If you saw that sweet Sony BRAVIA commercial with the exploding paint cans, you have an idea of the lengths Sony will go to for a cool commercial. Sony is ramping up for its next cool commercial with what it is calling the first ever “monophonic “ ad.

The ad is for the Walkman Project, which is promoting the new line of Sony Walkman PMP devices and is called “Music Pieces”. The same team that put the BRAVIA commercial trilogy together is behind the Walkman ad, so it should be cool.

Right now, the only thing on the Sony site is a teaser showing the musicians filing into London’s Alexandra Palace with all sorts of musical instruments from toy pianos to guitars and some sort of weird flute looking keyboard device. The idea for the commercial is to arrange the musicians by instrument group to form an acoustic grid creating spectacular waves of sound and movement as each note is played in sequence.

Nick Gordon, Director, commented: "This was an ambitious project to work on. We didn't just want to produce an impressive advert, we wanted to challenge people to think about music as an evolving art form. I hope that this inspires discussion and further musical experimentation just as the WALKMAN inspired a technological revolution in portable music players."

Sony says that the commercial took three days to shoot, used 128 musicians, 98 microphones, 52 direct inject for synths and guitars, two HD cameras and was shot in one 30 second take. The instruments in the commercial included 32 drummers with 8 Toms, 8 Hi Hats/crash cymbals, 8 Kick Drums, 8 Snare Drums, 8 Glockenspiels, 1 Toy Glock, 6 Kalimbas (thumb pianos), 16 High Synths, 4 Bass Synths, 4 Toy Pianos, 1 Shofar, 8 Tubas, 4 Melodicas, 8 Double Bass, 32 Electric Guitars, and 4 Music boxes.

Via Sony