To better connect you with the brilliant talent behind our music, we're proudly spotlighting various artists, composers & producers on the Megatrax roster. Tracey and Vance Marino are a wife-and-husband writing team. They've written and produced more than 3,000 songs and instrumentals, and their music is heard daily around the world. Among their specialties are composing upbeat, positive music for commercials, reality TV, and talk shows, as well as location music for film and other media.

Hi Tracey and Vance! Please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?

We are a husband-and-wife composing, songwriting, and producing team. As kids, we were interested in playing our instruments and recording music. We sang in choirs, performed in bands, played for theatrical productions, and later immersed ourselves in the music business any way we could. We've always been curious people, so we like to know about and experiment with new music technology. Pop, rock, and country music are our favorite genres, but we love and appreciate just about every style of music. Overall, we gravitate toward happy, positive music, so that became our "brand." You just can't be miserable and depressed writing this style.

How do you think the music industry will change over the next decade?

Fortunately, we play many real instruments, which is becoming more of a novelty. It seems people still want to see and hear living, breathing artists, songwriters, and composers behind the music. Also, from our experience, maintaining trusted relationships is still vital in the music industry, and this will become even more important in the future.  

Has there been a particular challenge that you’ve faced over the years?

There have been many challenges, but the one that took a few years to figure out was how to work together. Several people are dumbfounded how a husband and wife can create music together because it’s not easy! Our role models have been Alan and Marilyn Bergman, both of whom we’ve met many times. They were asked in an interview about their writing process. Marilyn responded, “One washes, one dries.” We took that advice to heart. We had to figure out each other’s strengths and frustrations. One of us likes to create and sit down before a blank page. The other is terrified of it and prefers to edit. However, we trade approaches now and then just to shake it up, or if one of us is too busy with another project. An obstacle we had to mitigate early on was one of us would start editing while the other was creating. The solution? We set up two separate studios in our home. It was the only way. You also have to be willing to leave the ego on the floor and out of the studios. Songwriting and composing, for us, is all about doing what’s best for the music, not who gets their way. 

Any advice for fellow composers out there?

Take every musical opportunity you can find and don’t expect success to happen overnight. We make frequent trips to Nashville. Just about every hit songwriter will tell a story of how it took five, ten, even 20 years of incredibly hard work to get their first cut or hit. Find a mentor. Years ago, we met Megatrax co-founder & CEO Ron Mendelsohn at a composer conference. He graciously took the time to listen to our music and told us in an email that he thought we had potential. That was life-changing and gave us encouragement to keep going. Don’t be afraid of networking and meeting people. Be kind and respectful because you never know who will be running a music publishing company or become the next award-winning big-time music supervisor. We’ve witnessed both of these scenarios. Volunteer at music conferences and join organizations. You’ll get to know people and be seen as a giver, not just a taker. The music business is a small world. People talk. Last, don’t quit! 

What can you tell us about your composition and production process?

For us, we find it best to do collections of songs and cues instead of one-offs. So we spend time watching and listening to commercials and TV and studying current production trends. Our approach is to do a range. For example, we gather some reference tracks. Next, we set up a musical template with the various instruments. Next, depending on the genre and the project, the first cue could be in the key of D and 120 bpm. The next cue could be in B flat and 104 bpm, etc. If we’re writing a collection of songs, for example, the first could be in 6/8 and 90 bpm with a tenor. The second song could be in 4/4 and 110 bpm with a singer in the alto range. This keeps the collection from being cookie-cutter. It’s amazing how many people don’t think about this technique. 

How do you see the music you created being used?

As we mentioned, we write happy, upbeat, positive cues and songs. There is always a need for this style. Many years ago a music supervisor invited us to spend a day with him in his office at a major production company. He played several of our songs, sat back in his chair, and listened intently. He explained he was imagining in which scenes each cue could be used. He said for him the ideal piece of music could be placed in several different projects, as opposed to scoring or doing custom cues. Ever since that meeting, we write every piece of music with this intent, and that is, to get multiple placements, not just one. 

What are your biggest musical influences?

We literally have too many to name. There are the usual suspects such as composers John Williams and Alexandre Desplat, and artists like the Beatles, John Prine, Stevie Wonder, Taylor Swift, and Joni Mitchell. However, as songwriters and songcrafters, we are fans of everyone from Irving Berlin and Leiber & Stoller to Max Martin and Shane McAnally. Like the Bergmans, Boudleaux and Felice Bryant are among our favorite husband-and-wife songwriting teams, of which there are not very many! Mega-hit songwriter Ashley Gorley is an influence and inspiration, too. We’ve had the pleasure of meeting him and hearing about his writing process a few times. He’s insanely talented and successful—nearly 70 #1 singles to date—yet he’s very humble. He goes through every word and every line of every song until it’s been rewritten and crafted to perfection. Who does that?

Tell us a bit about the work you’ve done in film/TV/advertising. What are some placements you're most proud of?:

When we got our first Pro Tools rig and set up our studio, we wrote jingles. We love commercials and promos, so it made sense. When we got more into writing production music, we discovered we enjoyed writing for reality TV and talk shows. Some favorite placements were a carnival cue in a Disney Touchstone film starring Miley Cyrus, The Last Song, and a mariachi cue in the film Goats. Talk shows include Kelly Clarkson, Oprah Winfrey, Nate Berkus, Steve Harvey, The Tonight Show, The Late Show, The Today Show, and others. Some favorite placements were Forged In Fire and Saturday Night Live. Megatrax got us a placement in a Clorox/Disney promo that ran for several years, so that was fun.

Tell us about your upcoming projects! What does the rest of this year have in store for you?

We spent two years writing a book about sync called Hey! That’s My Song! A Guide to Getting Music Placements in Film, TV, and Media, and spent another year promoting it. Now we’re back in our studios working on a circus collection and an indie folk collection. Writing that happy music again. 

Listen to Tracey & Vance Marino's tracks for Megatrax here.