Change Agents: Jared Gutstadt and his Jingle Punks

• Jingle Punks uses tech tools to quickly score music for a wide range of TV shows
• Founder and ex-rocker Jared Gutstadt composed the ubiquitous %27Pawn Stars%27 theme in just 15 minutes
• The start-up hopes to expand beyond music scores into helping bands break via ads%2C TV or viral videos

(EDITOR'S NOTE: USA TODAY's "Change Agents" is a regular series that focuses on innovators looking to alter the shape of business and culture.)

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Say you're sitting down to watch one of your favorite TV shows. Maybe it's the History Channel's Pawn Stars or perhaps ABC's Splash. Soon you're playing air guitar to the former's rocking intro or tapping your feet to the diving show's theme, and you wonder — who wrote this stuff?

The answer to that Jeopardy-worthy question is sitting at his desk in a warren of offices, hammering away at a combo computer-keyboard-drum kit on his next TV-tune masterpiece. Where in years past this sort of work was the painstaking and costly product of countless studio-musicians, the bearded wonder at the helm here is using technology to turn the scoring business on its ear.

"I was asked for an inspirational and adventurous sound here, so I think the guitar needs to soar a bit more," says Jared Gutstadt, 35, founder and CEO of Jingle Punks, a 4-year-old start-up dedicated to serving up catchy tunes on a moment's notice to TV, film, advertising and just about any business that asks.

Gutstadt, who during college played in a never-quite-made-it band called Group Sounds, hits a few buttons on his Mac and, guitar in hand, serves up a tasty rhythm track for a tune he calls Hero of the Day. The song is for execs at Fox's Fuel TV, who are in the market for a new theme for their adventure reality show Clean Break.

In an astonishingly short amount of time — under 30 minutes, and in fact, the Pawn Stars theme was conjured up in just 15 — Gutstadt layers in his own drum and bass lines, uses a software program to add some hand claps and a Vangelis-like synth run, and calls in Graeme Hogg, 24, a singer from a Scottish boy band who happens to be rehearsing in another Jingle Punks office, to sing the lead vocal.

It all not only looks like child's play in his expert hands, but also like loads of fun. The stress of the moment? "I think for the chorus I need a Who-like windmill guitar sound," Gutstadt muses aloud. "But what I'm really looking for is something that will evoke that big emotion you hear in U2 and Coldplay songs."

When he punches up his computer-effect choices on a large monitor, you can see his problem. "Technology makes the choices endless and dizzying," says the bearded, hat-wearing Gutstadt, who conjures up the image of a better-fed Johnny Depp. "You just need to get good at making choices."

The Toronto native has proved he's better than good.

Beyond the Pawn Stars theme, which, thanks to the show's popularity, won an ASCAP award in 2010 for most performed TV or film theme, he and his 50-person team at Jingle Punks — which started in New York, and has expanded to Los Angeles and London — are involved in creating original music for more than 50 media projects a year.

Sometimes that means an opening track, but most of the time it means coming up with those dramatic musical "fills" that telegraph to viewers what they should feel.

"Prior to unscripted TV shows, a lot of sitcoms had a theme band," Gutstadt says. "But with today's reality shows, it's wall-to-wall action, so if you don't tell an audience what to feel, they won't know."

So TV producers call Jingle Punks to make sure TV fans know they're supposed to grip their chairs because a mobster-wife squall is coming.

"If you watch shows with pregnant teens or fighting housewives, you're probably hearing our music," Gutstadt says with a shrug and a laugh.

"We need compelling music that brings unscripted moments to life," says Splash supervising producer Rick Austin, who says decades ago getting such original music required the time-consuming process of booking and supervising a full band, often to mixed results.

"It used to be an all-day deal just to get one piece of music," he says. "But with the technology that's available today, I've had Jared rewrite something instantly, send it to me by zip file 30 minutes before taping, and we get it up right away."

For all his hipster looks, the music-crazed entrepreneur is building quite the operation.

The backbone of Jingle Punks is a proprietary online music library that provides easy access to music that parrots familiar hits. Gutstadt calls it a "Pandora for the TV industry," noting that a producer can input search terms — "something like 'anthemic U2 sound'" — and for a fee instantly get something that suits their needs.

Those seeking a more custom approach get the human touch.

During a tour of the company's facilities, each opened door highlights a different aspect of the Jingle Punks skill set. Behind door No. 1, a half-dozen men and women man computers as they fine tune a track — which started with something Gutstadt hummed into his iPhone — destined for a Cajun-country paranormal show.

One office down, two more staffers are adding eerie piano to a small-budget indie film. And next door, Downtown Drive, four young singers from near Glasgow, Scotland, are working with a staff producer to see if they can make some noise online with anything from a jingle to a viral video.

Although their credits include co-writing Justin Bieber's single Believe, the quartet have struggled to make headway and are looking for any break they can get. These days, that could well come through television or the Web.

"These are new times, so whether you've got a song in a new iPod commercial or break big because a TV show played your tune, that's all counts," says Eliot Van Buskirk, editor of Evolver.fm, a site that focuses on technology for music fans.

"In the '90s, doing anything corporate with your music was considered cancerous," says Buskirk. But thanks to apps such as SoundHound, "Consumers can instantly identify even the most obscure music. Today, if you want to make music you just do whatever you can."

That goes for Gutstadt. He once harbored dreams of making it big in the music biz, only to see fellow bands score deals ahead of him. That led to a job editing TV shows in order to pay the bills, and that in turn has led him — to his own surprise — back to making music.

"If I have one advantage it's that I spent 10 years in a video-editing booth, so while I love the music I write, I'm not too precious about it," he says. "I know what editors need to make a scene work, so if they need me to start over on a piece to get it right, that's what's going to happen."