Meet the man behind the music on television adverts
Composer Neil Myers has worked on some of the best-known TV ad campaigns and short films – now he’s been shortlisted for a top industry award. Neil Hudson reports.
WHILE YOU may not have heard his name, you will undoubtedly have heard his music, because Leeds-born Neil Myers has worked on some of the best known ad campaigns, TV shows and even a BAFTA nominated production.
If you’ve ever seen Sony’s PlayStation 4 ad campaign which carried the slogan ‘For the players’, then its odds on you have, albeit unwittingly, appreciated some of Neil’s work. Likewise if you tuned in to 2017’s Sky Sports Box Office clash between boxers Floyd Mayweather and Conor McGregor, you will have heard his work – he wrote the music for the pre-match teaser ads. Anyone with children under 10 will also probably be familiar with Cartoon Network’s Amazing World of Gumball, for which he co-composed on seasons 1, 5 and 6.
The 44-year-old, who grew up in Leeds, says writing music is “a very slow, patient process, most of which is finding an idea and then chipping away at it”.
“It’s almost like pottery, in that you have your material, then you need to mould it. What you set out with will very rarely look like what you end up with,” he says.
“Having said that, working on Gumball was insane. It was the hardest writing I’ve had to do. Each episode is only about 10 minutes long but it takes between three and five days to score the music, just because it’s so intricate. You might have to do one piece of music for a head turn, another if the character runs down a corridor, another when he hits someone and so on.”
Some of his other work includes creating the music for clients including O2, Samsung, Intel and Transport for London. He has worked on a multitude of genres including music for film, documentaries, sports, promotions, branding, trailers, commercials and orchestra.
His work has been used in online TV series Rebecca Gold, for which he is nominated as Best Original Music award at the 10th Annual Indie Series Awards, which take place on April 3.
“It’s very gratifying and humbling,” says Neil, whose wife Laura is due to give birth to their first child any day now.
“If people like it then I’m pleased. I love what I do. Composing music is one of those professions where you are in the background. Quite often, people don’t notice the music and if that’s the case, then it’s done it’s job. If the music isn’t there, though, that’s when they will notice.
“Music is there almost like a silent character, it’s there to draw you in, supporting and respecting the images on the screen, it helps engage the audience, which is all about belief in the story. Things have changed in recent years in that there’s been a move away from the big bombastic orchestral pieces.”
Growing up in Moortown, he was playing guitar by the age of seven and later attended Leeds College of Music, before gaining a masters in composition for film and TV.
“One of my first jobs in TV came about from chatting to a couple of guys in a pub, it was a documentary for Channel 5. I said I could help and when I turned up at the meeting, I had the music written, I just used my initiative.”
One thing led to another and Neil ended up working with Sky Sports, whose rugby union coverage, for which he composed the music, was BAFTA nominated for best title sequence.
Now he’s working on several of his own projects, including a piece inspired by the emotions of becoming a parent. “Working in TV, you are writing to narrative, supporting content, characters, aiding the story. When I write something, there’s always visual stuff involved, it’s a stimulus, because that’s the way it’s written. I’ve spent so long writing music to pictures and seeing how they work as a synergy, that when I have taken a step aside to write my own music, there’s always been a huge visual influence in some way.”