This week, Dan McGrath. You'll have heard of his work - literally.
When a project needs something we can’t do brilliantly ourselves, we bring in someone who does that one thing properly. We currently have 21 superstars in the Crop Network and we’re showcasing a few of them.
Most brands are silent. They have a logo, a palette, a typeface and a tone of voice, and then they turn up on a podcast, a video, an event or a phone line sounding like everyone else. Sound is usually the last thing anyone thinks about, and the first thing an audience actually feels.
That’s just one of the gaps that Dan fills.
Dan started as a studio sound engineer on The Big Breakfast, then spent years producing and co-presenting alongside Chris Evans on Radio 1 and Virgin. Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush. TFI Friday. Live television and live radio at the loudest, least forgiving end of the business, where the sound either works or the whole thing falls over.
Then he started writing the music. He co-composed the theme to Strictly Come Dancing. His credits run through Jonathan Ross, A League of Their Own, Last One Laughing and RuPaul’s Lingo. Through Bounce, his sonic branding company with Nik Goodman, he created the soundtrack to London’s New Year’s Eve fireworks and built sonic identities for Radiocentre and the Disasters Emergency Committee.
What that gives a client is a composer who understands entertainment and an engineer who understands rooms. He knows what a brand should sound like, and he knows how to make it sound like that on a phone speaker, a stage PA and a pair of headphones.
Anyone can generate a soundtrack now. Almost nobody can make one that people recognise in the first two seconds.
Dan has been doing exactly that for thirty years.