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love with it and I'm never gonna get them off the
dime to put something else in there. " Is that something
that you deal with a lot, or not so much?
Not anymore! Used to be. I've learned my lesson!
I learned pretty early on that you don't temp
with the Rolling Stones or Led Zeppelin. But
because of the kinds of things I work on, I
haven't worked on a lot of big-budget studio
projects. My " wheelhouse " is more independent
and artsy independent, so oftentimes I'm dealing
with budget constraints... So, I like to be in control
of what I give to a director, so there's a lot of
work that goes into the music that I suggest. I'm
not going to suggest something that I haven't
already vetted for being in the budget parameters
of what we can do. So, I'm going through
hundreds and hundreds of songs finding things
that fit, but not sending anything until I know
it's affordable, because it's just too painful to try
and replace something once that template is in.
I'm sorry, I don't like to do ugly temps. I don't
like all the cues from the same films so it sounds
like a perfect score in your temp, because that's
the breeding ground for temp love, basically. I
" When you [musicians] want to put
your music into a film, you have to
consider that it needs to fit. "
-Mary Ramos
like to make them patchwork-y, because, again,
my temps are for getting the director to articulate
what they want. " You like this banjo? " " No?
How 'bout if we do it with a clarinet? "
You mentioned that you listen to hundreds of songs
to find the right one. From the musician's perspective,
that music comes from their heart and their
soul, and everything is riding on it, and they imagine
that a music supervisor might sit there-even
though they are gonna listen to hundreds-listen
from the beginning to the end, and really sit there
and thoughtfully ponder each and every one. When
you listen to hundreds, do you listen for three or
four or five or 10 seconds and think that, " Nope,
this just doesn't fit the vibe; on to the next " ?
We are talking to artists, right? I want to say that
we're not talking about your art, we are not trying
to tell you what to do with your art, because that
would be stupid. What we are trying to do...
What we are talking about is if you're interested
in getting your music into a commercial
platform, that's a whole different mindset. It's
marketing and it's sales and it's that kind of a
thing, so when you want to put your music into a
film, you have to consider that it needs to fit. It
needs to fit into the film; it needs to fit into the
commercial. If you're selling a car, they're going
to be looking for the right happy song, and
RECORDING January 2022 65
they're not going to be looking for a song that's
very specific in lyrics. For instance, very specific
lyrics about a storytelling-type of a song, or a
song that is all about " Laura, " a specific name.
There are a lot of beautiful songs that are very
specific in lyric, but we can't use them. A lot of
times when you are working on something, you
ask for the instrumental version so that you can
lift the lyrics and the vocal out and lay it under
dialogue.
When we're putting stuff in pictures, there are a
bunch of different uses to songs. There are only a
few times when you get the chance to really play a
song in its fullness, which is over one of those montages-you
know, the love montage. You hear the
lyrics; you get to hear the beginning, the middle
and the end of the song. Those are so rare. A lot of
times, sadly, what we are trying to do with songs is
play it in the background. The dialogue is happening
in the foreground; the dialogue is the top line
of the song, the top-line melody, basically. The
song needs to lay underneath that dialogue and
bring something special to the scene. You may
want to have a cool hook play in the pocket of the
dialogue, but these are the kinds of things that
we're looking for when we're looking for songs, a
lot of the time. So that's something to be thinking
about too.
Don't miss Part Two of this interview in next
month's TAXI Insider!
http://www.recordingmag.com/total-recording http://www.taxi.com
Recording January 2022

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