Write a Jingle

 

Sure you want to be the next great songwriter in the category of Carol King, James Taylor or Bob Dylan, but they already wrote those memorable songs. Anyone can pick up a guitar or sit down at the piano and find a verse and maybe a hook, but then you have to get musicians to help you out, record it, get it distributed, play before an audience and hope that people like it before it goes out of date.

Then you have to come up with the next great song before you are forgotten.

Like all authors who are writing the next great American novel but settles in on writing YA graphic novels (formerly comic books), you may have to lower the bar. There are thousands of tiny bars or backrooms with a stool and a microphone and thousands of hopeful songwriters trying to be discovered. There are hundreds of websites where you can make a movie with your cell phone and post your tune hoping it will become viral.

Most top 40 songs are 3-4 chords and there are mass varieties of styles that can be played. Don’t worry about finding the perfect verse. Make a chorus everyone can sing along with. Find a hook that will bring them back to the song and cut it off at 3 minutes otherwise the audience will lose interest.

There is another option.

Instead of worrying about staying up with the latest trend, spending nights crammed in the corner of a smoky bar screaming your heart out to a drunken screaming crowd then jamming all your equipment into a trailer and driving down to the next stop and repeating the set in hopes some big time record producer will discover you and make you famous.

Write jingles.

A jingle is a short song or tune used in advertising and for other commercial uses. Jingles are a form of sound branding. A jingle contains one or more hooks and meaning that explicitly promote the product or service being advertised, usually through the use of one or more advertising slogans.

I listen to NPR regularly and hear this comment everyday, “Theme by BJ Leiderman”.

Who is BJ Leiderman?

Bernard Jay Leiderman (born February 14, 1956), known as BJ Leiderman, is an American composer and songwriter. His best-known works are his theme music compositions for public radio programs, including National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, Weekend Edition, Wait Wait... Don’t Tell Me!, Science Friday, and American Public Media’s Marketplace.

Leiderman attended Virginia Tech, but dropped out and became a stage actor, then a cameraman at WTAR (now WTKR) in Norfolk, Virginia. He later studied broadcast journalism at American University in Washington, D.C. Leiderman’s Morning Edition theme music was used for 40 years, from the show's first broadcast on November 5, 1979 until May 3, 2019.

As of 2013, Leiderman lived in Swannanoa, North Carolina. He produced his debut album ‘BJ’ (2017), featuring The Randall Bramblett Band and Béla Fleck.

He might not be on the list of the Grammys or Top 40 Billboard chart or have platinum selling records, but his little jingles are paying the bills. He doesn’t have to tour or promote his name (though every time is name is announced he gets royalties and advertising) or answer music critic’s questions.

Think about the ring tone on your phone. That little ditty played to identify every product from diapers to movie titles. The please hold soundtrack is a jingle. The effects on a video game are accompanied by jingles. “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” and “Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep” are all familiar jingles. Just a few notes not a song in a Rogers and Hammerstein musical but the words are unforgettable.

So don’t sweat writing the next #1 hit. Put a few notes together and write a jingle.