Sometimes you just unwind at the end of an intense week by sitting down and composing/recording a cinematic choral medieval style soundtrack. Or at least 1 minute and 50 seconds of it. Enjoy :)

Dawn Requiem by Adrian Elton

"The Ballad Of Leon The Barber" is the title track that I composed and recorded for Ryan Spanger's final VCA documentary project of the same name.

The documentary tells the story of starry eyed barber, Leon Danziger, who has opened a vintage style men's barber in Elwood Village, a good decade before contemporary hipster sensibilities had arrived on these shores. The documentary explores his inner world; his philosophy; and his hopes and fears.

The song first emerged as I sat strumming an acoustic guitar in Ryan's apartment in Narong Rd, Caulfield, contemplating that Leon, in his own way, was the people's poet. An unsung hero if you will who deserved a joyous anthem of his own. With the core in place, it was later finished in my home studio in Prahran.

As is often the case with my recordings, I played the bulk of the instruments - but knowing that this track needed a bit extra in the 'special sauce' department, I called in the big guns. This meant in the first instance, harnessing the stunning, sultry vocals of the super-sassy songstress, Tamara Kuldin. Adding to this heady brew, was Simon Starr, the one-take wonder on double bass, who is one of this country's finest jazz exports. The arrangement was rounded off with the thigh slapping, country ho-down, violin lines, played by the super diverse, Michelle Lewitt.

As a lot of this the power of this track is bound up in the humour of the tongue-in-cheek lyrics, here they are;

The Ballad Of Leon The Barber
Words & Music by Adrian Elton

Verse 01	

This is the story of a man we know
Who had a great big dream
He came from the mountains
On a big steam train
And landed on the silver screen
	
Chorus 01

Leon the Barber
Had stars in his eyes
Twinkling and sparkling
And fuelling our desires
	
Verse 02

This is the story of a man we know
Who had the Midas touch
There can be no denial
All the glamour and style
Made him the man we love to love
	
Chorus 02

Leon the Barber
Had stars in his eyes
Twinkling and sparkling
And fueling our desires
Spiffing us up with a short back and sides
Leon’s the man we love (oh, yes)
Leon’s the man we love

The Ballad Of Leon The Barber

This is a track that was originally recorded for a charity album that was to feature the work of different electronic music producers. While the album never eventuated, it was later 'discovered' online and then signed to boutique dance label, Odessa Mama.

From here it was licensed for use in a European fashion series called, 'The Stylist', that has been broadcast around the world.

As a recording, it was a huge piece that took nearly 90 hours to put together. While there are drum loops and sound effects a-plenty - nearly all of the melodic instrumental elements were performed by me, along with the composition of the main theme (which could equally be played quite successfully by a small jazz trio).

The vocal samples came from an old vinyl record that my grandfather had  (he was a doctor) that was called, "How To Live With Yourself... Or... What To Do Until The Psychiatrist Comes" by Dr. Murray Banks.

We tried to track the label down for clearances for these samples but the label and release were from the 1950s and had ceased to exist a long, long time ago :P

10000 Women

This super fun little track was composed with the very talented Michael Burrows (from Brand Music). It was one of a series of tracks that we created for a Spanish computer games developer in Gibraltar called St.Minver. The tracks were commissioned to help set the sonic scene for different online games and they all ultimately had to loop so there wouldn't be a discernible end to any of the tracks. They were recorded at DreamGoat Studios, with both of us developing the musical ideas - while I sat behind the desk and drove the session.

The aim was to create an electro anime, 'plastic-fantastic' style of aesthetic that would tie in with the stripped back Japanese style of animation. We accomplished this by using sounds that came from samples of old electronic musical toys. 

Kurakku

This is the soundtrack for a TV (& cinema) ad that I wrote with the terrifically talented (and tall) film director, Paul Andersen. It was the winner of a national advertising competition called, "Oz In 30 Seconds". The competition was organised by activist group, "GetUp!" with the idea being that it would be the political ad, written by the people, for the people. This was to be in contrast to the party political ads which masked murky hidden agendas. The competition took place in the lead up to the 2007 federal elections where John Howard was finally dethroned after many years at the helm.

The competition finalists were invited to the Sydney Opera House for the grand unveiling of the winner. To that end, Paul and I had no idea that the event was going to be run, in a reality-TV format, with a panel of judges (including "At The Movies" Margaret Pomeranz). To our incredible relief, the judges unanimously chose our entry, and went on to say some incredibly lovely things about it too.

Following a media launch in Adelaide, the ad screened in cinemas around Australia and on TV in South Australia.

As for the music itself; the core theme was written a few years earlier, somewhat exotically, while playing an acoustic guitar on a tropical style lounge suite, in a house that was nestled in the lush rainforest surrounding Cairns. When it came to recording the track for the ad though, I was helped out enormously by way of having the sonorous cello performance of Sharon Leibowitz.

The voice over performances were care of Susan Miller, Ted McKinlay and Paul Andersen; while the film editing and compositing were care of Eugene Perepletchikov and James Wright from Studio Coop. The 3D animation of the flag was the fine work of Marco Damiano. I developed the overall 'look and feel' of the ad as well as devising the key "Australi-ARE" idea that the ad revolves around.

You can watch the TVC here - and when you do - keep in mind that this was made without a budget;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWL6szZjRrU

This Is What We Australi-ARE (TVC Soundtrack)

Sometimes you just gotta take the piss right? Well, on this particular occasion I happened upon an online competition which asked entrants to submit some music for use in an advertisement that was for a luxury German car. The only catch was that they couldn't tell us which brand it was for. So I figured, if I didn't know what brand it was for, I'd hedge my bets and create a jingle that was for every German car. To complete the track I brought in my good friend and occasional collaborator, Mr Bram Presser, lead singer of Jewish punk schlock band, Yidcore, to lend his gritty vocals to the proceedings. To our chagrin and enduring horror, we never heard back from them. Anti-semites! :P

Here are the lyrics;

It's Made In Deutschland
Words & Music by Adrian Elton

It's a car
It's a very fast car
A German car
Yeah it's a very German car
It'll take you to a million places
Put a smile onto a million faces
This car
That's made in Deutschland
Oooooo-wooo-ooo
It's made in Deutschland
(insert car name here)

It's Made In Deutschland

In the lead up to the 2022 AFL (Australian Football League) grand final my two little boys became obsessed with listening to the various team’s anthems. Listening to them en masse I was struck by how uniformly absurd the chest beating was, such that I decided to try my hand at writing my own generic football team song. Channelling the sound of badly recorded banjos, trombones and a baritone choir, I give you "We Are The Best Team".

We Are The Best Team
Words & Music by Adrian Elton

Verse 01

We are the best team
We are the best by far
We’re fearsome and we’re mighty
And we drive better cars

Chorus 01

We always win
‘Cause we’re so tough
You’re going to lose
Well that’s our bluff
The Schadenfreude 
Will keep us drunk for days

Verse 02

You are the worst team
That we have ever seen
You’re useless and you’re sluggish
You’re puny and you’re green

Chorus 03

‘Cause there’s nothing
That could be so sweet
As relishing
In your defeat
The Schadenfreude 
Will keep us drunk for days

Finale

We are the best team
The actual proper best team
Oh yes we are the best team now

We Are The Best Team by JingleHell

This is a track I recorded in 2002 to celebrate the Jewish New Year. It features some vinyl samples for the spoken elements and shofar (ram's horn) samples I found online. I played and composed the rest of the musical elements. Interestingly and weirdly, the bass line is played both on electric bass and on keyboard bass. For some reason I liked both of them so kept both of them, combining for quite an interesting bass tone.

Chassid Jazz

Walkie Talkbox

This is a rap I wrote years ago which obviously sounded absurd with me trying to rap it. I just used some AI called 'iMyFone VoxBox' to summon 2Pac back from the beyond. Now this is just doing a straight read of the lyrics, so is rhythmically all kinds of off - but it's still pretty amazing. Next to find AI that will follow the rhythm of a guide vocal. And then ultimately AI that will follow a melodic guide vocal too. #crazytimes

Rock It To The Front Rap Performed by AI 2Pac

This is the soundtrack that I composed and recorded for a video for my dad's 80th. The video consisted of childhood photos from the 1940s that were mesmerisingly brought to life with RunwayML Gen3.

The music was inspired by the kind of pre-rock n roll Vaudeville come marching band music that was part of British life back then as scones and tea, and diving into bomb shelters to avoid being shelled by the Germans.

The music was degraded by degrees to make it sound like an old phonograph recording.

Zippys Parade

This original piece of music was composed and recorded in response to the prompt for August (2025) for the little song club I'm part of with some audio heavy hitters in the US.

The prompt was to create a song that was for a made-up, non-existent culture. We also had to include a home made instrument too.

This was no doubt the most challenging brief yet - and I found the only way to tackle it was to go into audio production composer mode, imagining it to be for a sequence in a film, rather than a song in any traditional sense.

The words are completely made up and it really was like the process of chipping away at a block of marble to reveal the sculpture within. I had no idea what sounds would tumble out of my mouth next. All I knew was that the various lines needed to sonically land in a way that sounded resolved, and that the melodies of those various lines should also be harmonically cohesive so they could be stacked on top of each other.

The vocals that I recorded were pretty much single take positionals, captured only to get the idea down. But as the month busily rolled on, it became clear that I wouldn't have time to do proper takes, so it was a case of making the most of what I had. Of course, as a tribe would be made up of many people with varying abilities to sing in tune, the roughness probably helps to emulate that reality better than had I recorded it in any other way.

While I am very much an advocate of writing tracks that are fundamentally resolved before recording begins, in this case the track drew into focus through the recording process. With each listen through it became clearer what was needed and where.

It was only after I had begun that I got the sense that this might be a tribal chant sung to accompany a rain dance. From there came the idea of the vocals reaching a crescendo as the lightning strikes and the thunder rolls and the deluge begins. It was also complete coincidence that I later reflected on the fact that the Hebrew word for rain is 'geshem'.


The hand-made instrument was the undulating metallic hit after the thunder and lightning. This was a metal mixing bowl that I filled with water and hit with a big metal spoon. I had my laptop setup on the kitchen bench and recorded it with my Shure SM7B via my Universal Audio Volt 2/76.

The other acoustic instruments were the African thumb piano which plucked the opening sequence of three notes, and the Ocarina which I blew in for the strange echoey whistle.

My song-club buddies determined that my track had addressed the challenges of the brief most  faithfully which was a major compliment.

We even determined that our farewell salutation shall now be, 'Ki Go Goshem' :D 





Ki Go Goshem

This is the theme song that I wrote for the promotion of the inaugural "Big Sing" singing festival that is launching on November 10 in Melbourne, Australia. 

The brainchild of my good friend, Dina Zaitman, this festival aims to create an inclusive environment for singing enthusiasts of all ages to learn from the best in the biz.

For a first time festival it was critical that the branding and marketing struck the right chord (no pun intended). In that spirit, Dina showed me a rough idea for a promotional video featuring stock footage of people singing in the shower. It was a fantastic idea that perfectly amplified the brand positioning that I had developed for the festival. The only problem was that it used a very popular piece of music which would have been unfeasibly expensive to properly license. The easiest way around this impasse of course was to create an original piece of music for the video. That in mind, I couldn't resist the challenge of writing a sparkly new theme song that would capture the essence of the festival.

The initial idea came to me as I was driving. From the very first, it was always going to be a clarion call about the power of singing that would suit a choral or acappella style arrangement.

From there I created a rough demo. And even though I've got a hardcore recording setup with some seriously nice mics - I sat on the edge of my bed with my MacBookPro and a crappy USB mic and recorded what would become the backbone of the final track. There were ultimately 60 vocal tracks that were split across five sections.

Once it was recorded I emailed an MP3 to Dina and to my greatest relief she absolutely loved it and couldn't wait for us to record it for real.

As my studio wasn't really suitable for that many singers Dina was able to draw upon the considerable talents and largesse of her friend Robert Upward from Upward Studios in South Melbourne.

And so it was, on the 22 August 2019, a bunch of us piled in for a very unusual recording session. The aim being to make a small group sound like a fairly epic vocal ensemble.

It must have been quite bizarre for everyone involved as my instruction to Dina was that there was no rehearsal required. Instead, one by one, each of the singers entered the vocal booth and performed a few lines, reproducing my rough versions, without the larger context of the whole. In this way we were able to record the 60 vocal tracks within a few compressed hours.

From there I took the session away and removed my rough vocals, sifting through the hundreds of individual takes to cherry pick each singer's best take. From there I built the full arrangements using all of those little building blocks. When I played it back for the first time it was like the scaffolding being taken down on an elaborate building. It was phenomenal to hear the way that my meticulous planning had paid off.

But it still wasn’t properly mixed. For this I went back into Upward Studios with Rob and over four subsequent sessions he tweaked and caressed the tracks into the shimmering edifice that you can hear today. And it was no mean feat to make 60 vocals work simultaneously. Rob had to sculpt sonic definition and clarity with elements that all sound incredibly similar. It could have so easily sounded like mud.

Credits

Festival Director: Dina Zaitman

Song Writer/Arranger/Producer: Adrian Elton (JingleHell)

Mix/Mastering Engineer: Robert Upward (Upward Studios)

Singers (in alphabetical order)

Tammy Brami
Tammy Cantoni
Ben Chamravi
Adrian Elton
Janine Diamond Feldman
Olivia Feldman
Karen Feldman Epstein
Andi Herman
Sarah Kisilevich
Robbie Smith
Dina Zaitman

Sing It by Adrian Elton

This is a song that I wrote on the basis of a hot little tip-off that Susan Boyle's agent in LA was looking for some new material for her. Armed with this scant and unverified information, I wrote and composed this song which I imagined to be the kind of treacly thing that she and her audience would be very responsive to. To be fair, I've never listened to Susan Boyle's music beyond the incidental clips that I'd seen of her on 'Britain's Got Talent'. And I had no inclination to break a perfectly good habit at the point that I was going to try to write a song for her. So much for the spirit of diligent research. Anyway, sat at my mother-in-law's vintage upright piano I penned the core of this tune that I later built up into a full arrangement in Logic using various virtual orchestral instruments. I also knew if this was going to cut it as a demo - it was going to need a great female vocal. To that end I was put in touch with the super talented Vicki Pappas who came into my studio and delivered a perfectly killer performance which captured all of the pathos and faux drama of the song. All that done - I passed it through to my contacts - who passed it through to their contacts - and ... nothing... nada... zip... Which brings us forward ten years on, to 2020, at a point where I'm rediscovering my illustration chops in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, care of a brand new iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. Drunk on the power I realised that I can finally create the cover art that I'd had in mind's eye for the longest time, but hadn't found the motivation to create manually. And to that end, on account of the fact that the song sounded like it could have been the signature tune from any number of epic Disney animations, it made perfect sense to illustrate Susan Boyle as a Disney princess, recounting her tale of rags to riches.

Rags To Riches
Words & Music by
Adrian Elton
© Copyright 2020

Intro

Verse 01
		
I was born in the moonlight
On a night when the world was so peaceful and still
And the birds welcomed daylight
With a song that was joyful and shrill

Verse 02
		
I was born in a small town
Just the kind where most everybody knows your name
Where life doesn’t just hand you
The brass keys to fortune and fame

Chorus 01
	
But wherever this life is taking me
I’ve known from the start
Rags to riches and then back again
All we really need
Is the love in our hearts

Verse 02

I was born with a small voice
Just a child with a dream that had wings of its own
So I flew through these dark clouds
And I’m no longer singing alone

Chorus 02

Bridge		

Hold your dreams tight for a rainy day
Don’t look down, lest they should slip away
Head up high, so you can see the view
When it’s time, sometimes the world conspires
To make your dreams come true

Chorus 03

Outro

Is the love in our hearts x 3

Rags To Riches by Adrian Elton

JingleHell is a Melbourne based audio production group that offers snappy sonic solutions for advertising, digital, film and TV.

Indeed, if you need more than just effervescent sonic wallpaper, then you'll love JingleHell as we're all about producing music with super catchy hooks, fine-tuned to connect with your audience. 

Recent projects have included the production of a video and radio ad soundtrack for the virally acclaimed "Pubidome" campaign, as well as a video soundtrack for an online promotional video for the super innovative and award winning, “MakeDo” environmentally friendly toy product.

Jingle Hell have also produced everything from music for a Spanish computer games developer to an electro dance track that featured in a European fashion series called, "The Stylist".

As a companion business to Adrian Elton Creative* - our clients have the reassurance of working with a small group who completely understand the business and creative prerogatives associated with getting things done in the advertising and film industries.

And because we love things to sound as good as they possibly can, we have classic mics like the Neumann U87 paired with a Neve 1073 preamp, which is the self same, iconic combination that has consistently been the weapon of choice for artists like Stevie Wonder, Nirvana and more recently, Lily Allen. We also have vintage instruments like an original 1964 Hofner violin bass (which is the same model bass Paul McCartney played in the Beatles) and a Fender Rhodes 73 Mark I electric piano (which is the same model Ray Charles plays in the Blues Brothers). These vintage instruments sit alongside the absolute best of contemporary digital audio production tools and toys, so whether you project needs to sound like tomorrow, or Yesterday - we can confidently nail it. 

Sounds good huh? 

To talk about your next project, email Adrian Elton at >> adrian@jinglehell.com

JingleHell

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