administration but we overlapped duties, not in composition, but in the flow of daily work We had fun, we got work done, but it was inefficient," says Morse. "Now, there's a clear process to what happens when a call for a job comes in all the way through delivery of the final product."

While Spank's founders humbly anticipated success in the music realm, the success of the studio's sound design business has been a pleasant, if not unexpected surprise." I got three calls today solely for sound design," remarks Morse.

In addition to bringing in jobs of its own, the sound design capability combined with the music services, allows for a more harmonious combination of the two audio elements. "The sound designers can hear the track as it's being composed and conceived," says Morse. "This way they know in advance where the sound design has to go, where it has to breath, let up and be more intense."

TO DEMO OR NOT TO DEMO

As mentioned earlier; the reorganization of business operations was also brought about by growing agency demands for more demos in order to compete for jobs, "We've never had to give this many demo tracks; it's become the norm in the industry," says Allan, "And the demo money has never gone up.

A company's approach to this demand for more and more demo tracks can make or break its business, suggests Allan. And what's Spank's view on these demo demands? They've embraced the process and often submit a wide range of demos tracks for a single job. "Music houses usually take a big hit on the demo, but our ratio of winning demo shootouts is very high, so it's worth it," says Allan." I can't say it would be smart business for every other music house, and I know there are companies that do not do competitive shootouts. They tell clients that if they are awarded the job they'll give them 25 tracks, but they don't do the demo process because it costs too much money."

THE STUDIOS

The Chicago and Santa Monica studios each have two mixing rooms and space for recording live music, as well as two writing rooms. The rooms are all powered by the combination of Emagic Logic sampler/sequencers, Giga Samplers and Didgidesign Pro Tools. The studios connect via Apple's Xserve server; and there are multiple Apple Titanium laptops for the artists to use. The main room of the Chicago studio is equipped with a Euphonix C53000 console, but these days Spank does most mixing' within Pro Tools.

All of Spank's rooms are completely digital and feature the same equipment so files can be shared, a move that, although it poses advantages to workflow, has the veteran composers mourning the departure of the old reliable Synclavier sampler/sequencer.

"I had the seventh Synclavier ever made. They were great," Morse reminisces. "They were so ahead of their time, and still there's a lot of features that no one else has. But we decided that standardization among the studios was important. We're now down to only two Synclaviers and will be getting rid of one soon. It's a sad day."