Recording - March 2013 - 52

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sion ready to go for every song you pitch. If
you have to go back into your studio and take
a day and remix it, burn it, then re-format it,
and then send it, and then it’s probably too
late.
Julie: And make sure it sounds the same as
the mix that had the vocal so you can cut
back and forth between them.

money.” Supervisors don’t have the time to
deal with issues like that.
Kevin: By the way, that artist who is working
with that supervisor is a TAXI member—who
came through a TAXI connection—and has
now placed, I think, five or six songs in that
program.
Yay! We love to hear about those placements!

As a retired engineer, I always tell people to
make sure that when you do the mix, be sure to
leave the faders exactly where they were on
everything but the vocals, and just mute that
channel.
Pat: I would suggest doing just an a cappella
pass as well. And, Julie, you probably can talk
a little bit more about this. But a lot of times
when we’re cutting music against picture, the
director will almost be there signing off on it,
but suddenly the melody or the lyric is getting in the way, and if you pull it out, the
song sort of loses a little bit of its draw. So if
you have an a cappella and an instrumental,
then you can at least dump the vocals into the
instrumental bed, but still have the melody
sort of pulling you through the scene. Just
take the extra time when you’re dropping
your mixes to run off three versions and have
them up your sleeve and ready to pass on to
music editors and supervisors when they
need them.
Julie: Especially female artists. They tend to
cut through dialogue more because they’re
typically in a higher register. The lower voices
tend to sit back, which is why I think male
artists get more placements in general. Girls’
voices are closer in the range of dialogue…

Patrick, how long do you listen to a song before
you know if you want to use it or not?
Patrick: It depends. A lot of times I’m listening and searching for something very
specific, and in most cases, it’s to replace
something that we can’t afford. So, if it fits
the bill, I’ll give it a lot more of a listen. I also
want to go back to what John brought up earlier about separating your artist side and
creating stuff specifically for media. A great
thrill and a great thing to do is to go out and
look and see what the top 10 on iTunes is, or
the top 10 on Billboard. See what those artists
are doing, and don’t necessarily try to rip off
those songs, but emulate the tone and the
energy and come up with a good, broad, universal lyric. Because most of the time—I
think John and Julie would back this up as
well—again, we’re looking for something very

“Music supervisors really like and
respect when an artist is technically
kind of aware of the technical stuff.”
—John Houlihan

John: The saxophone as well. Unless it’s The
Guiding Light or something, the saxophone’s
always in the way of dialogue.
But I would say also that relationship-wise,
music supervisors really like and respect
when an artist is technically kind of aware of
the technical stuff. Just earlier today in the
lobby here at the Road Rally, I saw a music
supervisor of a show called The League. And
he said, “Oh yeah, so-and-so is one of my goto guys. He gets it. If I need instrumental or I
need stems, they are there within five, 10
minutes in my email box.” And that makes
him want to call that guy again. I’ve had
bands where I say, “Do you have an
instrumental?” and I don’t hear for a few
days, or it drags on for a couple weeks. It’s
like, “Well, we owe the studio money and we
can’t get back in there until we pay them the
52

specific. We’re looking to replace Kings of
Leon; we’re looking to replace Adele. If you
use those things as a guide to go in and create
new stuff, you’re probably going to have a
better chance of having your stuff end up in a
film or a TV show.
That’s great advice. I’m going to go to Kevin
with this question, because he is so hands-on
with music, but I want input from all of you
guys. There seems to be a trend that started a
couple of years ago of… We’re always asked by
you guys and everybody in the music supervisor
and library community to hold our bar really
high in what we forward to you guys. But then,
a few weeks ago, I did research one night after
work and listened to a couple dozen songs from
the show House—a great show. I love it, I watch
it. In those end-scene songs that they use, so
often it’s hipster singer/songwriter, where it
sounds really muffle-y. It doesn’t have a lot of
fidelity, the vocalist sounds like he’s got a sock
in his mouth and you really can’t understand

what the hell the guy’s singing. Yet, in the
defense of those songs, there’s a lot of emotion
there, and it certainly adds to the scene. I think
it confounds the hell out of our members,
because we don’t forward their songs to you
guys or other people that we work with because
it’s not broadcast quality. Yet they hear stuff on
TV that sounds muffle-y, or it sounds like someone’s got a sock in their mouth… I don’t have a
really good question for that. I think I’m just
venting. But Kevin and I talk about this pretty
endlessly.
John: Julie just had a scene like that for the
season finale of Parks and Recreation. Why
don’t you tell them that story? It was the big
sort of ending montage, right? The Colin Hay
song?
Julie: Yeah, but you could understand those
lyrics. They went through 50 different songs.
They couldn’t decide what they wanted. But I
think a lot of times, they are also mixed muffle-y. They treat them and they futz with
them, so that you are feeling them but you’re
not hearing them. And then, maybe at the
very end of the scene, they’ll turn it up and
there’s maybe a phrase that relates to what
you’re hearing.
That brings me to what I wanted to ask Kevin,
which is feeling. You and I spend a fair amount
of time sitting in my office together, and our
tastes aren’t exactly right on the money, but we
seem to respect each other’s tastes. Your stuff is
probably more modern and a little hipper than
mine. You’re a little younger, and not that long
ago you were still in a touring band. But the
stuff you always play me undeniably has emotion. Will you forward a TAXI member’s song to
somebody that’s as picky as your family members are—or other people we know in the
industry—based on, “I can’t really understand a
lot of the lyric in this, but the emotion still
comes through. The honesty and rawness still
comes through.” Would you forward one of
those?
Kevin: Yeah. I think the bottom line is that a
great song has just got to be a great song. It’s
just got to say something. Indie music is definitely all about the vibe, and it’s not about
the polished production anymore. People are
making records in their garages or their bedrooms. And the stuff sounds great as long as
they really are tapping into that emotional
place and the vibe and everything. I think a
lot of people forget, even as far back as like
early R.E.M., that nobody could understand a

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Recording - March 2013

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