What do you do as a music supervisor?
Do you perform the music you create?
What is the "Voice of Life" project?
Which of your services do you do when?
Does your process change on different types of projects?
What do you do as a music supervisor?
Music Supervision services often include many of the following tasks:
-"Spotting" the show or movie (determining what music should be where in the project)
-Supervise song selection, placement and integration
-Obtain licenses to use desired music from the owner of the recordings and compositions
-Supervise scoring and music editing process (making sure the transitions all work between score and editing)
-Supervise music contracts and overall music budget on a project
-Determine public domain and/or copyright ownership status of music that is desired to be used in a media project.
-Cast the appropriate musician, composer and/or singer for a media project, sometimes supervising an audition process
-Supervise recording session of orchestra/ live instruments
Do you perform the music you create?
We often bring in live musicians, budget permitting. On some projects that have smaller budgets, we will emulate instruments using samplers and electronics. When doing that, we'll do what's necessary to make the performance sound as real and like the actual instrument as possible. That said, it is always very nice to have the real musician play the real instrument when the budget does permit.
We work with a broad network of composer, producers and musicians. Each project gets cast with the best people to meet the project's needs. The team of the most steady collaborators are:
Songs:
Guy Erez
Dan Phillips
Score:
Guy Michelmore
Amotz Plessner
Inon Zur
Trailers/Promos:
Craig Dobbin
What is the "Voice of Life" project?
Mainstream medicine is now realizing that participating with music (including singing) helps the healing process. Voice of Life is an album of music for this purpose, designed to give the listener great music to participate with to harness the health benefits of meditation and chant without any of the religious or spiritual conversations that sometimes accompany these activities. More on Voice of Life can be found at this link:
Which services (composing, producing and music supervising) do you do when?
For each project, this determination is made on a case by case basis. With over 20 years of experience, we have relationships with many wonderful producers, composers and musicians. We work with the producer or director of the project to determine the approach, style and direction needed for the project. We all agree where songs are needed and where score is needed. Then we invite the most appropriate talent possible to be members of that team to deliver exactly what that project needs. Sometimes we just supervise, sometimes we just compose and often times we do some of each.
How does your process differ when working on music for different types of projects such as songs with words versus instrumental score to picture?
Before we start on the music, we hone in on the needs of the project with the producer and director, often choosing models of what other pre-existing music feels like it demonstrates a mood or feel that is wanted. Typically, a song doesn't need to be as tied to picture as score usually does. So, the process of writing songs differs from score in this sense. Otherwise, the physical production production strategy is basically the same.
Our studio is Mac based. We use a wide array of programs. Some of our favorite sound library plug-ins are made by the following companies: Ilio, East/West, Spectrasonics, IK Multimedia, Vienna Library and Native Instruments. When tracking live in our studio, we often use a Yamaha C414 microphone through a Focusrite ISA220 mic pre-amp, into a MOTU 2408 MK3 D->A Converter that connects to the main Mac computer.
