Lars Edvall interview
Interview with a versatile Swedish composer who composed 1200+ Nokia and Sony Ericsson ringtones
For those of you not familiar with his name, Lars Edvall composed hundreds of ringtones for the once-leading mobile manufacturers, Nokia and Sony Ericsson, between 2005 and 2010. Here is an interview that provides an insight into his work with those companies.
What’s your background in music prior to being approached by PlusFourSix to do ringtones?
I’ve been writing and producing music since I was a teenager. I’ve always had a thing for music — I remember that I wasn’t satisfied with the way the autocomp chords were distributed over the lower keys on me and my brother’s small Yamaha synthesizer when I was less than ten years old, so I guess I had an ear for it from the very beginning. Played drums/vocals and keys/vocals in bands, as well as being part of 90’s style dance acts, singing and even rapping to a certain extent. Spent a good deal of time gigging, but my main focus has always been working in the studio, writing and arranging. It’s easy for me to think of all instruments and sounds simultaneously, what each part is doing and how a change here will also have an effect there.
I did three out of four years of a music pedagogue education at the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm when I was around twenty, before I started full time freelancing. (Completed the last year recently — just shy of 25 years later.) That education however got me a smaller amount of knowledge of many genres and music styles from all over the world, something that came in very handy when PlusFourSix contacted me regarding the ringtone jobs. One of the founders of the company had a background as a producer at the same record company I had made eurodance music for earlier so we had known each other for maybe ten years. I had done a few jingles before, but this was an unexplored area for me, so a fun challenge to just dive into.
You composed over 1250 pieces of music for Nokia and Sony Ericsson between 2005 to 2010. Were there any particular challenges and considerations when it came to writing ringtones?
From the beginning the challenge was to make like seven to ten seconds of audio that didn’t sound like total crap when converted to the absolute lowest bitrates. The memory capacity (allocated to ringtones at least) in these old phones was so small so it really felt like a violent act to the music, cutting and hard-fading and compressing the tones to an absolute minimum.
Furthermore — after a while, since mass production for me seemed to be the key to success — coming up with unique and adequate names for the sounds became an issue. It ended up with more and more word wrestling and puns, basically only meaningful to me, like naming a Spanish-esque tone “El toro ferocio”, a reference to the bull fighting posters in Disney’s “Ferdinand the Bull” from -38, which happens to be very popular in Sweden.
What was it like working with Nokia?
It was a total challenge to meet Nokia’s expectations and specifications. At times they felt ridiculous. Always very precise, with many reference soundbites and descriptions of the intended target group, but still quite complicated, like “make a tone that appeals to 20–30 something art loving rurals with music in the style of a combination of dream house and jungle terror”. Ok, a bit exaggerated, but I had never heard of jungle terror as a genre until then. They also demanded more post production — like “Change the fourth note in the third bar from F to F sharp”, “add this in the mix”, “skip the guitars and replace them with ukuleles” and so on.
Nokia also wrote specific personal contracts clearing all music from any publishers or collecting societies.
What was it like working with Sony Ericsson?
Whilst Nokia felt like they planned something very specific and then went through with it, Sony Ericsson more or less tossed up a bunch of things in the air and saw what landed and where. They did a lot outside of ringtones and message sounds also — downloadable content, remixes, full length songs, music to be connected with movie clips, funtones, seasonal themes and so on. Several of their projects never made it to the public — you just got a message that they were scrapped and that was it. All effort in vain, basically. Sony Ericsson however made at least three times more orders via PlusFourSix, so in the end I delivered a lot more to them. SE also didn’t care about specific composers of their ringtones as far as I know.
How much was each ringtone sold for?
Very dependent on music length, or if there were vocals and lyrics in it and some other factors. There were some basic categories, like ringtones, message sounds and alarms to fit in to, but some exceptions too. I’d say I could invoice roughly $200–750 per sound/song in those days. A quick glance at the old documents gives me a total just shy of $100k for all my ringtone work at that time.
I delivered hundreds of ringtones and other sounds, but it was really a game of luck with no guarantees. My Excel sheet says 1252 pitched alarms, sounds and ringtones over the years and 262 sold — a 21% hit rate. I also did a few longer tracks, but just a handful and I actually don’t think any one of them made it through. I had a few that were rejected that I resubmitted to projects that had fitting specifications. Mixups or double deliveries between the two clients was absolutely unthinkable, so I was rather careful with that and kept close track of these tones.
What equipment (software, hardware, etc) did you use?
I basically used UVI Workstation, Boston library strings in the EXS24 sampler and the Albino synth. All internal synths, plus a Fender electric guitar and a Furch acoustic guitar. Korg Triton was in the studio, but hardly used.
I had a little hunch that the other guys involved with PlusFourSix were mostly producers of electronic music (and perhaps not too apt on other instruments) so I thought I’d have a competitive advantage by having a lot of guitar, as well as doing some jazz and classical contributions.
Overall, how do you feel about the interest in your ringtones and that they’re still enjoyed by many people to this day, even if most of them don’t know you?
I am truly surprised, but it is really cool that there obviously is an interest for these kinds of things. I think my “proudest” moment was back in the days, when my father bought a phone that had “El toro ferocio” on it — a ringtone I was especially satisfied with and which also incorporated some of the Spanish strumming techniques I’d learnt at the Royal Academy back in the days.
Given the fact that several people have contacted me the past few days about using my tones I’m thinking about releasing a package that actually can be used directly on today’s phones. I may have one or two in store…
Hope you enjoyed this interview! And as a bonus piece of trivia, Lars’ current ringtone is Brunch, a jazz ringtone which he composed for the Sony Ericsson W890 in 2007, released in 2008. You can listen to a playlist of other ringtones he composed here. Additionally, his current tracks are available on Spotify, as well as ones published under the Sad Jack moniker.
