Case – Electrolux (Brickland)

A waltz for the longlasting

I was asked to write and record some music for an Electrolux commercial. First thing Anton does in a project is getting the money thing sorted. It needs to get out of the way so it doesn't disturb the creative work to come. In this project the deadline was slim. The bureau had worked with another composer before Anton and it didn't work out, so they had very little time before the commercial where to be released. He was asked to do a demo for the next day.

The bureau had a vision together with the company that it should be a beautiful song, somewhat sentimental and portrays a lifespan of meaningful incidents, but also very happy. “What about the sadness and hurt you go through in life?”, Anton asked. “The costumer doesn't want that”, they replied. Fair enough. What is the most beautiful concept printed in our Disney-generation minds – the waltz. The Cinderella story cooked down into the most romantic measurement music has to offer. The manifestation of individual big, epic life changed e.g. the wedding waltz. Intimate loving but yet so grand. A waltz it is.

The work goes on with Anton looking at the film without any sound or music, locating in the visual material where the big changes and are. Where something more important is happening.

Visually analysing what's going on:

  1. The first romantic scene where the main character is dancing with a boy.
  2. The walk in the rain
  3. A baby is born.
  4. The mother remembers her life smelling the jacket
  5. The daughter finds the jacket
  6. End plates

My thoughts on composing the footage:

  1. This scene should have very intimate and romantic music with a sense of youth.
  2. The only scene where life isn't perfect and some kind of minor chord progression can be used.
  3. Here the music must be beautiful and somewhat epic to represent the biggest moment in the film.
  4. Here the reminiscing ends and so should the music.
  5. Here a new generation takes over and the same main music theme is used but with something extra added.
  6. I always think the plates should be highlighted in the music so with this song I changed the harmonic structures and chord progression of the main theme just before the plates and landed on the familiar chord just when the end plate came in.

As the first demo was made I got the feedback that the customer “wanted more” which I interpreted as more Cinderella ball romantic feeling. So, I added more strings. In this part of the project, we were running out of time and correspondence took too much time, so I decided to make a couple of versions for the bureau to decide between.

A version was decided upon and for the final touch I made the music fit perfectly for the different timed versions of the film before delivering the final versions to the bureau.

Today the commercial is international and airing on tv all over the world.