The article is below, does anyone know about this musician? You've probably never heard of Todd Hahn, but you might have heard his music. Hahn, 47, has scored soundtracks for everything from President Obama's campaign commercials to History Channel documentaries . He's done work for the Learning Channel, WETA (where my wife is employed), National Geographic, and a host of other current and former politicians and advocacy groups. Think U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, former president George W. Bush and even the Swiftboat Veterans. The musical entrepreneur grosses more than $500,000 in a good year, pocketing more than half that after expenses. He has no employees. Works at home. Loves what he does and gets to hear his stuff on television. And $50,000 worth of technology makes it possible. A piece of music software called MIDI (music instrument digital interface) allows the Potomac resident to pound a set of piano keys and reproduce in a couple of days the sound of a symphony orchestra that once would have taken weeks and cost a small fortune. "I call up the guitar sound and the computer will re-create its sound," he said. "I can offer a dramatic musical score for a relatively inexpensive amount of money. And all that money [that would have gone for the orchestra] goes to me." <!--[endif]--> I call it a miracle of productivity. Hahn has at least $10,000 invested in music sounds alone on his computer, ranging from a harmonica to a full 120-piece orchestra. He performs hundreds of jobs a year, charging anywhere from $750 to compose background music (called wallpaper) to $2,500 and above for a more complex score that pulses a political ad. "I've developed a niche business here in D.C.," he said. How? "A convergence of three things," he said. "I was at the right place at the right time meeting the right people. The technology was right. And I was creative enough to deliver a decent product." <!--[endif]--> Hahn learned piano as a kid in Akron, Ohio, from a former professor from the Julliard School. After graduating from the Institute of Audio Research in New York with a degree in audio engineering in 1984, and after a short time at the University of Akron, he studied music composition at Julliard himself. His first job was as an assistant engineer at a studio in Cincinnati. The studio, known as the Fifth Floor, was a hotbed for funky band music. Hahn was in his early 20s, making about $20,000 a year. He calls those days "the starving artist years." There were a lot of very talented music and advertising people working in Cincinnati at the time. Chalk it up to Procter & Gamble, the ginormous consumer goods manufacturer headquartered there. An entire sub-industry of music studios, filmmakers, sound people and advertisers grew around the company. "I was the third-string guy, helping score things like industrial films," Hahn recalled. Soon, the third-string guy graduated to solo gigs. His first job was writing the music for an admissions video that Dennison University wanted to send to potential students. That led to other college jobs and to freelance work for places such as the Columbus Zoo, for which he would create music for dolphin and penguin exhibits. Hahn was soon making $50,000 a year. He quit the Fifth Floor in 1986 to go out on his own. He moved to Columbus and opened a small studio with $20,000 he had saved. He started cold-calling companies, producers, movie directors and others. "If I was lucky enough to get a job and the client liked it, then word of mouth spread. Once you are in a production community in any area . . . your name starts getting around." The lessons from these years were valuable. To get his foot in the door, he would write some pieces on the condition that he would charge a fee only if the buyer liked the result. Over time, he learned how to set a price for his work. "They would say, you've got $2,000 to do this show, and I would say, I will do it and give you one revision if you don't like it." The big turning point -- every entrepreneur has one -- arrived when a childhood buddy hired Hahn to score internal videos for the American Federation of Teachers, which is headquartered in Washington. A Bethesda audio group called the Soundsters offered him a job at its studio off River Road in 1990. Hahn loaded his equipment on a rented truck and drove to Washington, where he quickly did the soundtrack for a Discovery Channel multi-part documentary about military aircraft and hardware. He scored a 20-minute internal film for the National Institutes of Health that taught scientists how to dispose of radioactive waste. A friend introduced him to media consultant Mark Putnam (now Murphy Putnam Media), who was looking for something more dynamic than old tunes to infuse political ads. Putnam hired him to score the political ads for a Putnam client who was running for mayor of a big city. The idea for original music caught on, and Hahn's niche of political business took off. Now it brings in well more than half of his revenue. "During a heavy political year, I can bill half a million dollars or more," said Hahn, who left Soundsters in 1993 to go out on his own. Hahn said the key to keeping his clients happy is relying on their input and knowing what they want. His goal is to stir so much emotion in listeners they will vote for the candidate. "Music is a catalyst for emotion," he said. "Once you put music against the scene, it explodes. Just watch 'The Magnificent Seven.' You put music to that and all of a sudden these guys on horses are heroes. That's what we're trying to do when we are selling a candidate."