“Music was accidental, it always seemed temporary as a career, but having done this for 15 years now, its difficult to imagine life without it.”
Johannes Hammers, a Los Angeles native, has managed to diversify his energy into music composition and sound design for television commercials, furniture design, and graphic design. Having studied communication and philosophy of art, the diversification began early.
Fascinated by anything involving media or design, Hammers began his circuitous journey into to advertising. Having worked briefly at then Chiat/Day/Mojo, he met Stephen Dewey and soon thereafter helped to form renowned music and sound design shop Machine Head. There he became creative partner and composed music for over 500 commercials, the 1993 MTV Music Video Award Show and received two Clios and two AICP Museum of Modern Art Awards in the process. As if this wasnt enough to keep him busy, Hammers simultaneously he formed HFD (Hammers Furniture Design.)
After Machine Head, Hammers left to join Conning Hammers Klok + Wager (CHK+W), a music and sound design firm in Los Angeles. During this period, it was the music that underwent diversification. CHK was an amalgam of very different creative people and the collaborations were very rewarding, Hammers notes. “It actually changed the way I wrote music, both technically and creatively.” At CHKW, Hammers collaborated with varied talents such as Giorgio Moroder and wrote the score for director Dan Bootzin’s Apartment 12, starring Mark Ruffalo.
Hammers then went onto become the composer/sound designer at Ravenswork in Venice, California. Ravenswork is a full service audio post-production facility for advertising and television. The collaboration continued with Robert Feist, Eric Ryan and Chris Canning all staff mixers.
Today Hammers has joined Amber Music exclusively for commercials.
