I am a composer and producer who has also made quite a lot of music for advertising. Some time ago, there was a job for the Japanese market —a Perrier-Jouet champagne ad.

So I made my first draft. The director of the ad liked it initially very much. Sometime later, however, the feedback came that I would still redo it—a completely new version. I did the next version. Everything was fine initially. However, some time passed, and it was returned with a comment that I should try it one more time from scratch. I had no idea what exactly was missing or what was needed. It is also interesting to hear what vocabulary is used when they give feedback like it could be more floating. And then, you have to work with these confusing comments and think about how you translate them into notes.

I did 18 or 19 different test versions before we got to the thing we started to build up from. Between these versions, I must have been six times at the point where I thought I would send this last version away, and if it didn’t fit, I would quit. But when it came back again, I thought, what do I have to lose? I had free time then, and I continued.

However, this saga ended in such a way that this same music won the original music award at the Japanese and Asian Advertising Awards. Sometimes it’s just the case that the client or a partner you’re working with has to push you for so long that something starts to marinate strongly, or you start to work against it even in a way that brings a certain creative liberation, and as a result of which you rise to an entirely new level.

It’s interesting how a director can pull something completely different out of you in the long run that you might not have come up with on your own. This director has already taken me far away from my usual style. He doesn’t directly write music. He doesn’t even say concretely what he wants. With his influence, he can take you to such a point that you break out of yourself and find something completely new. And it’s not just that he forces you to pull out of your comfort zone and handwriting. So actually, it is possible to create something utterly new at such tense translation points of different creative disciplines. And you have to press on because maybe the saying in creative work is true: if you don’t love it, it probably sucks.