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Today I’m bringing you my interview with my good friend Tony Esterly, songwriter and music producer extraordinaire. Tony has production & songwriting credits with artists such as SIA, BTS, Mae Muller, Andra Day, Ashe, NCT 127, KIRBY, Raekwon, Yo Gotti, Gavin Haley, Izzy Bizu, Between Friends and The Struts among others. Not only a hitmaker, Tony has seen success in the sync world as well garnering ad placements with Allstate, Apple, Audi, Motorola, Samsung and Uber to name a few.
Tell us a little about yourself and your career:
My name is Tony Esterly. I am a producer, songwriter, mixer, engineer, composer, and multi instrumentalist based out of Nashville, Tennessee.
Tell me about your first sync music experience and any challenges you faced getting there:
One of my first major syncs was kind of crazy. I had written some songs with some friends in Nashville and we didn’t really understand the process of how supervisors selected songs, or how a request worked, and how clearance processes played out. I basically knew very little. I remember I was in line at a doctors appointment waiting to pay the co-pay for my appointment, and I was hoping it wasn’t going to be very expensive as my bank account was dwindling at the time. Someone from the other publishing company involved in the song had texted me a link as I was in line, and there was a trailer to the new Assassin’s Creed movie using the song I had produced and co-written. I remember trying to remember the terms of the request while my brain was swimming watching this trailer, and I resolved at that point to keep myself educated as much as possible.
The biggest challenge I faced in getting to that point was getting the quality of my songs and productions up to a high enough level that supervisors would actually want to use the songs. I remember in the beginning of my career. I wrote a lot of bad, bad, bad, terrible, “l don’t ever play those songs again” songs. After that, getting the right team and people connected within my publishing company was the next hurdle. I was with Downtown Publishing at the time, and it took a minute to build relationships with the sync team that pitched to supervisors. Once that was all in place, trust was built; and things moved along.
Can you share your most memorable sync?
The Assassin’s Creed sync was also my most memorable sync based on the circumstances on how it happened in my lack of knowledge and the surprise that someone would actually give you money to license your song just blew my mind and I’ll never forget it.
What are some guidelines you’d suggest for creating music that’s syncable?
I know it’s a very overused term but having different sections and builds within a song arrangement is one of the biggest guidelines that I try to follow on every song. I’m writing and producing an ad based song, I’ll try to envision the commercial or the spot or a product and what I would want to hear if I was a video editor. Basically, I try to naturally deliver the :30 edit within the confines of a song. So, you’ll have a mellow verse section which builds into another section, then hits into a pre chorus, then goes right into a catchphrase type chorus, then into an earworm post chorus instrumental section. I basically tried to make the music supervisor and editors job as Easy as possible.
How has the sync licensing industry changed since you started?
It’s definitely gotten a bit more crowded. More people are understanding that music licensing is a great way to make a living and recoup your pub deal. So in a sense that has made it more competitive is more people are creating more music that works for sync. Therefore, your product has to rise above and be more original and be weirder and be cooler and be odder than somebody else’s to rise to the top.
With the improvement of quality in AI music, I’m finding myself making more human sounding songs with more happy accidents and weirder parts that are a bit more unexpected. I think the sync music has changed in the effect that you have to stand out more!
How do you approach collaborating with other artists, songwriters or producers?
I love to collaborate with all sorts of different people, songwriters and artists all over the world. I just spent a week in London, where you’ll get to meet people from almost every culture making music together. If I’m zeroed in on a sync brief, I usually try to keep collaboration with just one other person to keep the rights simple. It’s just easier to clear a song split 50/50 between two writers than 10/20/5020 etc. it can get a little sticky adding too many cooks to the kitchen.
Do you have any routines or methods to get creative work done? Combat writers block?
My main routine to combat writers block is to keep creating. I start a lot of bad ideas. I start a lot of mid grade musical ideas before I find some good ones to even present to an artist or a co-writer. I feel like you have to dig through the mid ideas to get to the really good or weird ones and just keep creating until you hit the level you want to be on. I probably have terabytes of eight bar loops on my hard drive, and it’s been worth it to make those to get to the good ideas that excite me.
What advice would you give to musicians looking to break into the sync world?
I think creative volume is the main piece of advice I will give. I find a lot of people at the beginning of their careers feel very precious with songs and will work on one song for a long time, then wait for an idea for another song until starting a new one. When really they should just be writing new songs and writing new songs and writing new songs haha. You kind of need to have a certain amount of volume and songs that say the same thing in different ways to really get moving in the licensing world.
What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned about songwriting or production?
Write more songs! I find that I write about 150ish songs a year, and really think there’s about 3-5 great songs each year that keep me coming back. I’m showing up every day for that moment in a session when you’re on to something amazing and you can feel it in the room. To me, that feeling and rush is better than anything else. You’ve got to really love music and love creating it! Music is a tough business with a lot of rejection, so you need to be able to have some tough skin and a deep love of music to keep coming back to it every day.
Key Takeaways
- Keep cranking out tunes – quantity helps you stumble upon quality in this game.
- Stand out from the crowd – as the field gets more competitive, get weirder, cooler, and more original.
- Collaborate smartly – for sync, keep it simple with just one partner to avoid rights headaches.
- Build relationships in the industry – it takes time, but it’s worth it.
- Stay educated about the sync process – knowing the ins and outs can save you from confusion later.
- Remember: even the pros write a ton of not-so-great songs before hitting gold.