Nothing sounds like vinyl. An analog recording has a quality, a warmth and expansiveness, that digital just can’t equal.

For those of you too young to remember what it’s like to drop a needle on a record, it’s hard to explain how it turned the act of listening into a sacred ritual, something requiring care and attention, but you may get your turn yet. According to the Wall Street Journal, while CD sales fell 5% last year, sales of vinyl records grew by 36%. Everything old is new, again. Hipsters are buying them like hotcakes.

We never gave up on vinyl. It’s not just the quality of the sound that we love so much, but the fact that an album is an actual thing. Its size allows for artwork that can’t be effectively shrunk down to fit on a CD jewel box. It has a weight that feels like it matters. Nothing about vinyl says disposable.

That’s why we released our own vinyl LP last year, “Sonic Branding”. We took special care to create a package that provided the perfect visual accompaniment to the music it contained. If you have it, but don’t have a record player, run out to Target and buy one (or just pop the companion CD into your player if you must). Put on your headphones (the kind with the RCA jack) and pour a glass of your favorite beverage. We suggest a nice single malt scotch. Then, let those warm tones carry you away on a cloud of sonic bliss.

Don’t take our word for it. Check out these recent articles about the vinyl revival:

• Dallas Record Company Benefits From Vinyl Record Boom (NBC DFW) »
• Neil Young: Steve Jobs listened to vinyl (USA Today) »
• It’s Alive! Vinyl Makes a Comeback (The Wall Street Journal) »

That means 3 things: great football, million dollar ads and MUSIC.

For us in Dallas, the Super Bowl is something of a mirage these days (even if it was at Jerry World last year). This wasn’t the case in the 90’s. The ‘Boys, led by the Triplets (Troy, Emmitt and Michael) won 3 SB’s. But, with just 1 playoff win in the last 15 years, we can only relish the good old days… but I digress.

Super Bowl ratings have always been sky high. Not just because of the spectacle of the game, but also because of hi-profile commercials. And, in the last 20 years or so, who performs musically at halftime has almost become as important as who plays in the game!

It started with the King of Pop at Super Bowl XXVII (1993) when he sang Heal The World. And we all remember his sister’s wardrobe malfunction when she was singing with Justin Timberlake (Super Bowl XXXVIII). Other notable entertainers have been U2, Prince, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney, to name a few.

Last year Dallas’ own Stephen Arnold Music got overlooked (not really) and The Black Eyed Peas performed… This year, in Indianapolis, the ageless Madonna is scheduled to perform.

Other music that comes to mind around Super Bowl time is The Super Bowl Shuffle by the 1986 Super Bowl Champion Chicago Bears:

But my all-time favorite football tune was composed right here at the SAM studio for the New Orleans Saints, who went on to win Super Bowl XLIV in 2012. It’s called Big Thang:

These days good football isn’t the only key ingredient to a successful Super Bowl. Good music matters too!

Golf Channel – “Playing Lessons”

CBS Sports – “Tim Brando Show”

HDNet – “kidScene”

To view more of our projects, visit our YouTube channel at youtube.com/stephenarnoldmusic

The “Arts” always come out in full bloom at year’s end. We all have our favorite, iconic holiday book/film/play/TV show, maybe even a favorite toy, and last but not least, favorite Christmas song or carol.

Since I was a kid, some of those iconic holiday classics have been replaced — a change made ever more apparent as the father of three young ones (although only one still young enough to “believe”).

I will never forget those classics near and dear to me come Christmas, but as a sign of changing times, here’s a quick comparison of my favorites against those of my children:

BOOK
Then: The Night Before Christmas
Now:  The Polar Express

MOVIE
Then: A Christmas Carol
Now:  Elf

TOYS
Then: Atari
Now:  Xbox 360

MUSIC
Ironically, when it comes to music, this is one of the few Christmas favorites that really hasn’t changed. My kids love “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”, and my personal favorite has always been “The Little Drummer Boy”, especially Bob Seger’s version.

Sonic Branding is as common a phrase as any other here at Stephen Arnold Music. I’ve explained it a thousand times to clients and would-be clients. “That set of notes that musically identifies a program, a film, a product…” I didn’t have to be in the room looking at the TV last night to know Monday Night Football was coming on – I could hear the sonic brand from across the house.

Think of the concept as it applies to Christmas. There are hundreds of “sonic brands” out there that immediately tell us what time of year it is…Christmas time!

What’s your favorite Christmas Sonic Brand?

Check it out:

The directive was to create a lively and playful soundtrack built on a driving pace that would underscore edited video and graphics.  Golf Channel wanted a strong, organic music logo to anchor the package, so we came up with a four-note hook.  The music incorporates acoustic guitars, a catchy bass line, drums, and some unexpected musical flourishes and sound textures.

The new music will be used for the show open, teases, and various IDs throughout the show, as well as for promotions.

Playing Lessons, hosted by Brandel Chamblee, features some of the world’s top touring professionals talking through a round of golf with celebrities from the world of sports and entertainment. During each episode, the pro discusses strategy, course management, shot selection and a variety of tips, as well as the featured celebrity’s career highlights. New episodes are airing on Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET.

This is a clip from the Promax NYC “Marketing Genius” session this June showing the creative behind

WGNO-TV, New Orleans’ “God Bless Louisiana” campaign.

What a sonic brand really does is evoke something in your brain that says, “Hey, go do this,” or “Get ready for that,” or “Watch out!” So when you heard thunder, you’d go into the cave for shelter, or when you heard the rooster crowing you knew it was time to get up and go to work plowing the fields. Or your brain would be able to differentiate between whether you were hearing a snake in the grass, or just the wind.

That’s the relationship from a psychological, scientific perspective of what sound does. It’s interesting because the only way sound can work that way is if it’s connected to something that happens over and over again: It’s the repetition of sound that causes us to say, “I need to go and do this now.”

Fast forward to today when you’ve got wide-reaching sonic signatures, like the ones my company has done for the Weather Channel or CNN Headline News. I don’t think these came about because mankind one day just said, “OK, we’re going to take a sound and exploit it.” It was obviously an evolutionary process. Because it went from being just nature to everything around us: the whistle of a train coming into a station, an alarm clock, a boiling coffee pot, your Blackberry, car keys in the ignition…you name it. If you made a list of all the sound signals you heard throughout the day, from the moment you woke up until you went to bed, it would be unbelievably long – you can’t consciously think about all the ways you use sounds in your life.

But at some point our tendency to associate sounds with events and reactions was recognized as, “We can use this to get people to remember our products or services.”

In the commercial aspect, many times a listener feels like they hate a sonic brand, and they’ll say, “I don’t want to hear that again.” But as we point out in some of our presentations, “Sometimes you love it. Sometimes you hate it. And sometimes you hate that you love it!”

Listen to Aerial, and leave a comment below for your chance to win a vintage Martin acoustic guitar.

You can check out the actual guitar here (thanks, Stephen):

Drawing to be held on Tuesday, May 17th 2011.

click here for contest rules and eligibility requirements

Given HLN’s sonic brand — which tends to feature a quick, upbeat pace — and Dr. Drew’s popularity with younger audiences, we went with a highly-charged, guitar-oriented theme that felt like a good fit not only for the host and his audience, but for HLN as well.

Let us know what you think. You can check it out here, or on HLN tonight at 9pm.

In the 1987 film Broadcast News, real-life film-score composers Marc Shaiman and Glen Roven had a cameo as dorky musicians trying to pitch a new theme song for the network’s nightly news broadcast. They frantically introduce the parts as they sing them — “Now comes the counter melody!” — and signal the piece’s big finish by chanting in unison, “Big finish!”

Stephen Arnold and Chad Cook know that scene well. For the president and VP of creative services, respectively, of Stephen Arnold Music, a Dallas shop that has created themes and audio logos for ESPN, ESPNU, Golf Channel, Tennis Channel, and NBC Sports, as well as the YouTube hit for the New Orleans Saints’ “Big Thang” victory song, the manic 40-second cameo belies both the lengthy and nuanced process that goes into creating music for broadcast sports and the fact that sometimes you have to get it all across in three seconds.

“Everyone is looking for their own ‘John Hancock’ of music,” says Cook, “the theme that lets fans instantly identify with the show.”

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