"KIDS CAN SING JINGLES TOO!"
When an ad agency comes to me and asks for a children's jingle, I had to do some research. Kids are hard to find as it is for voiceover work, but for singing on a jingle? That's tough. Yes, almost every kid can sing, but jingles are different. Not only do you have to hold a correct pitch, but you must enunciate, and most importantly for this project, we needed kids who would SOUND like the age range the client was looking for. Through a few voiceover friends, I came upon a vast resource of potential children who would sing on the jingle. I set out with my sidekick soundguy and we held a cattle chute audition. Most of the brave souls were theater kids, some a little nervous, some with gleaming confidence and a smile on their face at all times. One of the surprises I encountered was that one 15-year old boy actually sounded like a 10 year-old! This was in the exact age-range we were looking for, and since his pitch was perfect, he was an obvious candidate. One other thing I realized when working with theater kids, is that they tend to over-enunciate, which nullified my original expectation of slurring words. But at the end of the day, we had to find kids that could sing well, and fit the age range we were looking for, and we did. We got a nice mix of boys and girls and the final mix impressed the client so much, there were no changes (a rarity in the biz!)

Scenes from the produced TV spot using the children's jingle.