Sony Walkman: Music Pieces ad

This is the result of 128 musicians each playing one note on a different instrument. This commercial is for the new line of Sony Walkmans, which can be seen at The Sony Walkman Project.

From the press release:

Sony has created the first ever ‘monophonic’1 ad to mark the launch of the latest generation of WALKMAN digital media players. Titled ‘Music Pieces’, this innovative commercial is created by Fallon’s award-winning team behind the BRAVIA ad trilogy. Creative Director at Fallon, Juan Cabral, worked with the creative team of Samuel Akesson & Tomas Mankovsky to create this unique project.

‘Music Pieces’ brings a musical experience like.no.other to television screens, by taking an original piece of music composed by Hollywood music director Peter Raeburn [‘Sexy Beast’, ‘Birth’] and deconstructing it to give 128 musicians just one note each to play in order to reconstruct the melody.

The production gathered the musicians, playing everything from electric guitars and Kalimbas to mini toy grand pianos, in an iconic music venue – London’s Alexandra Palace – under the direction of top music video director, Nick Gordon [The Kooks, Muse, Supergrass]. The musicians were then arranged by instrument group to form an ‘acoustic grid’ which created spectacular waves of sound and movement when each note was played in sequence.

The trailer to this commercial and a behind-the-scenes look at its creation can be seen at Duncan’s TV Ad Land.