Griffiths Gibson and Ramsay Productions has been producing commercial audio since 1968. Based in Vancouver, the company is still going strong. Thirty-two years into its history, executive producer Gord Lord says, ‘We’re having our best year ever.’

The original founders of ggrp were Brian Griffiths and Brian Gibson. At the time, it was simply Griffiths Gibson Productions. Lord explains that in those early days, the company ‘pioneered music production in the North West, and to some degree, in Toronto.

‘They broke a lot of ground,’ says Lord. ‘There weren’t a lot of people doing [music production]. They came out of ubc with music degrees and focused in on advertising. They had some success down the west coast of the United States – through Seattle and Oregon and down into San Francisco and l.a. And immediately, they did very well in Toronto, as well.’

A few years into the company, they ‘came into connection with Miles Ramsay,’ who Lord says brought a comedic sensibility to the organization, which produces both radio and tv commercials at an approximate 50-50 split.

Brad Belcher, ggrp’s chief engineer, is pleased to be working in the two modern studios the company keeps on West 7th Avenue in Vancouver, site of the old Little Mountain Sound Studios. For him, the digital production process is improving the quality of the work that flows through the shop.

‘I would say [digital] is helping immensely, in a good way. You can try so many things in such a short period of time. The end result comes out sounding easily 50% to 100% better,’ says Belcher.

Creative director Peter Clarke agrees that digital production has been key to the development of the company. However, Clarke believes digital, although an excellent tool, is no substitute for organic instrumentation.

‘Some people will use sounds to death,’ Clarke begins. ‘Where digital is great is when I take my Roland 1080 and I plug in an English horn sound or a bassoon or oboe sound. This way I get a good feeling for how it will turn out. And then I can hire the real musicians to come in later.’

Belcher also works to battle the potentially dry sounds of digital presets and sound effects cds. One element of his job is to ‘constantly expand [the] sound effects library’ at ggrp.

‘We’re always looking for new sounds and we try to insert them into our productions to keep them fresh,’ Belcher says.

Although ggrp does not acquire sounds direct from the commercial set, it has purchased a portable dat player ‘for that purpose’ and intends to address the issue of sfx acquisitions in the future.

‘At this stage,’ Belcher explains, ‘we take [the sound recording] from the sound recordist. We haven’t been engaged early enough in projects, to this point.’

ggrp’s strength can be detected in its stability. Three decades later, two of the founding partners, Griffiths and Ramsay, are still ‘actively involved with the company.’

The thoughtful Griffiths takes a moment to reflect on the vast chasm between the company’s original incarnation and its current form.

‘We have two studios that we need all the time because there are so many more jobs that go through the company than there used to be. The budgets are smaller, there are certain restrictions, but the technology allows you to do so much more in less time than it did when we were back dealing with analog.

‘So it’s hard to compare in a lot of ways. [In the ’70s], you’d get a pretty good budget, but you’d spend all day on a job. Now, we’ll put five, six, seven, eight things through here in a day,’ Griffiths says.

ggrp, which has a staff of 12, feels it can bring more to a commercial production than just audio. ‘We’ll write tv commercials, we’ll write radio commercials. So it’s writing, casting, etc.,’ says Clarke.

Do clients approach ggrp directly, bypassing the agency?

‘That has happened,’ Clarke replies. However, he cautions, ‘most of our business does come from agencies and it’s mainly production. But we massage the scripts. We’ll help them along. Help make them better, make them funnier. Whatever way they want to go, we’ll take the script that way.’

Lord talks about the great year the company is having. ‘We’re having a little bit of extra work – both radio and television – out of the u.s. right now as a result of the [sag/aftra commercial] strike, but also increased business in the Vancouver market. And we continue to work across North America. We do a lot of work through the Prairies, a lot in Toronto, and out of Atlantic Canada as well. And we do probably 30% of our business out of the u.s.’

The company is also looking into online ventures, having recently completed ‘a small project for the interactive sex market’ that Lord describes as ‘fun.’ He sees the online market growing as the Internet looks for an increase in soundscape, voiceover and online sound design.

Perhaps the Internet will catapult ggrp toward another 32 years of audio production.