From Adele and Usher to the Advertising World: Ariel Rechtshaid is the Dual Producer
Why choose?
That’s the question posited by the career of Ariel Rechtshaid, who’s straddled the twin tracks of producing platinum hits and advertising music as effectively as anyone. Is maintaining creative credibility with pop stars copacetic with composing Covergirl commercials? Consider Rechtshaid’s particular path.
Ariel Rechtshaid is full speed ahead with a dual-threat career.
On the chart side of things, his producing/mixing/engineering skills have keep going GRAMMY, winning in 2015 when he produced two tracks for Adele’s 25 including “When We Were Young,” in 2013 for co-writing and producing Usher’s gorgeous “Climax,” and again via his 2014 production for Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires in the City. [Read in-depth about mixing “25” here, and the mastering of “Modern Vampires In the City” here.]
Recently Rechtshaid has been songwriting and producing for U2, Troye Sivan, Rae Morris, Kelela, HAIM, and Vampire Weekend again, with the likes of Madonna, Major Lazer, Adele, Solange, Sky Ferreira, and many more stocking his discography.
Then there’s the advertising side, where things have been equally prolific. Working in step with the bicoastal company he co-founded, Heavy Duty Projects, the LA-based Rechtshaid moves seamlessly from bands to brands. A source of original composition, music supervision and sonic strategy, Heavy Duty Projects’ client roster includes Target, Gillette, State Farm, Pantene, American Eagle, AARP, Apple, and Nationwide to name a few.
Producer Genesis
While the pairing of music producer and Heavy Duty may appear to have hatched from a finely-tuned scheme, that’s one thing Rechtshaid can’t take credit for. “I didn’t wake up one day and say, ‘I want to complicate my life and start another business!’” he laughs. “This was all happening organically – I was one of a group of people that were constantly making music, but there aren’t enough records to accommodate everything that we want to get out there. Making music for commercials and everything else we do at Heavy Duty Projects is an avenue for all of our artistic instincts to be satiated.”
Rechtshaid started his career in classic style, syncopating at 180 BPM as the lead vocalist and guitarist for the ska/punk band The Hippos, and later playing bass for folk-rockers Foreign Born. Soon enough, however, these raw origins led him to look for something more refined.
“When I was a teenager I didn’t know how to make music short of turning an amp up loud, garage band style,” he recalls. “But one of my high school bands [The Hippos] – completely blindly – got a record deal, which took me on a bit of a journey. I toured, had a blast, and learned a lot, but then I realized, ‘I’m not doing my best work right now.’
“What was really important to me was to make recordings sound the way I wanted them to sound. So I quit that band, set up a studio in my parent’s garage, and started to experiment with recording.”
Picturing Music for Picture
Meshing his songwriting talents and multi-instrumental chops into a producer role proved to be the right move. Bands that he had toured with like We Are Scientists signed on early to have him produce, an early trickle that would eventually turn into an all-star stream, from Cass McCombs to Theophilus London, Solange, Justin Bieber and upward.
As all that unfolded, another set of boyhood connections opened his eyes to an unconsidered industry. “At that time, two or three other people that I’ve known since I was a kid were doing commercials,” Rechtshaid says. “One of them was working on an ad, and the director wasn’t happy with the music – actually everyone was unhappy, the ad agency, the director, the client. My friend came to me and said, ‘Can you do this as a spec?’ And I said, ‘Fuck yes!’ That was my official start in ad music, which is how I’ve come to be doing this since my early ‘20s. Along the way I met my partners in Heavy Duty Projects, Josh Kessler and Kate Urcioli – we all arrived at the same thing from different angles. They were as passionate as I was.”
The Heavy Duty Crew: (l-r) Kate Urcioli, Josh Kessler, and Ariel Rechtshaid.
With a background that began in Universal Music Publishing and dms.fm (a Downtown Music Publishing Company), Kessler was ideal for co-launching Heavy Duty in 2011, a company that now comprises both Publishing and Projects divisions. Urcioli partnered in circa 2015 after being a Heavy Duty client when she was a Senior Music Producer at NYC-based advertising agency mcgarrybowen. The firm grew yet again this year with the addition of Zach Pollakoff as Executive Producer.
Groupthink
And Rechtshaid had yet another penchant that would pay off as they got Heavy Duty off the ground: mentoring.
“As my career shifted into producing and writing,” he says, “I found I was helping DJs and musicians that I was collaborating with who just didn’t have a direction or understand how to put their talent to use. Over time, that’s how I started a collective of people that I was mentoring, that as I got more in demand I could bring on board. That became a publishing company that I signed writers to, growing beyond just me.
“Simultaneously, there was this custom side of it, which became Heavy Duty Projects. We were using the same approach to pull creative artists together, so that the people I worked with on a record for Sky Ferreira, Carly Rae Jepson or Vampire Weekend became the same people who were composing commercials.
“The result was lots of different film and audio coming together, and I think we became known for something specific. The biggest draw of Heavy Duty Projects is this group of people. There’s no line between the music that we make because we love it, and the music that we make for film: It’s the same thing — it’s just that luckily we’re getting asked to do what we do best.”
Rechtshaid points to Heavy Duty’s work for Target and Gillette spots as prime examples of the collective working on all cylinders. Target’s was an eight-minute mini-musical, taking over two consecutive four-minute blocks of commercial airtime during the first-ever TV airing of Frozen. The megaspot starred John Legend and Chrissy Teigen, with Heavy Duty writing all of the music and recording all of the characters including John, Chrissy and all the toys. “For Target I got to work with with Benj Pasek, an amazingly talented guy who did all the lyrics for La La Land. I also collaborated with several Heavy Duty musicians and artists on it — that was all worlds put together.”
“On Gillette, we worked with an old friend of mine, SIA. That was a collaboration of ideas that included Olodum, a well-known percussion group that played on Paul Simon’s Rhythm of the Saints. They were looking for something to represent Brazil during the Brazil Olympics, so we put them together with Pusha T. That’s what this company is all about: As my producer career grew, the people that I’ve been collaborating with and mentoring are taking the lead on different projects.”
Due: Heavy Duty
With the current trends that are moving through music for advertising, Heavy Duty finds itself in the sweet spot to meet some key needs.
The first instinct of brands and their agencies is often to bypass jingles and synch license a hit song for their campaign, but that’s a move that may not prove feasible or advisable for any number of reasons. A big single can be prohibitively expensive, and/or overexposed if someone else has beaten them to the punch. Pick too big of a hit or otherwise create a mismatch, and the song is all audiences remember about the spot while the product or service is forgotten.
Often a smarter move can be found in the middle ground that Heavy Duty specializes in: an original song with all the sonic trappings of a chart-topping hit, minus the sky-high synch fee and emotional baggage. The track may have been built from the ground up for the brand and its campaign, or it may already have been recorded by a Heavy Duty producer with a pop artist in mind.
“We get a lot of calls for music that sounds like it’s on the radio,” confirms Rechtshaid. “That works very well for us because we’re constantly making that music. If a song we produce turns out to be perfect for an ad before it lands on a record, then great: There’s no lesser quality to it, no alternative direction to making it. That’s the integrity that we bring.”
Check Heavy Duty Projects’ upbeat dance track, backing Rashida Jones’ spot for Almay:
The Positive Cycle
Currently, Rechtshaid’s main album project is with Vampire Weekend, working on the follow up to their GRAMMY-winning 2014 effort. By now, his dual experience producing for artists and advertising have showed him that the two crafts are much more alike then they are different.
“In advertising, things usually move a lot faster,” he observes. “A long project when you’re making a record is a lot longer than a long project in advertising. So the main difference is deadlines, and we have structures at Heavy Duty Projects to make sure things are done efficiently.
“But on the creative side, it all comes from the same place – it’s truly no different. Sometimes you try to do things for an artist, and that ends up on the cutting room floor. The same thing happens in advertising. At the end of the day, it’s all about what’s best.”
While some may assume the commercial work is strictly a sideline, the fact is that branding experience provides powerful tools for producers to use on pop projects. “My horizons are definitely expanded by composing for advertisements,” Rechtshaid says. “There was an IKEA commercial we did, for example, that made us think about negative space, minimalism, and early synthesis. It was stuff I never looked into before on the musical and conceptual level – the value of silence in music.
“In advertising, there’s no specific genre you’re ever stuck to, so you’re exposed to so much. Deadlines are quicker, faster moving, and you wind up working in styles that you might not necessarily ever get into in the pop industry, because the music we make at Heavy Duty is certainly not all pop: It spans the spectrum from underground to mainstream.”
The support that a producer gets within a fully-formed advertising music company can be very nice to have, as well. “When you’re recording an album, there isn’t always someone checking in on you to turn things in on time,” says Rechtshaid. “As talented as Kate is on the admin side, she also has a great ear, is very musical, and can help check you if you miss the brief a little bit.
“I often feel like I have more resources at hand in advertising than when making records. As an artist, sometimes you’re able to call in other people, but there’s a preciousness to it that doesn’t exist when you’re doing advertising where you can call in anyone, throw everything at the wall and present what’s best for the client. They’re not hiring a specific person – they’re hiring Heavy Duty Projects, and there’s a whole team behind that.”
Even with all this careful planning, of course, the dual worlds can collide in a not-so-great way. “There’s complications in anything,” Rechtshaid acknowledges. “Scheduling is an issue, and sometimes you have to do two things at once – that’s the line of work we’re in.
“I feel fortunate that the projects that are overtaking my life are all great, and that comes back to the team here. I oversee everything, but we have an extremely talented, futuristic staff of writers and composers who are constantly doing the heavy lifting. And it’s a cycle: As they start to graduate, they have people who are coming up behind them, and it just grows.”
AARP gets instant cred via Heavy Duty’s addictive sonic backdrop.
Double Vision
If going the Ariel Rechtshaid route – or routes, rather – sounds appealing, he’s on point to encourage. Just be sure to keep authenticity at the core, lest the diversity grow too daunting.
“I did what was in front of me: Making music was what I wanted to do, it wasn’t for any vanity,” reflects Rechtshaid. “So I would tell emerging producers, ‘Don’t wait for anybody. If you want to make music, make music.’ But it’s not easy. I feel very fortunate that it’s worked out. There’s no formula for making it, but if you’re doing things because you want to do them, the worst-case scenario is you did what you wanted and it didn’t work out – the best case is you did what you wanted and there’s a demand for it.
“When I was young, I spent years doing what I wanted to, not worrying about how in demand it was, and then eventually what I was doing became more in demand. So while this whole operation is very organic and feels very ideal, it took decades of work to get there. There were frustrating long nights, long months, long years, and I’ll admit even today when I’m up against a deadline, I can have a hard time enjoying the moment. But luckily in my work there’s a memento left behind: When you look back at what was done, you can be proud of it.”
- David Weiss is an Editor at SonicScoop and co-author of “Music Supervision: The Complete Guide to Selecting Music for Movies, TV, Games & New Media (Second Edition).”
Please note: When you buy products through links on this page, we may earn an affiliate commission.