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Sound designers create jingles, effects heard around country

April 22, 2008

Making something out of nothing might sound like a daunting task — unless you’re a sound designer.

“(Sound design) is taking sound and creating an environment that doesn’t really exist,” said Steve Curran, co-owner of Harvest Music + Sound Design, 1011 N. Washington Ave., in Lansing.

Harvest, which Curran and co-owner Mark Miller started more than 25 years ago, specializes in original music and sound design for radio and TV advertising, Curran said.

With a staff of nine full-time employees, Harvest has created the sound component of radio and TV advertisements for companies including Meijer, Old Country Buffet, Shoe Carnival and Ford.

Because the business is in Lansing rather than New York or Los Angeles, Curran said new technology has been essential to helping Harvest flourish in such a competitive field.

“Whether we’re working in Dallas or Chicago or Detroit … we e-mail everybody everything,” he said.

“Quicktime (files), MP3s — rarely do people come in to work here.”

Curran, who started in music and has a college radio background, said he fell into the business somewhat by accident.

He said he visited Lansing for his mother’s marriage and stayed for a few months. During this time, he met Miller.

The two started recording music for bands and Curran said they were good at it, but later decided to switch to commercial work.

“It’s an opportunity to hear your stuff on the air,” he said. “It’s fun.”

For Miller, who also has a strong music background, commercial work seemed to be a natural fit.

“I had an aptitude to the technical end of (making music),” he said.

“What was fun for me was being able to actually assemble a piece of music from both a musician standpoint and a technical standpoint.”

Phil DeTolve, a 2007 MSU graduate who works as a recording engineer at Harvest, said one of the advantages of creating sound for commercials is the quality of the music.

“It’s guaranteed that you’re going to work with really good musicians,” he said. “The product has to sound good.”

Julie Magsig, who has been working at Harvest for more than 20 years, said most of the work done for companies other than Meijer are from outside of Michigan.

Magsig, who composes music for any jobs that require it, said she likes the variety of assignments.

“Everything that comes through the door is different,” she said.

“Some stuff is ‘Yawn, oh no, another jingle for such and such,’ (but I) don’t know from week to week what’s going to happen.”

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