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Harmonie Park Music Group
Pretty much the only pitchy chorus you'll hear from commercials these days is this one: the jingle is dead. Once a standby of TV and radio commercials, those maddeningly catchy maxims are no longer. Plop, plop, fizz, fizz? Been there, done that. Ads now aspire to loftier heights: making the music in commercials as entertaining as the stuff on CDs. Over the last few years, Harmonie Park has been doing just that, writing hit songs that drive advertising campaigns while producing chart topping hits at the same time.
The Harmonie Park Music Group has established itself as the premier music house in Detroit and the Midwest for the advertising and recording industry. Over the last 10 years, Harmonie Park has been writing hit songs for clients, developing creative campaigns and making the Harmonie Park studio production facility available to creative's from ad agencies and major label artists & producers for recording projects.
HPMG has created original music branding for Detroit Edison, Pizza Hut, Daimler Chrysler, Pontiac (GM), Detroit Metropolitan Visitors & Convention Bureau, Coca Cola, The Detroit Red Wings, Detroit Tigers, Michigan Lottery and McDonalds to name a few.
Nestled among the tree-lined side streets of downtown Detroits cozy Harmonie Park is the aptly-named Harmonie Park Studios. Open since 1996 and run by brothers Mark and Brian Pastoria and Bill Donahue with in-house Grammy award winning producer and songwriter Michael J. Powell, HP has gained a reputation nationwide thanks to high-profile clients like Aretha Franklin, the Four Tops and Kirk Franklin and welcomed marquee-names-in-the-producer-world like Rodney Jerkins and others to create Grammy Award-winning jams (Mark won a Grammy for his work on Franklins track CA House is Not A Home from the recent Luther Vandross tribute album).
HPMG has recorded some of the music industries top acts such as Eminem, D12, Aretha Franklin, The Black Crowes, Tori Amos, The Four Tops (currently working on their new album), Grand Funk Railroad, Motley Crue, Missy Elliott, Ben Folds Five, Everclear, George Clinton, Elliott Smith, Alto Reed (Bob Seger Band), PaJam (NSYNC, Kelly Price, James Moss).
They've carved out a successful enterprise in a highly-competitive environment. Detroit has its fair share of advertising production studios, but Harmonie Park manages to mix the artistry of original work with contract production work for the local ad biz.
"A studio is a hard thing to open these days,"
says Brian Pastoria.
Our studio is mostly for our own work and we happen to work with associates who need a studio. [Audio editing software] ProTools has changed everything. We are very proud to be a part of an incredible music and creative community here in Detroit!
For their part, in addition to the commercial work, Harmonie Park also keep themselves firmly rooted in their neighborhood and their city, supporting the neighborhood summer concerts and becoming a proud part of the community in which they live and work.
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