Muzak Orchestra has a youtube channel

CMDess said:

Interesting is an understatement.

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www.youtube.com

This was the in-house orchestra/band who created much of the muzak when the concept / company started. The compositions list different composers and different publishers in repertory search. They did intend to make a very specific kind of music, actually not for shopping but for workers. To encourage the worker work more LOL. So one series is called "stimulants progressions".

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Rather than "stimulants Progressions", this kind of soft "jazz" always progressed me into a deep slumber.

It sounds like it has a blanket on it. haha...That was them trying to make something that wouldn't encourage dissent which was a part of the programming. Not gonna lie, these days all I want is soothing jazz...no more trailers. It's interesting to note all the things they tried in this. The bass is really flat. The drums are very middle of the road except for the fills, meant to smack people back to work I guess. Those 70s strings. I like the progressions on the solos. At work I actually listen to acid house or jungle to stay motivated.

CMDess said:

It sounds like it has a blanket on it. haha...That was them trying to make something that wouldn't encourage dissent which was a part of the programming. Not gonna lie, these days all I want is soothing jazz...no more trailers. It's interesting to note all the things they tried in this. The bass is really flat. The drums are very middle of the road except for the fills, meant to smack people back to work I guess. Those 70s strings. I like the progressions on the solos. At work I actually listen to acid house or jungle to stay motivated.

History of Muzak

us.moodmedia.com

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I always recognized this music as rather well written and well orchestrated, well performed and produced, it just always sounded beyond cheesy to me aesthetically and just reminds of when a kid waiting for my mother to finally release me from the purgatory of shopping for clothes at the mall.

Didn't MV write a lot for Muzak under various pseudonyms, or am I misremembering that?

It was my understanding that part of the muzak sales pitch was that a business didn't have to pay a BMI or ASCAP blanket license for their store/dentist office/elevator/etc since Muzak controlled the rights to all the music.

Man, throws me right back to being a kid and hearing this blaring out of my folks' huge wooden furniture cabinet, which they called a Hi Fi Stereo. The metal record player arm weighed more than the monitor arm holding up my second screen. And to ensure it would burrough through that annoying skip in the Herb Alpert record we used to tape quarters on it over the needle to give it more weight... you can't make this stuff up. Long live Muzak! My dentist really did play it in his waiting room. Waiting nervously for my first cavity filling I distinctly remember listening to the Muzak version of Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head. Memories.

Hahaha I was going to post Herb...I'll refrain...(no pun int). That's a funny visual with this happy go lucky music at the dentist.

I've been studying these guys lately, along the same vein it was music for the weather channel type jazz. It's cool and it's dextrous with session players o'plenty. No doubt Russ visited this kind of BBS to learn to produce this style, he did a great job.

CMDess said:

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My favorite version of this song.

So the other Muzak-style orchestra (who did a ton of covers of Beatles tunes also, etc) was The Hollyridge Strings, conducted by Stu Phillips. The orchestra has often been referred to as the String Ninjas. Case in point, have a go at the opening of this (I listen to this Christmas album every year, several times, lol!):



It's like Yngwie Malmsteen was plugged into these guys in this intro, lol. The amount of reverb is just nutty. Love it.

And if you get completely addicted to this style, here's the whole album:

That reverb is something, I see what they were after. The grain delay of the era....That spring reverb was really musical as well for this style. It's a living piece / style the way they do it. Never heard a harpsi blend so well. ha

They should show some of the musicians who played muzak..

Here's my favorite muzak radio station:

YaniDee said:

They should show some of the musicians who played muzak..

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Challenging. I generally have used Discogs or AllMusic to get a vague idea trying to pinpoint things like that. There was a main conductor for the early titles, Nick Perito. Discogs has very detailed info but it's very challenging to get independent info into their system. They have people who flag your content as missing something, meanwhile I literarily do everything in the release including make the art. The internet has a stupid factor. The way publishers mess with names it's crazy now I can't imagine what they were up to then.

This is beyond cool:

I know Authentic Soundware publishes Kontakt libraries that duplicate some of this sound, but we really need those strings with extra slippery legato! Can someone make a library like this please?

You guys might find this book interesting. I got when I was looking for some graphic design inspiration for my sample libraries, but it also contains a lot of interesting information about some of the odder types of records being made in the late 50s early 60s.

Francisco Relaño Peña said:

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That's a funny idea to do for production music. That sweet smooth music then kaboom.