RECORDING June 2022 - 66

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ten to it, or I'll look it up on Spotify. In my off
time, to be able to sit and listen, sure! But,
when you're on the clock there's just never
enough time.
You don't have off time. You are an editor and a
mom. I can't imagine you have any off time. How
old is your son now?
He's three. About the same age as I've been
doing this conference.
One thing you said when you were onstage at the
last Rally that everybody... This was the " Laurel
Ostrander knocked me out of my chair " moment.
Everybody went, " Ahh, revelatory. " And I'm paraphrasing
you here, but you said, " Cues with short
intros that get right to the heart of the cue work
best. Maybe a really short drum turnaround like
boom-boom into it, or a guitar riff into it. Why
are those so appealing to you?
Well, I think because it gets my attention
immediately right off the bat, and I get a sense
of, OK, this is exactly what the cue sounds like.
Especially now, because I think that music is
changing in reality television. Music is changing
more; my awareness of the way it's being
used is changing a little bit, because now some
that work are more of a " sports " sound-and
we can talk about that later-and in that case
they do want music to kind of sneak in and
catch you unawares, and then I really lock into
the scene. But especially in a lot of docu-follow
type shows and competition shows, you want
to have the cue really jump in with that capital
letter and say, " Hey, here I am. This is the start
of the scene; this is the start of the beat; this is
" If a cue is too busy, if it's got a ton of
instruments going on simultaneously,
then it's probably going to drown out
dialogue and be really difficult to find
a place for it. "
-Laurel Ostrander
the start of the thought; the start of the joke-
pay attention. " And then we'll go from there.
So, I think a really great way to organize [or
arrange] the cue is if you can give me dynamics
within the cue. Come in with a punch!
Don't be afraid to have a quiet moment in the
middle; I can always rearrange it. If I needed
to sneak it in, I can take that middle and play
it early and then come into your big punch,
and then always punctuate it at the end with
another great sting.
I like the fact that you're calling the front of it a
capital letter. I don't think you used that term
66 RECORDING June 2022
onstage, and I always say that a sting is an exclamation
point, but now I'm gonna steal that
[description] and tell everybody that coming into
it is the capital letter. That's imminently stealable!
Thank you, Laurel.
Do you ever find cues that you absolutely love,
and you tag them or stick them in a special subfolder
and use them over and over as much as the
EP will let you get away with that? Because it's
reliable and you know that it works better than
most other cues of that type?
Yep. The first thing that I do whenever I start a
new show is I create my own library, basically,
of all of my favorite cues. I will designate them
by scene type or by emotion type, whatever, so
that I can find them, and I will use them until
I'm sick of them, or the EP is sick of them, or
the network is sick of them, whichever comes
first.
I think a lot of musicians who are new to the
world of instrumental cues think that you're looking
for compositional brilliance, and that their
entire cue might get you. Obviously, you want
great cues. You're not looking for just OK. You
wouldn't have a job if you were just picking " OK. "
But is it a compositional brilliance that makes it
great, or what other factors make a cue desirable
for you? Rather than saying, " Wow, that's the
best composer I've ever heard; he's gonna kick
John Williams' butt someday. " Other than compositional
brilliance, what makes you pick a cue?
I think that there are so many things that go
into choosing a cue, but one of the most
important is remembering that it is gonna be
layered in with so many other elements simultaneously.
So, it's got to be something that's
not going to overwhelm dialogue; it's gotta be
something that's not going to necessarily overwhelm
sound effects. If a cue is too busy, if it's
got a ton of instruments going on simultaneously,
then it's probably going to drown out
dialogue and be really difficult to find a place
for it. Something that I think is really useful
with cues is when a composer can provide us
with... I call them stems-I'm sure that that's
not the correct term for it-but when I get
multiple different versions of the same cue
broken down by the different instruments,
then it's a little more versatile. So, I can in that
case maybe use a cue multiple different times
in the same episode. If I'm using just the
drums and bass in one place, maybe I'm just
using the guitars in another place, and maybe
I'm using the drums and bass in a different
part of the episode. Because if I've got a really
emotional scene, you start with the strings,
and then you bring in the beat at just the right
moment, and then you layer on guitars and
build your way up to the full version of the
cue. It can be really flexible.
And you are more of a musician that you give
yourself credit for. You think in very musical
I know there's no real average length that a cue
might be used. But is it safe to say that more
often than not you only use pieces of cues, not
the entire thing? And assuming that's correct,
why is that?
Yes. Well, again, I think that the longer you sit
in a cue, you know, it feels like OK, this
thought has gone on for a really long time, and
as a viewer you start to get bored. So, when
you're changing the music, you're keeping the
episode feeling more dynamic. That being
said, I've worked on a lot of shows in the last
couple of years where you might use an entire
two-minute cue if you're doing a really exciting
montage that's having you touch base with
multiple different characters in your cast, but
maybe they are all talking about a similar subject.
Then you can wrap that whole big
thought-that whole big beat-around one
cue. But that I think is a very specific instance.
For the most part, cues can be as short as 10
seconds. On average, I'm using about 30 to 40
seconds worth of every piece of music.
That's great. That helps new composers who don't
know the drill yet understand that they have to
write to make it dynamic throughout; in other
words, up and down throughout. Come in strong,
finish big and in the middle keep it interesting so
that you've got a lot to work with.
" As many times as I try to like stick
'Dueling Banjos' into my cut, it just
never quite fits. "
-Laurel Ostrander
Anecdotally, many of our most successful members
tell us that the cues of theirs that get used
most often are the ones that are in fact pretty
stripped down-like you mentioned, just bass
and drums-and they see the most income coming
from the most sparsely populated cues they
make. So it sounds like simpler is often better.
True statement?
Yes. As many times as I try to like stick " Dueling
Banjos " into my cut, it just never quite fits.
And I've been thinking about this too, why do
drum and bass cues work so well, and I wonder
if it's... Now I'm gonna be silly, musical,
and not really know what I'm talking about.
But you're looking at a symphony and how you
got your bassline at the bottom of the
symphony really driving the scene. And I think
that a scene in television is similar. You've got
your dialogue track sitting there up at the top,
you know, your female voices and then your
male voices, and then you've got that really
great space and percussion lines that grounds
Continued on page 69
terms, but you tie it to the emotion that you're
going for, which is probably why you're an A-list
editor.
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