
| by: | Apr 1, 2001 |
Self-avowed low-tech composer/sound designer Jane Mangini's slice-and-dice sampling and premeditated rhythm tracks equal her skills for creating genre-specific mood tunes.
A graduate of Boston's Berklee College of Music and former keyboardist with Berlin Airlift, Mangini joined New York's Bang five years ago. Self taught in the intricacies of her Roland S-760 Sampler, she applied atmospheric sound designs and precise, varied musical efforts to spots for Motorola, Northern Light, Sony, Sprite and Heineken. She has crafted crooning lounge and barroom blues for Heineken and archetypal sexy sax for Sony, but Mangini's favorite work is heavily sampled, sound design-affected music.
"My favorite one so far has been Northern Light 'White Room,' because I was throwing everything I had at the screen. It was sampled, heavy, crazy rhythmic stuff," says Mangini.
The spot, directed by Steve Ramser moves from chaotic, textured white noise and tones driven by blunted drum and bass to a crescendo of electronic bleeps, before it breaks into placid synth wash. To keep her rhythms fresh, Mangini programs and sequences her beats and then samples a live percussionist playing it out.
"There's only so much processing you can do on the same old samples. You get sick of hearing those same old loops," she says. "And people always ask for anything that is different, that's why I cut a lot of things up or end up going back to some really rich, old-sounding loops. But you can make a rhythm out of anything, so sometimes I will find crazy sounds, make a rhythm pattern and work around that."
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