Feb 2, 2012, 15:18

The house groove in this spot for Norwegian Cruise Lines is so slammin’ we tracked down David Muhlenfield, the producer behind this great song for an interview. Muhlenfield is actually on staff at The Martin Agency, the advertising company who handled the entire campaign. Dave was kind enough to elaborate about his career, other projects he’s done and the particulars of how this soundtrack was created:



“The track was originally written for a brand video we were during the pitch for the Norwegian account. It was recorded in my home studio (which runs Apple Logic and uses KRK monitors), under the auspices of English Major LLC, a music company I set up with the blessings of The Martin Agency so I could pursue songwriting and ad-music production independently of my agency work. (Incidentally I have done a lot of music-driven ads, including all of the FreeCreditReport.com & FreeCreditScore.com band songs, plus Comcast’s XFINITY campaign and some Wal-Mart spots).

By the time we finally won the pitch, everyone at Norwegian was loving the track so they wanted it in the TV campaign. I was going to be producing the TV spot with my partner Will Esparza (total genius by the way), so to maintain focus on that, we hired the Lodge, a music house with NYC and LA offices, to take the original track and push it in as many different directions as possible, just to see where it could go.

The version in the spot is actually pretty close to the original, but has less raw “club” drums and brings in a really smooth vocal and beautiful live guitar that worked well with the footage we brought back from Mallorca.

Some other versions the Lodge produced are on Norwegian’s Facebook page in an app called “Mix it Up.” There’s a pounding underground club version plus a sexy lounge mix and a reggae-esque version that makes you want to drink immediately.

Will and I had the idea of using dance music from the very beginning. Good dance music can either energize you or chill you out, depending on your mood; and that synced up nicely with what we were trying to say about Norwegian—i.e., get on the ship and you can have pretty much whatever experience you’re looking for.

It’s been nice to see so many YouTube comments asking who wrote the track, and saying how it should be a real song etc. But the best props we’ve gotten have come from the DJs on the ships, who like the track so much they’re integrating it into their live sets, so it really is getting played alongside Kaskade and Swedish House Mafia and whatever else they’re dancing to in Mallorca.

People gettin’ sweaty to your song on the dance floor…dream come true my friend.”

Producers looking to license house beats for video can find great tracks like this with the search tool on www.musicrevolution.com.

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Mike Bielenberg is a professional musician and co-founder of http://www.musicrevolution.com, a production music marketplace with over 15,000 tracks online where media producers, video producers, filmmakers, game developers, businesses and other music buyers can license high-quality, affordable royalty-free music from an online community of musicians mbielenberg@musicrevolution.com.

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