First, the New Music Tipsheet (http://www.newmusictipsheet.com/) where Scott Perry alerts us to what’s new on iTunes every week. Always good for staying on top.

You might want to sign up for the newsletter from RCRD LBL (http://rcrdlbl.com/), they’ll send you a link to a free hot pick MP3 every day. These are tastemakers with taste.

NPR Music has gotten past it’s stodgy reputation and has developed a gift for picking the hits. Go here, http://www.npr.org/music/ and sign up for their song of the day as well.

For the latest and the best in what is going on in New York City, read www.sonicscoop.com

And for a slightly more interactive approach, go to Pandora (http://www.pandora.com/) and set up a radio station or six. Besides the artists you like, you’ll discover some of their kindred musicians who’ll expand your sonic universe.

Again…let me know where YOU go for great music info. Just like courtesy, inspiration is contagious!

Once again we were fortunate to work again with our friends at CNN HLN to develop a new high-energy theme and music package. This time their evening news program  “Prime News” looked to us to compose the third generation of the show’s memorable theme. We first developed a theme for “Prime News” in 2005, marking it with a punchy three-note mnemonic.

The latest theme and package of opens, bumps and transitional elements feeds off vibrant, fast-moving graphics that set the tone for “Prime News.” We created an equally active theme where vigorous sound design and driving drums/percussion propel the viewer directly towards the day’s top headlines.

This project comes on the heels of other sonic branding projects for CNN including “Inside Africa,” “I-Desk” and “Morning Express with Robin Meade.”

What’s next for us and CNN? Stay tuned…

We also: Ate some weird food in Chinatown; cruised rickshaw style through mid-town; and stayed in arguably one of the smallest hotel rooms known to man.

Below are some pics from our trip to the city so nice they named it twice. See you soon!

Rolling rickshaw style

Larry Watzman with our new BFFs from agency McGarryBowen

This may well be the smallest hotel room in New York.

Our new director of business development Noelle Alanis with VP Creative Services Chad Cook

The Vault by Stephen Arnold Music continues to add top tier talent to it’s Artist Collection. The most recent artist being nine-time Grammy Award winning jazz singer/pianist Diana Krall.

Check out “Sunshine Express”

Elegant

Authoritative

Intellectual

Classy

Serious

Not dark

Not overly uplifting

According to her Wikipedia entry, Amanpour “joined CNN in 1983 as an entry-level assistant” and “worked her way up to an international correspondent in 1990. Her first major assignment was the Gulf War, and she has since covered wars, famine, genocide and natural disasters around the globe,” including “interviews with world leaders from the Middle East to Europe to Africa and beyond.”

Amanpour is among the most recognizable talents in CNN’s worldwide family. Obviously, our challenge was to develop a strong aural signature that fit her personality and appealed to her broad international audience.

The theme needed to be distinctive and authoritative, but also have a feminine quality to it. Not the easiest combination – but when we started creating several arrangements and music signatures, we used a blend of piano, strong percussion, and sweeping strings. We felt these maintained her sense of elegance, dignity and intellectual appeal, all essential qualities we wanted to weave into the music.

One particular theme, an imposing 4-note signature, was quickly singled out from the others as a front runner. The producers played it for Christiane, who really liked it – but she suggested the last note of the signature rise instead of fall.  It turned out to be a very nice touch… In fact it was the finishing one. Now every time you hear her theme, you hear that last note soar.

With the primary theme and 4-note signature approved, it was a matter of doing a variety of arrangements for content and topics in the show (i.e. serious, somber, uplifting, energetic etc).

Like most everything we brand, the instruments were played by members of the Dallas and Fort Worth Symphony Orchestras, including violins, violas, celli, French horns, and piano. I think the richness and depth live players add is especially clear in this piece. We’ve learned you can’t get that warmth by programming it.

So we hope you enjoy it as much as we all did – we felt the package and theme fit her personality well, with a regal blend of expectation and emotion.  As always, and most importantly, we had a lot of fun with this one!

http://www.stephenarnoldmusic.com/amanpour/

When we were asked to write the song for CBS Early Show’s new “A Lot Happens Early” promo campaign, CBS called and outlined what they wanted to hear, their objectives, the audience they were targeting, and gave us a few reference tracks. It had to be a song you knew was a hit the first time you heard it. At SAM, we all agreed: Let’s knock the ball out of the park.

We got started that afternoon. Stephen and I first worked out a couple of rough versions on acoustic guitar. These were just preliminary ideas we recorded and sent to CBS for review.

The feedback was very positive and we were fortunate to have strong creative direction from Dave McCoy (Senior VP, CBS News Promotion) and Julie Haaland (Director of On-Air Promotion, CBS News). They wanted the final song to have a crossover appeal, so they reemphasized the importance of the tune’s urban/pop elements.

With the initial creative direction approved, it was back to the drawing board. We worked for a while and then there was this moment when we all knew we’d found the next step. We were working with Greg Barnhill – a Grammy nominated songwriter for Tim McGraw, Jessica Simpson, and Trisha Yearwood, among others. Barnhill was chiseling away at some lyrics while we tried various chord progressions on the guitar, playing with the melodic and rhythmic structures.

After trying several versions of the song, all the pieces suddenly came together. There was this instant buzz and we pretty much panicked – “Hit record and capture it quick!” You just know when you have the right tune and this was it, a great melody that served as the foundation of the song for the rest of the project.

After we worked out the song’s lyrics with Greg, we began searching for a female vocalist who could give the melody the touch it needed. This was an essential part of the process since “A Lot Happens Early” is such a vocally driven song.

And it feels like morning everywhere

C’mon get up, get on

Be a part of a bigger change

And a better way

Right here, right now

This is a new day

It’s a new morning for America’s family

Sun’s coming up so make it all that it can be

You know a lot happens early

Everyday is good when you’re starting it off right

What a way to bring it all out in the daylight

You know a lot happens early

The music and words convey a sense of chance, an opportunity that comes with every morning. We wanted the listener to experience that, so we needed the right singer for the magic to come across.

We shopped around a bit and had a few auditions in Nashville and elsewhere, but once we found Ciamar, an extremely talented artist here in the Dallas area, we knew we’d found the voice we were looking for.

As we wrote the song, and later as we recorded it, we thought of the project as though we were making an album for a top recording artist. We wanted more than just a memorable melody; we wanted a song that could top the pop charts. A song like that needs the right melody, the right chords, the right musicians, the right groove, the right tone, the right mix. There are so many nuances that seem easy to overlook, but if one thing fails, the whole project suffers.

For example, we re-recorded and re-wrote the background vocals multiple times trying to lock down an arrangement that complimented both the genre and the lead vocals. If you listen, you’ll hear the backing vocals are quite complex; the process took a lot of time, but the effort was necessary to make the track come to life.

As a result, “A Lot Happens Early” required the efforts of so many talented people. Our whole team and our creative partners at CBS were behind this project from the start. I think everyone was very pleased with the result: “A Lot Happens Early” really captured the emotion of a beautiful morning.

There’s this point in a song’s life when you get past the trial and error stage – it all gels and takes you where you want to be: that’s the joy of creating music. That’s why we do what we do.