How to Create a Jingle

You need recording equipment to create and record your jingle.

Commercial jingles are catchy, short musical pieces with lyrics and music used to market and sell businesses, public service announcements and products world wide. Normally, jingles are written and recorded by professional musicians outside of the company that owns the commercial. Yet, sometimes jingles are created by an in-house musical department, or studio, that specializes in composing jingles. Assuming you have the musical knowledge to compose a song, with the right equipment you can create and record a jingle to license to clients.

Things You'll Need

• Recording studio
• Recording equipment
• Musical instruments

Instructions

1. Listen to a variety of local and national commercial jingles. Take note of the musical arrangements and timing of the jingles. Pay attention to wording, phrasing and catchy tunes that have made certain commercials sensations.

2. Practice writing short jingles that could fit into television or radio spots. Practice writing lyrics that rhyme by thinking of it as writing poetry. The Web site, Money In Music, suggests practicing your lyrical writing by creating jingles for fake businesses. Consider creating a niche for yourself by focusing on creating one style of jingle, such as comedic jingles, or more informational based ones.

3. Research the company in which you want to create and sell your jingle. Find out what products the business sells, and what kind of image they want to portray for their products. Discover how the company performs in their particular industry, who is their main competitor and what reputation does the company hold. Request from the company, what guidelines they have for commercial jingles.

4. Record your jingle. Create your own recording studio, or rent time in one.

5. Create different mixes and variations of the jingle. Common running time for jingles are 10 to 60 seconds long. Loop several sections of your jingle when providing it to a client. This allows the client to make adjustments and edits as needed. The jingle can be all instrumental, orchestrated with voice,or a tag line, with just a few seconds of music.

6. Contact local television and radio stations to see if they need jingles. Ask your friends if they have any contacts in the broadcast community where jingle writers could be useful.

Tips & Warnings

• Perform a copyright search in the initial stages of creating your jingle to prevent future legal issues. Hire an intellectual property attorney to assist you in copyrighting your jingle and drafting licensing agreements.

References

• Song Writing Guide: Write a Jingle
• Money In Music: Writing Jingles

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish
• U.S. Copyright Office