• Blogs
• Tradeshows
• Partners
• White Papers
• Events

The Sampler

Dec 6, 2004 3:35 PM

The History Lesson, Part II
Okay, we caught a few of you folks dozing off in the middle of Part I of our Production Music History Lesson, and we also received a query wondering if it was going to be available as a book on tape. Really, is that sort of sarcasm necessary? The answer, of course, is yes, with James Earl Jones generously volunteering his services.

But seriously, when we left off last time, silent movies had given way to “talkies,” and companies that had once specialized in selling sheet music for incidental pieces designed for films were beginning to switch over to that exciting medium that would make such a mark on 20th century culture: phonographic discs, aka records. By the ’30s, too, it wasn’t just cinema that was hungry for production music--radio was reaching into households all over the world in a way that film did not, and there was suddenly a massive new market for music on disc. While some popular programs hired small bands and orchestras to provide musical accompaniment, other shows relied on records to fill out the sound on dramas and comedies alike.

In England during the mid-’30s, a pair of music publishers, Bosworth and Boosey & Hawkes, created what some consider to be the first real “mood music” libraries on 78rpm discs. The offerings combined some well-known classical works by then-contemporary composers such as Gustav Holst and Edward Elgar (who is also notable as one of the first to record at EMI Studios in London, which later became known as Abbey Road), along with previously unpublished pieces by lesser-known writers that were tailored more specifically for use in theatrical films, newsreels, and various radio applications.

A problem that cropped up in these early days is one that would dog the production library business until the advent of CD libraries 50 years later: the variable quality of disc pressings. Some of you young whippersnappers don’t know the agony of putting on a favorite record and hearing that annoying “Tick... tick... POP!” that was part of the soundtrack of the Age of Vinyl. And you certainly couldn’t have that kind of noise on the music for your radio production. Well, Boosey & Hawkes, to cite just one example, had so much trouble with their early pressings that following World War II they re-pressed all their discs on the better materials that became available.

It was during the war itself, though, that another prestigious British company jumped into the mood music business: Chappell Publishers started releasing records in 1942 and quickly became one of the most successful outfits of its kind. In its first five years alone it released about 100 discs in the Chappell recorded Music Library. The records were 78s, of course; what’s somewhat surprising is that the company didn’t switch over to LPs until 1969!

Meanwhile, in America, a pair of publishing companies--Emil Ascher and Thomas J. Valentino--began selling European libraries (including Chappell and others) in the U.S. Occasionally these U.S. companies would re-package the discs and even change the names of cues so that they could be more accurately tracked by the two major music licensing agencies, BMI and ASCAP. Valentino even had its own record label, called Major Mood Music, but the source of the tracks was European labels who were not even credited on the discs--a point of some contention as you might imagine.

By the end of the ’40s, there was yet another medium rearing its ugly electronic head and hungry for content: television!

More on that next time...

In Session With Eddie King of Megatrax
Engineer/producer Eddie King had an illustrious studio career going long before he became the chief engineer for the large Los Angeles-based production music company Megatrax. He mixed Bruce Hornsby’s first smash, “The Way It Is” back in 1986, and through the years he’s worked with a number of other “name” artists, including smooth jazzer Dave Koz, piano ace Jim Brickman, former Police guitarist Andy Summers, and many others. For 15 years, too, he ran a successful studio in the San Fernando Valley, based around a wonderful-sounding live space and a control room outfitted with a Neve V3 console he modded himself.

Eventually, however, he tired of the studio business and he sold his studio to one of his occasional clients: Megatrax. He continued to do freelance work for Megatrax, and over the years it developed into a really good relationship, King says. “Then, about a year and a half ago, they hired me on as an employee, which is something I thought I would never do, but it’s worked out really well for both of us. It’s been a lot of fun,” he says.

I asked King how working primarily on production music differed from conventional session engineering. “One thing that is different is that we don’t usually have specific time pressures. We want to get it right so we do what we have to do. We don’t have a record company A&R guy breathing down our necks worrying about whether it’s going to be finished in time for the [album] release date they’ve already announced. Also, I like that it’s continuous work but I can set sort of regular hours. So I can work my ass off, which I like to do, but also have a life.

“The other thing I like is that I find myself doing a lot of different styles of music, and that’s a real challenge. I really have to do my homework. When a new project comes along I put my headphones on and I really immerse myself in that style of music and just listen, listen, listen, so I can make what I do sound the way it’s supposed to sound. And that’s hard because every style has its own rules to an extent.

“Not doing a lot of vocal music and not doing a lot of songs has been a change for me, too, because with that kind of music, everything is about surrounding the vocalist and highlighting the vocalist. Doing instrumental production music is a whole different kind of thing; it’s a different mindset entirely. But you still have to worry about the basics--recording it well, mixing it properly.” And, of course, he’s working on shorter pieces. Production music tracks rarely clock in at more than two or three minutes, and there’s always that 15-, 30-, and/or 60-second version to think about.

Part of what piqued my interest in King was Megatrax’s recent release of a 6-CD collection called Sensación, which offers a huge collection of Central and South American music styles, ranging from traditional rhythms of Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and other countries, to hot Latin dance numbers, to cutting edge contemporary hip-hop and other street grooves. It was, as you might imagine, quite an undertaking: the recording and mixing sessions spanned three months and involved some of the finest players in L.A. Producer Jorge Calandrelli helmed three discs: “He’s very cultured, a great arranger and sort of an old school romantic,” King says. The other three, more contemporary sides, were produced by Byron Brizuela, who King describes as “a real Mexican music expert, old and new.” Engineer Derek Jones shared the workload with King.

“On any kind of project like this, casting is so important; getting the right musicians,” King comments. “These style are very specific. So, for instance, on Jorge’s tangos we used a guy who plays the bandoneon [an Argentinian accordion]; Jorge wouldn’t let me bring in a regular accordion player. I have a fabulous accordion player we’ve worked with who I thought could do that style, but Jorge wanted a real guy for the bandoneon. We also found a tango bass player--the way he attacks the bass is something I’d never heard before; it’s a different style. Even the percussion guys were not the typical Latin guys who work all over town.”

The sessions were cut to Pro Tools HD at 96K (using Prism converters), and by and large mixed through the studio’s Soundcraft console. “At least it started life as a Soundcraft console,” King says with a chuckle. “I’ve modified it heavily, with a new power supply and beefing everything up.” Brizuela also mixed some of the more groove-oriented pieces inside Pro Tools. Some tunes called for multiple percussionists, others for a lush string section or a group of horn players. “One of the most fun sessions was doing the mariachi and banda, which is like Mexican marching band music, because it was all guys from East L.A.; nobody spoke English. Nobody read a note of music but the writers would sing the parts to these guys and they’d learn them almost immediately. Then these guys would play as loud and as ratty as they could--it was such a blast doing that!”

King says he loves the challenge of tackling different styles, and certainly he gets plenty of that working on production music. When we spoke in late November, he was onto something new for Megatrax. “I’m in the middle of mixing and cutting up some house music dance stuff. We’re doing some long-form house tracks. So I’ve been listening to tons of stuff, from the Chemical Brothers to Portishead. The education continues!”

For more info on Megatrax, go to www.megatrax.com.

How mSoft Is Bringing the Library Business Together
A remarkable thing happened at NAB last April: Seventeen different music libraries shared a single 20x20 booth space to show off their wares. That’s a lot of competing products, not to mention the salespeople to go with them. What brought them together was mSoft, the Woodland Hills, Calif.-based company that makes a widely used Digital Asset Management System that allows clients to tap into multiple libraries using just a single server.

“What happened was mSoft had a pretty big booth, so we decided to give some of the libraries a chance to share the space with us,” says Doug Perkins, mSoft’s VP of sales and marketing, who conceived of the NAB plan. “We had a whole bunch of computer stations that were devoted to libraries where someone could enter in a password and automatically bring up our system, but with their logo and graphics and limited to just their music. In other words, to get to their music they had to use our system and that way they showed their music and their customers might have seen a system they wouldn’t have seen otherwise.” Among the libraries participating were APM, DeWolfe, Aircraft, Megatrax, Master Source, and others.

If anyone could pull off this unusual confluence of friendly competitors it’s mSoft. After all, they have built their company in part by providing a non-discriminating host environment and delivery system for libraries of every stripe. "If you’re a production facility and you have six, seven, eight libraries, you’re not going to want to have that number of systems to search them," Perkins says. "You want to have one system and that’s our thing. Here’s a management system for all the stuff you use in productions on a day-to-day basis. That includes sound effects libraries, music libraries, it includes the tools to ingest your own material that’s not from commercial libraries--people will save their voiceover recordings in the system, all their logos for the companies they do work for, things of that nature. Then, once they’re done with a production, our system will read an EDL file from an Avid or similar system and then create a down-to-the-second accurate cue sheet of what was used in the production. We have all the publishing information in the system, and our database isn’t just the information that comes from the library; it’s actually cross-referenced across all the libraries. And the way search results come back in our system is the newest first, based on the file creation date in the system. That’s better than a random return back because that’s what people want to hear--what are latest new things in the system?

“We’ve been very scrupulous to not have anything in the system that plays favorites with the libraries,” Perkins continues. “Of course if a producer wants to do a search and find, say, alternative rock within a particular library, they can do that easily, and they can even make a group of libraries that they prefer for different types of music and search just those groups. But the system doesn’t dictate to them that they do that. It’s not: 'Library X pays us this much a month so they come first.' Not at all. The reason we’ve succeeded is we’re sort of the Swiss consulate to the music world,” he laughs. “We’re neutral; we don’t play favorites.

“That’s what happened at NAB. These people are competitors, but they’re cordial competitors. Some of them probably don’t really like the idea of their stuff being lumped into one place with the others. I’ve had people say 'Our music can’t be on the same server as Library X, and I’d say, 'They’re on the same CD rack [in the production office]--what’s the difference?'"

Perkins expects that mSoft will probably host a similar setup at next year’s NAB, as well. And some natural grousing aside, the many library companies that have used mSoft’s services can’t argue with success: more than 300,000 hours of production music and sound effects ordered off mSoft systems. And soon to come: a stock library management system.

For more info, go to www.msoftinc.com.

© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.