Jason Brando

When you’re a kid dreaming of rock stardom, your music tends to be channeled towards a few specific goals: the need to be different or the need to get girls. For Apollo Studios’ composer Jason Brando O’Farrell Ciciola, he channeled his bent for music toward the former. At age 13, he was playing bass and writing songs for his first band, a ska-punk outfit. In the suburbs of Montreal, that was enough to qualify one as an outsider.

But the ska-punk phase would soon fade when Brando realized that serious musicians require a degree of technical proficiency – at least more than the few power chords needed to play punk. Inspired by the classical melodies of this Italian background, he picked up the classical guitar and began studying flamenco.

Still, the DIY ethic of the 26-year-old’s ska-punk days seems to have remained. Having no formal degree, Brando is largely self-taught. It’s a method of learning that served him well in his trial-by-fire entry into composing music for the ad world.

“I just showed up at Apollo Studios with my demo,” says Brando, who up until signing with Apollo in 2008 was working as a sales rep. “I’d never worked with a computer before but [owner] Paul Macot and I clicked instantly. He tested me out to become a producer and slowly but surely that’s what I started doing.”

Brando has been instrumental in helping the Montreal-headquartered Apollo make recent gains into the European market. He won the pitch for a major Duracell Ultra Lithium campaign from Ogilvy, Paris that saw Apollo go up against Europe’s most recognizable music houses.

“Ogilvy was testing us,” explains Brando. “I just felt that I had to do something extremely catchy, extremely poppy and very spontaneous. To be honest, the melody was written in maybe eight minutes and in a span of 30 minutes the song was written. The hardest part was finding the appropriate singer to deliver it.”

Vocal producing is Brando’s forte – despite the fact that he isn’t the strongest singer. For the bubbly, pop-rock anthem he pitched for Duracell, he sang the melody and put it in Auto-Tune to correct his pitch. Using that as the template for what he envisioned, he sent the track to a local singer who sang it from her studio and sent the track back for the team to mix. It was that recording that won Apollo the work.

Next time, Ogilvy would contact Brando directly to compose a track for Perrier “Melting”, directed by Irène’s Frédéric Planchon. In it, a heat wave literally causes a downtown core to melt like an ice cream cone, accompanied by a rhythm-and-blues track that incorporates a sonic effect that sounds as if it too is melting on a record player.

“I wrote the song and took the session to [Montreal-based sound design company] Sonart,” says Brando. “Together with the sound designer we tried to find the spots where the melting effect would work without compromising the song. We tried vocal transformers with automation but in the end the best tool – using Pro Tools to slow down the pitch – was the most simple one.”

Currently Brando is preparing to launch his own record label, Corico. His first artist will be none other than colleague and First Boards Awards finalist Michael Mooney.

“This is where I always wanted to go,” he says. “Obviously, I like to write songs but I like to make it happen even more. Since I have a writing background, I can always be there to guide projects creatively, but I like to see others do the writing and I like to be the one to channel it.”

www.apollostudios.com