Sacred Noise Teams With R/GA For Verizon's New FiOS Site The TED Conference and New Creative Ad Agency Toy Also Tap Music and Sound Design House for Key Interactive Projects

NEW YORK, NY ­ Sacred Noise, the award-winning music and sound design house led by creative director Michael Montes, lent its considerable creative skills to three new and distinct interactive projects, including the just launched FiOS site for Verizon, created by the award winning interactive agency R/GA, New York, and the powerful cinematic theme heard at the start of audio/video streams, downloads and podcasts of the speakers at this year's prestigious TED Conference.

"Production values on the Internet are skyrocketing because of the competition and that demands a high level of creative across the board, including music and sound design," said Montes. "People who work at the level of R/GA, Ted and Toy want strong creative ideas that add to the mix and make them stand out ­ and that's where we excel."

Welcome To FiOS Living
FiOS is Verizon's fiber optic cable initiative that involves converting their current lines to state of the art fiber, which can transmit data many times faster than traditional phone lines. To illustrate exactly how FIOS will impact the lives of users, R/GA created the new content rich website to provide real world examples, such as creating elaborate rooms where users can click on just about everything in the room and see how FiOS changes everything.

Adding to the experience, the site features original music and sound design composed by Montes and the Sacred Noise team. This includes the atmospheric ambient groove that sets the tone on the site's homepage, the sound design heard on every clickable item and the music and sound effects for the site's very own FiOS videogames.

The "FiOS Living" section offers a look at three rooms in a sample FiOS wired house. In one room, a teenage girl's bedroom, we see what appears to be a static photo of a teenage girl chatting with her friends on a laptop computer while her younger brother plays videogames on a nearby desktop computer. However, click on any of the items in the room and the picture comes to life. For example, click the videogame monitor and the screen slowly zooms in to that part of the room and pop-up copy informs about how FiOS enhances the videogame experience. The Sacred Noise created videogame sound design adds a layer of realism to the scene. Click on "Play With FiOS" and users are taken to two FiOS enhanced games, both featuring original music and sound design.

"They were looking for a someone to take over the project musically, not just music for the home page but every sound you hear ­ every time your mouse rolls over a link there's a sound for it," says Jason Menkes, Sacred Noise's Executive Producer. "We had a lot of conversations about how much sound the website should have. Unlike ads or film scores, the Internet gives audience power in how they hear the music or if they want to heat it at all. We talked a lot about at what point does the music enhance or distract. We tried different approaches from big scores to atmospheric ambient and I think we ended up with a perfect balance."

Adds Montes, "Collaborating with the R/GA was great because they gave us license to explore different ideas. We went through in-depth explorations that allowed us to come to some meaningful decisions that add to the overall experience."

TED Conference Gets Dramatic
Every year some of the best and brightest minds in technology, entertainment and design gather in Monterey, CA, for the TED Conference to hear speakers ranging from Al Gore to Ross Lovegrove, the designer of the iMac and Sony Walkman, to writer Malcom Gladwell. In past years, Montes composed the music heard during the actual show, but this year TED organizers decided to make all the presentations available as streams, downloads and podcasts. Montes was asked to create a signature theme that would be heard at the start of each presentation that would encompass the scope and cutting edge nature of presentations.

Beginning with a rhythmic progression of chimes and bells, the music builds quickly with the sound of an explosion, metaphorically signaling the explosion of ideas that is TED. From that point on the music crescendos to the beat of timpani drums and blaring horns that recalls the work of composer Bernard Herrmann.

"Chris Anderson, the curator of the conference, was looking for something big and dramatic that could bring excitement to these programs," said Montes. "Until recently the Ted Conference was a bit of a private club and this is the first time that the Talks are being made available to everyone for free. This stuff is ground breaking and I wanted the music to have that same feeling."

Toy-ing Around
When the creatives at the new creative agency Toy approached Sacred Noise about creating sound design for their corporate website they knew they wanted something clean, simple and in keeping the site's playful tone. Sacred Noise composers Peter Rundquist and Ravi Krishnaswami responded with a playful yet elegant sonic palette.

"Peter actually brought in a lot of mechanical children's toys and balls and things to bounce and shake," says Montes. "We recorded them and sifted through it all till we found the special gems."

Log on the Toy site (http://www.toyny.com) and you're treated first to the sound of an old fashioned winding toy followed by a small ball that bounces around the Toy logo. The audio is a simple palette of a bouncing ping-pong like ball and various other toy-related sounds.

"Expanding into new media is a no-brainer for Sacred Noise," Montes explains. "Music for a moving image is what we've always done and this new medium is a lot of fun because it's developing fast with more and more creativity going in to it."

About Sacred Noise
Sacred Noise is an award-winning music house specializing in creating cutting-edge music and sound design for top national advertising campaigns, broadcast design, new media projects, television and feature film, including the 2001 Oscar nominated short "One Day Crossing." The company's roster of composers includes Executive Creative Director Michael Montes, Chuck Lovejoy, Peter Rundquist, Ravi Krishnaswami and Lawrence Scaduto.