First: can you explain the role of a music scoring mixer?
Basically, it's quite a big job, and the first part of it is starting a conversation with a composer. I find out what the scope of the score is, what the composer has in mind, what the construction of the score is. Is it all orchestral, or acoustic, are there electronics involved, or is it primarily electronic? Or is it a hybrid score, both electronics and orchestra? Are there any specialised instruments? For example, is it a solo piano-driven score, or are there other instruments that need to be isolated, or treated in a certain way? So I'll get a real concept of what the score is. I'll ask for demos of the cues themselves, and quite often – in fact, almost always now – composers mock up their scores for the director to put in; he or she will send this music to the director who puts it in in the editing room, so they can get a sense of what the score is. They'll listen to each cue to approve or ask for changes, and to see how it works in the movie. I get a sense of what the score is, and from there I conceptualize how I want to set up the studio; it's my responsibility to determine what the setup is on the scoring stage, or in the recording studio. I have to describe the setup, but also what microphones I'll use, other electronics, how I want them plugged in, if there's any other outboard equipment like compressors, limiters, reverbs, that kind of thing. All that's done for the recording phase.
While the recording is being done, I'm in the control room listening, obviously. I'm very involved in the dynamics or the performance – which I guess is a better way of putting it – of the music. For example, if I hear there's a particular cue being recorded, and everyone's recording live, and the trumpets are really loud in relation to everything else, I'll ask for a dynamic change and have the trumpets play less, or if there's some big instrument like taiko drums in the percussion – and it's just overwhelming everything else – I'll suggest that we record that separately. It's things like that, which I know are going to be an issue later on in the mix or in the dub.
Does that make you effectively the 'music producer' for the movie?
In a way. I have so much experience now of doing this that I can look at the picture and I can almost hear what it's going to sound like in the final dub, even though when we're scoring generally we're looking at the picture, but not hearing any other sound. Occasionally we'll play music back against the dialogue, and that's all there is, so rarely do we have any sound effects playing along with it. Let's say there's an exterior street scene and there are people talking and maybe whispering to each other, and there's very light strings playing underneath it. I know that if we hear any street ambience, that music is going to disappear, so I'll recommend to the composer that we need to get a little more sound out of the strings. They can't play quite so softly, otherwise it's just going to disappear in the final dub. Things like that are important to guide the recording process. Once it's done, there's not much you can do outside of adding electronic samples, which would change the sonic quality of it.
All this is part of my responsibility as a scoring mixer – in the recording process. The mixing process is a whole other thing. Here my responsibility is to achieve a good balance between, say, orchestra and electronics. It took quite a bit of time to learn how to do that, because the issue of balancing electronic with acoustic instruments, especially an orchestra, is that electronics typically have a lot of presence to them and if they're too loud against the orchestra, the orchestra will sound small. It won't have any impact. To get the balance of the two is challenging.
Do you talk to the composer a lot?
Quite a bit, especially in the recording process. It's very popular these days to record in what we call 'stripes' doing separation. Let's say we start with strings and woodwinds, and maybe harp, and then we'll add brass, and then we'll add percussion to that… These are all recorded separately. The positive side of doing that is that it gives you control of those separate elements. The negative side of it is that there are often intonation problems, so the tuning of, let's say, the brass against the strings can be a real issue. Also, the timing is more challenging for the musicians in order to get everything in sync, so very often after we're done recording, we have to edit the various elements together so that they fi t together rhythmically.
So, there's positive and negative. Also, the dynamics are different, and just sonically it's different. For me, personally, I much prefer the sound of all the instruments recorded together. Also, for musicians, especially orchestral musicians, they learn how to play their instruments sitting with everybody else. They adjust their intonation and dynamics and performance based on hearing everyone else in the room together. When you now take that apart, and you separate them out, and their reference is headphones, which is a much different experience, it's challenging for musicians. It really is.
The Q & A is coordinated by The upscale existence blog.
Basically, it's quite a big job, and the first part of it is starting a conversation with a composer. I find out what the scope of the score is, what the composer has in mind, what the construction of the score is. Is it all orchestral, or acoustic, are there electronics involved, or is it primarily electronic? Or is it a hybrid score, both electronics and orchestra? Are there any specialised instruments? For example, is it a solo piano-driven score, or are there other instruments that need to be isolated, or treated in a certain way? So I'll get a real concept of what the score is. I'll ask for demos of the cues themselves, and quite often – in fact, almost always now – composers mock up their scores for the director to put in; he or she will send this music to the director who puts it in in the editing room, so they can get a sense of what the score is. They'll listen to each cue to approve or ask for changes, and to see how it works in the movie. I get a sense of what the score is, and from there I conceptualize how I want to set up the studio; it's my responsibility to determine what the setup is on the scoring stage, or in the recording studio. I have to describe the setup, but also what microphones I'll use, other electronics, how I want them plugged in, if there's any other outboard equipment like compressors, limiters, reverbs, that kind of thing. All that's done for the recording phase.
While the recording is being done, I'm in the control room listening, obviously. I'm very involved in the dynamics or the performance – which I guess is a better way of putting it – of the music. For example, if I hear there's a particular cue being recorded, and everyone's recording live, and the trumpets are really loud in relation to everything else, I'll ask for a dynamic change and have the trumpets play less, or if there's some big instrument like taiko drums in the percussion – and it's just overwhelming everything else – I'll suggest that we record that separately. It's things like that, which I know are going to be an issue later on in the mix or in the dub.
Does that make you effectively the 'music producer' for the movie?
In a way. I have so much experience now of doing this that I can look at the picture and I can almost hear what it's going to sound like in the final dub, even though when we're scoring generally we're looking at the picture, but not hearing any other sound. Occasionally we'll play music back against the dialogue, and that's all there is, so rarely do we have any sound effects playing along with it. Let's say there's an exterior street scene and there are people talking and maybe whispering to each other, and there's very light strings playing underneath it. I know that if we hear any street ambience, that music is going to disappear, so I'll recommend to the composer that we need to get a little more sound out of the strings. They can't play quite so softly, otherwise it's just going to disappear in the final dub. Things like that are important to guide the recording process. Once it's done, there's not much you can do outside of adding electronic samples, which would change the sonic quality of it.
All this is part of my responsibility as a scoring mixer – in the recording process. The mixing process is a whole other thing. Here my responsibility is to achieve a good balance between, say, orchestra and electronics. It took quite a bit of time to learn how to do that, because the issue of balancing electronic with acoustic instruments, especially an orchestra, is that electronics typically have a lot of presence to them and if they're too loud against the orchestra, the orchestra will sound small. It won't have any impact. To get the balance of the two is challenging.
Do you talk to the composer a lot?
Quite a bit, especially in the recording process. It's very popular these days to record in what we call 'stripes' doing separation. Let's say we start with strings and woodwinds, and maybe harp, and then we'll add brass, and then we'll add percussion to that… These are all recorded separately. The positive side of doing that is that it gives you control of those separate elements. The negative side of it is that there are often intonation problems, so the tuning of, let's say, the brass against the strings can be a real issue. Also, the timing is more challenging for the musicians in order to get everything in sync, so very often after we're done recording, we have to edit the various elements together so that they fi t together rhythmically.
So, there's positive and negative. Also, the dynamics are different, and just sonically it's different. For me, personally, I much prefer the sound of all the instruments recorded together. Also, for musicians, especially orchestral musicians, they learn how to play their instruments sitting with everybody else. They adjust their intonation and dynamics and performance based on hearing everyone else in the room together. When you now take that apart, and you separate them out, and their reference is headphones, which is a much different experience, it's challenging for musicians. It really is.
The Q & A is coordinated by The upscale existence blog.