Hal Leonard helps millions strike up the band

Ask people on the street to name the biggest, most successful businesses in Milwaukee and they'll likely rattle off companies like MillerCoors, Harley-Davidson and Northwestern Mutual Life.

Chances are, they won't mention Hal Leonard Corporation.

But, they should.

Whether on their way to work, school, a Brewers game at Miller Park or Gilles Frozen Custard, thousands of Milwaukeeans drive past Hal Leonard's corporate headquarters -- tucked into an unassuming brick office building abutting Honey Creek Parkway at 7777 W. Bluemound Rd. -- without an inkling of what goes on inside.

"We are kind of a well-kept secret," said Hal Leonard chairman Keith Mardak, who has spent 40 years guiding the company through expansions and acquisitions that have made it the largest music publisher in the world. The company has roughly 500 employees in Milwaukee, Minnesota, Nashville, New York City, Australia and Europe  and annual sales are about $150 million.

And, still it doesn't come to mind?

If you've ever played an instrument -- be it the piano as a youngster, trombone in the junior high band or electric guitar in college -- chances are you've had your hands on a Hal Leonard music book. If you've been in a music store, you've probably seen the dizzying array of sheet music, songbooks, instructional method books, CDs and DVDs, or educational materials for bands, orchestras and choral groups all released under the Hal Leonard banner.

"We produce, on average, 12 publications a day," said Mardak, whose deals with Chicago-based organ manufacturers accounted for much of the company's early business in the 1970s.

"We do anywhere from 3,200 to 3,300 a year. Half of it is song-driven and half of it is educational. 'The Hal Leonard Guitar Method' is the No. 1 guitar method in the world. 'The Essential Elements for Band Method' is the No. 1 band method in the world and 'Essential Elements for Orchestra' is No. 1, as well. We're not No. 1 in piano. We're probably No. 3 right now."

Hal Leonard sells its products in 65 countries through music stores, big box electronics retailers, book giants like Barnes and Noble and Borders and through its own booming Web division. With more than 120,000 titles, Hal Leonard represents artists from Aerosmith to Stevie Wonder, Miles Davis to Justin Timberlake, Frank Sinatra to Hank Williams, Elvis Presley to Elton John as well as catalogs from Irving Berlin, Andrew Lloyd Weber, Rodgers & Hammerstein and Disney.

The company, which has a distribution facility in Winona, Minn., has deals with iTunes, RockBand and the Kindle.

"It's an interesting thing," said company president Larry Morton. "We sit at more or less an intersection between the audio part of the music business and the publishing business."

Either through acquisition or licensing deals, Hal Leonard -- the name is a hybrid of original owners Harold "Hal" Edstrom and his brother, Everett "Leonard" Edstrom -- acquires the right to publish music from artists and songwriters, who are paid royalties. What Hal Leonard does is look for ways to maximize its use of the music.

"If you take a big song, like 'My Heart Will Go On,' from the movie 'Titanic,' think of how many ways we can use that song," Morton said. "We can use it in a beginning level piano book, four or five different keyboard books, three orchestra books, different choral arrangements, we can put out a book of great long songs and another one of great movie hits. It's really amazing. We counted it up recently and we have about 130 million different uses of songs in our catalog. We're putting them out there, introducing them to new audiences. The thing about music, though, is that there is always something new. There is always a new song or a new band."

For Hal Leonard, that also means a new book. Why, in the age of digital downloads, will people still plunk down $20 for a music book when they can purchase the songs at a Hal Leonard Web site and print out the songs themselves?

"Good question," Morton said. "We actually were one of the first companies to offer music for download in 1997 -- before Amazon and iTunes. It was like we were dressed for a party and nobody came. Then, we had the dot-com boom and the dot-com bomb and while we are still trying to sell music online -- we have 11 different sites where people can buy music -- we've found there is a distinction for the consumer between digital and the physical.

"People like to have books. They like having the photos. They will walk into a music store and say, ‘Yeah, I'll pay $20 to have that.' The songbooks are going to have longer legs than a lot of us believed."

At first glance, the open airy first-floor workspace looks similar to dozens of other offices in area. Workers sit silently in cubicles, some wearing headsets while tapping away at keyboards.

Walk a bit closer, though, and you'll realize that the keyboards in question are configured like pianos rather than typewriters. Workers listen to recordings -- many by composers who can't read a note of music and often well in advance of a record's general release -- and diligently transcribe music with programs that turn notes played on the keyboard into music on the computer screen.

"Nobody hands us music and says ‘Here, print this,'" Morton said. "We are not a printer. We do all our own creative work. Our real core strength is the ability to transcribe and arrange the music. Once we get the rights, we go to work trying to find ways to use the songs across our different platforms.

"We've been working on a couple big movie projects this fall: 'New Moon,' which is part of the 'Twilight' series and a Disney movie that will be out in December called 'The Princess and the Frog.' We get advance audio and we're trying to figure out how many levels of piano, guitar, orchestra and choral we can make."

Though it is filled with music buffs and there is a vending machine that distributes cans of beer for post-deadline quaffing, the atmosphere at Hal Leonard seems quiet.

"I think it's a fun place to work," said Mardak. "But, we're pretty busy, too. We put out a lot of books."

"We're an intense company," said Morton, who majored in music composition and theory in college and joined Hal Leonard as a salesman in 1990. "It's fast-paced. We're not a big coffee klatch kind of place."

The company parties, though, are legendary.

"We have a garage party in September and it's killer," said Morton, who played in bands in high school and piano bars during college and grad school. "We set up a stage and we have big bands, rock bands, jazz trios -- everything you can think of. Last year, we had a barbershop quartet."

"We're all unified by a love of music. I liken it to being a great athlete and working at Nike. We all talk music, 24-7. People are always talking about bands they've heard or ‘Did you hear who we signed?'

"I think people are proud of the work we do."

Mardak, who handed daily operations to Morton in order to focus on signing bands and creating new products, is justifiably proud when recounting the company's history of mergers and acquisitions. Though he admits that operating a business in Wisconsin isn't always advantageous in terms of taxes, he's also happy to have kept the company in Milwaukee.

"At first, it was odd," he said. "The people we were licensing from said ‘You're from Milwaukee?' But, our initial business was tied to the organ manufacturers in Chicago, so it was good that I was able to get to them.

"This state is a tough place to do business. Taxes are ridiculous. We're partially in Minnesota, too, and that's not a piece of cake. If I could put this anyplace, I'd put it in Nashville, because it's a hub of music. Everybody in our business gets there. I wouldn't want to be in New York or L.A.

"But, I was born and raised here. I grew up on the South Side. I went to Pulaski High School. My family is here. The city owns me, in a way."