Are you an executive ...making a video pitch to win a new business? Perhaps you’re a team leader ...producing an internal video to motivate your staff? Or you might be an advertising firm ...creating a public relations campaign ...to convince people that oil companies
care about climate change? Well, whatever it is, ...corporate music has you covered. Because no matter the product, ...no matter the event, ...it has the ability to touch each and every one of us. When we learn. When we play. And even when we turn off. It has the power to inspire joy ...and sometimes heartache. It can fill us with wonder ...and bring us back down to Earth. And whatever journey you're on, ...it holds your hand ...all the way. Helping you ideate ...and innovate ...to achieve above and beyond. Forever. Okay. I’m sorry for doing that. *sigh* Sorry. But let's just take a moment to... Let's breathe. Here we go. Corporate music. Why does it exist? No matter how much of it I’m exposed to, ...I always seem to come away
feeling either baffled or irritated. When it’s trying to be inspirational, ...it only ever succeeds in making me feel, sort of, ...tired and jaded. If it tries to come across as
emotionally charged or poignant, ...it ends up sickly sweet and desperate. And I don’t think I’m alone here. Most people I know seem to feel the same way, ...which makes corporate music a unique
phenomenon when you think about it. A genre that manages to thrive ...despite being both unpopular and ineffective. And I’ve not witnessed anyone
jumping in to defend it either. I mean, ...usually when you criticise a style of music, ...you’d worry that you might
hurt some people’s feelings. "Corporations are people too, my friend." Oh- oh yeah, I forgot about that. Um... Uh, yeah. Thanks, Mitt! So what do I mean by 'corporate music'? Well, it’s not exactly straightforward to define. I want to first be clear that I’m not
talking about commercialism, ...which is when artists allow financial
interests to infect their music. Corporate music is different in
that it’s transparently created ...to be a backing track that
helps someone sell something. It's mainly used in that weird world ...where businesses advertise
themselves to other businesses, ...or in videos created by massive corporations ...in order to communicate with
their thousands of employees. Let’s deal with this side first (the insular business side) ...before talking about how it can
spill out into the real world. So, corporate music isn’t exactly
a genre in the traditional sense ...because it’s not bound to a
specific style or set of instruments. I think it’s more accurately described ...as something that can harness the trappings of a style ...taking its surface-level idioms and cliches, ...while deliberately leaving behind
any emotional authenticity. In other words, ...I think corporate music is something designed
not to resonate with us emotionally. And I want to clarify what I mean by this
before we dig into some examples. So, ...let me share a story. A few years ago, ...I was working as a designer in a really
horrible corporate studio in London. And one morning, on my way to this studio, ...my train malfunctioned, ...and I found myself stranded
at Tottenham Hale station, ...which, for anyone who doesn’t know London well, ...is a pretty joyless place. So, to pass the time, I grabbed a book I was reading, ...called: ...written in 1944. In essence, ...it’s a critique of how our thinking has
been affected under late capitalism. One of its observations is that ...modern society is nowhere near
as enlightened as it thinks it is, ...and that the most rational among us ...are still trapped in systems of
thinking that are magical in nature. And they’re talking about actual magic here. One of the examples they point to ...is the ancient practice of human sacrifice, ...a transaction that offered a human life
in return for divine favour. Adorno and Horkheimer compared this to
the thinking process of a modern worker ...caught up in the machinery of capitalism, ...being forced to work for an employer with
no real financially plausible alternatives. They felt that, ...along with this physical obligation to be at work, ...workers were also forced to
actively practice what they called: 'the introversion of sacrifice'. And so... Hold on. Let me read that again. What? What on earth does that mean? Well, I didn’t know. I just stood there, stranded in Tottenham Hale station ...trying to comprehend what this
could mean in concrete terms. Did they mean that we simply sacrifice
our time in return for money? That felt a little obvious, ...and I felt I was missing the point. So after about twenty minutes, ...I put the book away, ...and just stared out into space ...at all the tired and irritated-looking people around me ...and the generally ugly atmosphere ...with all it’s electric wiring and massive billboards. My overwhelming feeling at that moment was: "Urgh..." "Man," "...I really wish I could exit this dump and go home." And then I looked up at the billboards ...and focused on one that was
advertising a fashion line, ...promising to help you look snappy at the office. And it was at this moment that I started
to think of the ways that I was trapped. Not just in location, ...but also in spirit. Like, why would I want to look snappy in the office? And then I began to slowly empathise with
this idea of the ‘introversion of sacrifice’. It’s not just that I have to be where I don’t want to be, ...it’s that I have to act in a way ...where my personality is locked in a little cupboard ...and replaced with the personality of the company, ...with its dull, quasi-friendly,
airplane-food communication style. A little piece of my spirit in return
for the means to go on existing. And when I thought about it like that, ...it did seem like a pretty significant sacrifice. With all our amazing technology, ...even those among us who're privileged
enough to work in well-paid jobs ...still feel de-humanised and machine-like. And it’s in this spirit that I want
to return to corporate music, ...which I think of as the audio equivalent
of the workplace hive mind. And it also seems to be bound by similar rules. It can’t be too artistic or experimental, ...and it needs to keep things ‘nice and sensible’. In fact, if it was legitimately genuine or heartfelt, ...it would, kind of, be embarrassing to
listen to in the company of your colleagues, ...because authentic, heartfelt
expression doesn’t sit well ...in an environment where emotional displays are frowned upon. So instead, internal workplace music
tends to be an empty husk, ...only dealing in the most conventional
and surface-level cliches ...while actively avoiding edginess or unpredictability. It resembles the environment it is created in. For example, let's take the music I wrote
for the introduction to this video, ...which I based on something I’m sure you’ve
all been subjected to a thousand times: The 'inspirational’ video. Let's begin with the harmony, ...where I’ve used one of the most
unoriginal progressions in existence: It’s your absolute go-to if you want to sound deep ...in the shallowest possible way. And pay attention to the fact that this
progression never changes once. This is the essential rule when writing corporate music: Avoid development at all costs. Now, since our harmony is standing still, ...we need to give the illusion of development
by using another classic trick, ...which is adding a new instrument every two bars. First you hear a bass drum: ...then the bass: ...then a repetitive melody which never
threatens to destabilise the key: And then, with a big burst of drums and vocals, ...the music hits its peak: And because I wanted it to sound extra inspirational, ...I threw in some meaningless vocal ticks too. To make it sound, sort of, ...spiritual or something, ...the vocal tick I decided on was the phrase: So that’s our peak, ...achieved through loudness rather than
any attempt at musical development. Nothing happened. No story was told. Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall. Humpty Dumpty... ...sat on the wall. He’s just going to sit on the wall. Still there. Still there. This is the continuing story of
how Humpty sat on the wall. He’s sitting on the wall. Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall. I go to bed, ...he’s on the wall. The next day, I have my breakfast, ...and I look up and... ...he's still there on the wall. Still there. He's still there, still... ...still watching. "Hey, Tantacrul." "Enjoy your day at the office!" Okay, uh, thanks Humpty. Uh... See you later. "You will see me later." "I bet you’ll never guess what I’ll be doing." Erm... Uh... are you going to be sitting on that wall? The next type of corporate music I want to talk about ...is in such high demand ...it has to be produced in industrial quantities. I call it: Nothing music comes into play when a business ...doesn’t want to communicate any type of emotion. They just need something that sounds
like music in their videos because ...the alternative is silence. And you come across this in
more uncontroversial industries, ...like accounting or tech support. Again, I’m going to create my own pastiche of this style ...which primarily takes its inspiration
from the kings of nothing music ...and fellow Irish compatriots: U2. And specifically, ...we’re going to be drawing from
the granddaddy of genericism, ...The Edge, ...hallowed be his name, ...with that incredibly lame guitar
delay effect he’s known for. A great technique for nothing music is to open with an ...phrase that repeats right until the end. This one noodles away uninterestingly in the key of D: ...until joined by some piano chords: First, you have D: ...then you have G: ...followed by C: ...followed by a cowardly retreat back to D: And then, to the coup de grâce: This inane melody: And with that, ...we’ve achieved near-complete harmonic inertia. This exact process can be followed
to write nothing music in no time. And to recap, ...let’s look at a different example
I put together in about 20 minutes. First you have the ostinato: Then you add two or three chord changes. In this case, I’m just removing the
root note of the chord in the bass: Then you add a pestilential melody, ...which keeps restating the same
phrase with only minor differences: There we go. Vintage nothing music. So one of the unfortunate consequences ...of businesses creating music for internal advertising ...is that corporate hacks get so used to it, ...it’s not long before it begins to affect how
they communicate with their customers. And nowhere is this more evident
than in the world of tech: The purpose of this kind of music is to help sell the idea ...that the product being sold is the
culmination of some kind of ...profound altruistic endeavor ...aimed at the betterment of humanity. The inspirational music written for this style of advert ...usually requires a decent orchestral sampler ...because you can believe you’re going to be hearing
a lot of string sections playing spiccato: And when they’re not going the ..."We’re making the world a better place" route, ...then... They instead go for the ..."Isn’t life just awesome?" route. This is possibly the most irritating of all ...and you can expect to hear
one or two different sounds. The first is whistling. Hey! Have you got a really trivial inconvenience? Well, here at- ...we've designed a ludicrously expensive gadget to help, ...until it breaks or we design
something even more expensive. Let’s make the world a brighter place
by wasting our disposable income! Aside from that, ...the most common and egregious ..."Isn’t life just awesome!" instrument of them all ...is the ukulele. Now, since I don’t have one of this to hand, ...I asked fellow YouTuber David Bruce ...to record himself strumming the lamest
progression he could think of on his one. Here’s what he gave me: Perfect. And from that, ...we get this: life is just so great it's so good uh... things are amazing and we can all get together and we can all be together and b- and be one and yeah we can all do lots of stuff uh... we go- erm... we love everyone li- life is great uh love love life life er be together and... uh... the end buy my stuff, please Now, although most inspirational ads ...try to be vague about the social
good their product will bring about, ...usually sticking to phrases like: 'Me, You, Everywhere, Inspire,' ...yada yada, ...others go a bit further ...by pretending to support an actual cause, ...like Audi, ...whose advert seen here pretends
to care about equal pay for women: This advert landed them in hot water
after it was pointed out ...that their entire executive team were men. Oh, dear. And after taking a deeper look, ...I discovered that it was created by a company called, uh T- there are companies you can hire to
help you pretend you care about causes? How can these people survive without
punching themselves in the face? So, to finish up, ...let’s look at the most outrageously
cynical marketing campaigns of all: Those by oil companies pretending
to care about the environment. An issue this sensitive requires some big guns. For this, ...you’ll need monorhythmic piano chords. Every year, ...the destruction of the Amazon rainforest intensifies. This makes us sad. Here at Shell, we are sad. And that’s what corporate music is. Pretending. Pretending to be something a human would write
in order to communicate an actual emotion. Pretending to be anything other than a creative stillbirth. The product of a thousand unimaginative decisions. And no matter how hard it tries, ...it just can’t help but reflect
the banality and inauthenticity ...of the corporation that commissioned it. And that, I suppose, ...is the one emotional insight it's capable of providing. It is a pretty accurate portrayal of
what corporate life is really like: Dull, hackneyed, ...and completely lacking in substance. Here’s some monster truck music:
God this video is a masterpiece, been one of my favourites for a while
It's eerie how well he nails this style of music, but I guess that's the point.
tantacrul is such an interesting edge of youtube for me. an account that covers disparate interests in software design, music theory and marxism; what a time to be alive
I edit corporate videos for a living, this hit me hard in my brain place. I spend hours sometimes trawling through royalty-free tracks that have the right balance of not-cheesy/not-too-expressive. Any of the spoof tracks he made I would have immediately bought
Been a fan of this channel for quite some time!
"Here at Shell we are saaaad" gosh, this line is godlike
It sounds like the Christian music they played at my church when I was younger. No wonder I hated it so much
honestly I would love to see a genre crafted from this. Where you try to remove the soul from your music to the point that you refine it to an art form and attain negative levels of soul
This was insightful and amusing too.