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The Sampler

Nov 9, 2004 11:09 AM

A Touch of History, Part I ...
We know what you're thinking: "No, no, please don't make us read any history! We're busy! We barely have time to answer our phones and read our email!" Okay, point is well-taken, but we thought that from time to time we'd present a little bit of the rich and colorful history of production music and sound effects libraries, to show you what life was like in the Bad Old Days of vinyl records and analog recording. Have no fear--you will not be tested!

Sherman, set the Wayback machine to 1909. That was the year that Thomas Edison's movie company first started making suggestions about musical pieces, mostly from the classical repertoire, which could be purchased in sheet music form and used to accompany its films. (Of course there was already a long tradition of sheet music being sold for use in stage productions ranging from melodramas to music hall variety shows.)

Four years later in 1913, Sam Fox Publishing of Cleveland, Ohio, began putting out sheet music folio books to be used specifically for motion picture accompaniment, even making suggestions about which music pieces might work best for different kinds of scenes--i.e. comedy, action, adventure, etc. Also during the years before World War I, DeWolfe Publishers in London eschewed the popular repertoire of the day in its offerings for film music by selling sheet music of original compositions to film studios. A few other publishers followed suit. Then, immediately following the Great War, a gentleman named Guiseppe Becce established a sheet music library called Kinothek in Berlin designed to be used by film accompanists, and employing a number of fine contemporary composers of the day.

With the rising popularity and increased quality of gramophones throughout the late 1920s, it was no surprise that it occurred to a number of companies to offer music on disc for film and theater productions. In 1928, the Brunswick Record Company produced its first "Mood Accompaniment Library," which consisted of nearly 500 10in. and 12in. 78rpm discs of assorted popular and classical compositions. A year later, in England, the Columbia Record Company put out a catalog that gave suggestions for how selections from various Columbia records could be used for film applications. From these modest beginnings, the modern artform we call "production music"--called "mood music" early on in America, and either "cinema music" or "atmospheric music" in Europe--was born.

Next time: The first Golden Age of production music...

Associated Production Music
Over the past two decades, Associated Production Music has quietly grown into the largest provider of production music in the world, largely through the smart acquisition of numerous successful library companies. Today APM boasts close to 200,000 available tracks on more than 3,200 CDs (and online, of course), and they are still putting out new compilations at the rate of more than 15 per month. Indeed, there are 22 new offerings in November 2004 alone, with such diverse titles as Middle Eastern Journey; Christmas Treats; Hip Hop Mix Tape; Kitsch and Quirky; Latino Songs and Beats; Trance, Trance, Trance; and Ambient Mystic Chill.

Much of the company's clout springs from its international diversity. Originally formed 23 years ago to represent libraries that were owned by European music titan EMI, APM has become an umbrella for libraries from around the globe, as well as for such domestic powerhouses as NFL Films Music Library and various Emmy- and Grammy-winning composers, including Barry deVorzon. Today, APM is owned by both EMI and BMG.

"The music we sell was made and is marketed all over the world," says company president Adam Taylor. "It's valuable having access to material from so many different countries because, say, with dance music, what's coming out of London will be different than what's in Ibiza or Miami or New York. Just recently we did a custom production for an ad agency in Spain that needed some mambo music, but they didn't want it done in Spain, they wanted the best players from the United States. So they came over and we hired Gloria Estefan's rhythm section to do it, and we recorded it down in Miami, and it turned out great."

While APM is more than happy to work on custom packages, the bulk of their business comes from their incalculably huge reservoir of libraries. According to Taylor, APM has always taken an active role in making disc and track recommendations for clients. There is a staff of music directors who do just that, and even its online system, the PlayAPM Music Finder Service, is geared toward making specific music usage suggestions. A refinement of that system, called MyAPM, will make its debut within the next few weeks--it promises to be the company's most sophisticated, yet transparent, online music management portal yet.

Additionally, APM is now able to install music in uncompressed files directly onto their clients' inhouse servers and to tie in directly with Avid, Pro Tools, Fairlight, and other editing systems. APM has also partnered with Globalist Internet Technologies to make a mini-search and select system for Firewire and other portable/removable drives.

And the music just keeps on coming. "We do a lot of trend analysis internally because we need a constant flow of new material," Taylor says. What about overlap between the many different libraries around the globe? "We like that they sometimes work on the same type of material because each library has its own flair and flavor and character. So we end up with a wider variety of material in most styles, and that gives our clients more to choose from."

For more information, visit www.apmmusic.com.

Aircraft Music Library
The well-regarded Aircraft Music Library has benefited tremendously from being affiliated with Soundtrack recording studios in Boston and New York: Between them, Soundtrack's two facilities house 16 rooms for tracking, post, and mixing, with a wide assortment of console possibilities, from SSL 4000- and 9000-series and Avant, to Sony DMX models, to Euphonix post boards and much more. This gives Aircraft much flexibility when it comes to creating new libraries.

According to Aircraft's managing director, Paul Greenberg, the library operation was sort of an outgrowth of their studio work. "Early on, our advertising customers were coming in to do their sessions and they weren't always finding what they were looking for from the libraries we had at that time, so we started to create our own. We made albums, we made cassettes--all those antique formats," he says with a laugh. "Even today, I'd say that about 70 percent of the stuff we put out is a direct result of speaking with the customer who needs something in addition to what we have, or needs a little spin on something we already have."

Aircraft's customers include TV and radio stations and a lot of corporate work. "Our music is used in training films, inhouse video productions for corporations, and at trade show events," Greenberg notes. He adds that the company's website has also attracted a considerable amount of new business. The company offers its product online or on disc and either by subscription with blanket licenses or buy-out per project. "It seems as though most of the people who come to us through our website are buying individual tracks that they can audition on the website, and then we're more than happy to send them over to them," Greenberg notes.

Like all music library producers, Aircraft is constantly working to keep its operation as up to date as possible, which means keeping a finger on the pulse of contemporary music at all times. Greenberg thinks the stakes have been raised, too, by the proliferation of well-known rock and hip hop tunes being used in advertising and regular programming.

"I think in general people are a little more particular about what they're looking for and little more savvy about different styles of music and how quickly genres change," he says.

For more information, visit www.aircraftmusiclibrary.com.

Meanwhile, in the Film World: An FX Update
As original SFX libraries have become more quality-conscious through the years, they have often looked to Hollywood for recording innovations and techniques. In the competitive world of feature film sound design, many of the top practitioners of the art form have moved away from stereo DAT and toward recorders that offer higher bit rates and more tracks, such as the Zaxcom Deva. Now there's another contender.

Recently, we spoke with Oscar-winning sound designer Richard King (Master and Commander) about his sound effects recording work for the forthcoming film Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, starring Jim Carrey and Meryl Streep.

For this film, King and his crew of sound editors decided to use the new HHB Portadrive eight-channel hard disk recorder, which allows for up to two hours of 8-track 24/96 recording and nine hours of 4-track 24/48 recording. "On Master and Commander we used Devas and DATs and we were really happy with them," King says, "but the beauty of the HHB, which has only been on the market a few months, is that it's more channels and it's 96K, which allows us to record and subsequently manipulate the sounds at a higher sampling rate, which helps to maintain clarity."

For more on King's effects work on this film, see the December issue of our sister publication Mix, on newsstands around the first of December.

© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.