The Composer Decision

You’re in the process of choosing the agency who will create your brand’s sound. The brief is approved, the shortlist looks strong, and everyone has a reference track they hope the composer has heard. It can feel like a decision that comes down to musical taste. In practice though, you’re choosing a sound that will accompany the brand for years, across ads, apps, stores and moments you haven’t even planned for yet. Get it right and a few notes can make the brand easier to choose and harder to forget. Get it wrong and you may spend years repeating a cue that leaves little trace of the brand or any real feeling about it. So, alongside the usual questions about credentials, qual reels, and process, I’d ask one more: When did the composer last make music in front of other people, in real time?

I’ve spent more than a decade testing the effects of audio on brands. The strongest sonic assets I’ve encountered typically came from composers who still perform—musicians, DJs and session players who are used to reading an audience and making intuitive musical decisions on the spot. That’s an observation from my work, not a finding I can generalize to every composer or project. But it has made me interested in what performing live might bring to the way a sonic identity is made.

In a 2008 study, neuroscientists Charles Limb and Allen Braun put six professional jazz pianists in an fMRI scanner. The pianists alternated between playing learned material and improvising. The researchers gave them both a simple exercise and a more complex jazz task, allowing them to compare the two ways of playing across different musical demands. When the pianists improvised, neural activity decreased across parts of the lateral prefrontal cortex associated with monitoring and controlling behavior. Activity increased in a focused area of the medial prefrontal cortex. Limb and Braun suggested that this combination could support spontaneous musical expression with less conscious oversight of each decision.

It’s tempting to translate that into “the brain’s inner critic switches off when we improvise.” The scans don’t tell us what the pianists were thinking, and six is a small sample. What the study does show is that improvising engaged a different pattern of brain activity from playing material they already knew. There’s another detail I find useful for brand work: the pianists had constraints. In the jazz task, they worked with an existing melody and chord structure. In the simple task, their choice of notes and timing was tightly limited. They were drawing on years of practice to make something new within a structure. A good creative brief can serve the same purpose. It should give a composer something substantial to work with: the brand’s identity, the job the sound needs to do and the settings in which people will hear it. The composer still has to find the music.

Many sonic branding projects begin with reference tracks. I understand why. They give everyone a shared vocabulary, and they can make an abstract discussion feel manageable. They also give the team something familiar to listen for. Once a reference has taken hold, an idea that resembles it may feel right sooner than one that takes the brand somewhere less expected. Each round of review can pull the work a little closer to what the room already recognizes. That’s where I think active performers may have an advantage. They practice making musical choices while listening and reacting. If one phrase suggests another, they can follow it. If a rhythm takes on a character they hadn’t anticipated, they can work with it before someone asks whether it matches the mood board.

Research published since Limb and Braun’s paper has continued to study improvisation as a process that draws on musical knowledge while requiring rapid prediction and adjustment (citations below). Although it helps explain the skill involved, it can’t guarantee that a sonic identity made by a performer will have more impact on consumer choice. That claim has to be tested with consumers. I’d give a composer a clear brief and enough time to explore it with other musicians. I’d want to hear the route that answers the brief neatly, along with at least one route nobody thought to request.

After that, I’d test what the sound does to the brand in the minds of consumers. Does it strengthen the associations the brand needs? Does it make the brand more compelling to choose? Does it make the brand easier to remember? The people in the review room might be able to judge craft and strategic intent. Only consumers can tell us whether the sound has the intended effect. My interest is in what improvisation can contribute before the asset is finished: an idea discovered through playing, then shaped with care and tested against the job it needs to do.

So, when I’m asked how to choose a sonic branding composer, my answer is simple. Listen to their work, to be sure. Talk about the brand, of course. But don’t forget to ask whether they still perform live. The idea your brand really needs may be waiting just past the reference track.

Other references:

• Musical knowledge and practiced skill: Pinho et al., Connecting to Create. An fMRI study of 39 pianists found that improvisation experience was associated with stronger functional connections between brain regions involved in planning and performing music. It supports the role of learned expertise, though it does not show that experienced improvisers create better brand assets.

• Listening and responding to another musician: Donnay et al. (2014), Neural Substrates of Interactive Musical Improvisation. Jazz pianists took turns improvising four-bar phrases, with instructions to listen and respond to each other’s ideas. This is the closest direct support for the in-the-moment adjustment part of the sentence.

• Prediction and musical vocabulary: Daikoku (2024), Temporal Dynamics of Uncertainty and Prediction Error in Musical Improvisation. This analysis of 456 recorded jazz improvisations examined patterns of predictability and surprise in the music. It supports discussing expectation as part of improvisation, although it models the music rather than measuring musicians’ split-second thoughts.

Photo credit: Jack Davis via Pexels