Recording - August 2018 - 53

AUGUST 2018
TAXI Road Rally 2017

Music Supervisor Q&A
Moderated by Michael Laskow
PANELISTS

Music Supervisors Mason Cooper and
Frank Palazzolo
Moderator: Alright... everybody who's got a question, please come out to the center aisle and line up.
Audience Member: I was in a songwriting class
this morning and it was about demoing. The
question that I asked after hearing some things
was, "Do you think pitches have to be mastered?"
and the teacher said "no." And I had always
thought they had to be. Based on what you guys
were talking about earlier, it sounded like you
need them to be mastered as well.
Frank: If it sounds good, it sounds good. Just be
aware of what you're sending. If it sounds like a
demo and it's not ready to go out into the world...
Basically, I prefer you to be like, "Hey, I've finished
this and I'm done with it and never going back to
it." But just know what you're giving us. If it doesn't sound like it's ready to be on TV, then it's not.
But if you feel like it's good to go, then sure.
Mason: And mastering, which basically will take
some compression and do all that, I mean, we can
do that in our mix. Now we're going to be messing
with your song. So, if there are certain sonics that
jump out and we need to compress it or do certain things or mess with some EQ, if we love the
song, yeah, we'll just do that. Now you're at the
hands of some other mixer that's going to be mastering your song. So if you can master it, it
doesn't hurt.
Audience Member: This is actually a question
for Frank, because I think I asked this question
earlier to Mason when he was on another panel.
Let's say you are working on a period piece that
takes place in the '60s, '70s, or '80s. Would you be
open to licensing a track that wasn't recorded in
the decade that whatever movie or TV show takes
place in? Would you be open to licensing if it's
authentic to what was recorded back then, but it's

a brand-new track?
Also, how often do you
license backing tracks,
meaning that there
was originally a lead
vocal on the track, but
it's just the backing
track without the lead
vocal, not necessarily a
score or song with lyric
and melody, but just a
backing track without
the lead vocal?
Frank: First off, if it's a Music Supervisors Mason Cooper (left) and Frank Palazzolo gave out a wealth of highly useable
vintage scene, 98% of information as audience members asked one great question after another during the Happy
the time, I want it to be Hour, Music Supervisor Q&A session at TAXI's Road Rally convention in November, 2017.
authentic. There's just
very seldom do we look for a backing track only.
something about using an authentic song, and
there is plenty of authentic music from the '50s,
And back to the authenticity question you asked
'60s, and '70s that I have access to that I can get
me before ... The authenticity is really important.
for a pretty affordable price. So it doesn't do me
Sometimes we'll go "period," and we do contemmuch of a service to go and license it elsewh ere if
porary music on purpose. But we have to make
it's not authentic. There might be a situation here
very legitimate, specific decisions with that. When
and there, let's just say that I don't have enough
I did the film Jobs, the question was with the direcmoney to get one of those authentic tracks. I
tors, "Are we gonna go now, like contemporary, or
might try to fudge it, but it's really got to be....
are we going period?" Because we can't go kinda
You gotta have killed it. The recording has to
sorta period-especially with that one which was
sound legit-everything about has to sound
a biopic about a guy's life that went through those
legit-and I have to be convinced when I listen to
times. And his thing for me when he basically
it that it really is from the '60s, which is pretty
temped in about a million and a half dollars of
hard to pull off.
songs, and when I came on board, I talked to the
producer, and he said, "I forgot to put in the budAnd to answer your second question about using
get for licensing." So we were about a million and
songs without vocals, I very rarely license those, if
a half over budget-a well-pl anned-out budget.
at all. When it comes to instrumental stuff, I'm
[audience laughter] So I had to go and I had to
usually going for orchestral, jazz, electronic, world
work and find artists that owned their own matermusic, but I don't need a rock song without vocals
ial to make it affordable from there, because the
in it. If I need something like that, I'll ask one of
director said, "I'm open to suggestions, but I am
my well-paid composers to do it for us.
not open to making it fake, because we'll get
caught with our pants down."
Mason: More often than not when we do end up
using a track, it's because we started looking for a
Frank: Maybe on a jukebox somewhere.
song and maybe the lyrics started getting in the
way, and we just maybe end up with a track. But
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