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Reader SurveyThe Sampler — December 14, 2005
Dec 14, 2005 11:07 AM
A Look Inside Killer Tracks
Over the past 16 years, Hollywood, Calif.-based Killer Tracks has evolved into one of the most successful production music libraries companies in the United States. Acquired in 1992 by entertainment mega-company BMG, Killer Tracks has expanded and diversified tremendously through the years; at the same time, it has partnered with many other library concerns from around the world. The company's client list is long and very impressive, a testament to its continuing growth and relevance.
Recently, I spoke to Killer Tracks' senior music supervisor, Wendie Colter, to try to get some insights into what makes this vibrant company tick and to find out about her role there. As if being a music supervisor isn't enough responsibility, Colter has been "rewarded" by being given more work to do: Now she is a production director, too, in charge of putting together projects for Killer Tracks. No wonder in the photo of her on the Killer Tracks website we see only the top of her head peeking above a mountain of CDs.
BJ: Tell me about the job of senior music supervisor at a big library music company like Killer Tracks.
WC: Well, in general, what a music supervisor at a library does is different than what a music supervisor at, say, a television production company or a film production company does; although it's also similar in some ways. A lot of what I do for Killer Tracks is I get calls from clients—and that's an incredible range of people in all sorts of different areas —when they have a project and need music. I'm helping them put music to their commercials, to their corporate videos, to their radio spots—whatever it is they're doing.
BJ: Does this mean you literally know all 20,000-plus tracks in the library?
WC: I do.
BJ: Wow! Impressive! How did you get into this business?
WC: Actually, I was a signed artist for about four years; I was signed to an independent record label. Then I became a composer and I started doing music for Killer Tracks, and now I'm the music supe. Ideally, music supervisor is a position done by a musician, because what I need to do is interpret non-musicians' descriptions and adjectives into music.
BJ: "We want something moody, but mellow, not too edgy..."
WC: Exactly!
BJ: "We want a little of the Kanye West feeling, but mixed with screaming guitars..."
WC: [Laughs] Right! Either they'll have a musical reference that they know they want to get to, or they'll have mood words or descriptive words. And sometimes they can be as vague as "green and spotted," so I need to be able to figure out what that means. It's very much trying to get into someone's head and interpret. A lot of times, too, I'll get a call from the advertising agencies where they'll say, "We have a car racing along a highway, so we need something that really sounds energetic." A lot of times they won't even have a sense specifically of what sort of music they want, and obviously you can go a number of different ways in a situation like that.
BJ: You can have the wild rock guitars, or some sort of electronic pulse, or drums.
WC: There are many, many options. So my job is to try to figure out which direction to go in, and then work with them to make sure they get what they're after. And sometimes, once you go a certain way [musically], that might bring their ideas into more focus, too. Of course there are also many clients who are quite specific about what they want. In those cases I'll match up their ideas with a bunch of the 20,000 tracks we have. [Laughs]. I'll know right where to get it.
BJ: How has the nature of the music changed through the years? Obviously you have to stay current with changing tastes. Like, I feel like I hear so much more of that aggressive, guitar-driven rock that we associate with sports programming.
WC: That's true. There's a lot of that out there right now. We have a bunch of it.
BJ: And there probably isn't as much call for some of the pieces you were licensing 10 years ago.
WC: You'd be surprised. At Killer Tracks we find often that a lot of people still use things from the very early [years] of the library, and that's because it's been consistentely high-quality all along.
But, like you said, it's part of our job to watch trends and create music that goes along with those. So, for instance, right now there's a whole sector of what we call "nu metal" happening in music, and you hear that a lot on the sports shows. There are also a big mish-mash of styles blending together. In Latin music you have "reggaeton," which is hip-hop and latin styles. And a lot of the nu metal has urban influences, too. There's also something called "rocktronica," which is hard rock mixed with electronica; it's very cool stuff.
Now that I'm also a production director, I'm directing the production of discs that we create here, so along with knowing music and helping people find music, I also am spotting trends, coming up with ideas for new discs and bring those to our clients. It's very exciting.
BJ: Does Killer Tracks have its own studios, or do you exclusively deal with freelancers who have their own facilities?
WC: Freelancers. And we're really proud of our composer list. These people are the top-notch film and television writers in the country and we continually cultivate new composers. All of them work in their home studios, and it's really a tribute to the way technology has gone that the quality that comes out of these home studios is so high. A lot of home studios really are on a par with professional studios these days in terms of quality.
BJ: What are you working on right now?
WC: A couple of things. One is an underscores disc; that's a really important category in broadcast. These are sort of chilled, cutting edge…
BJ: "Chilled." I'm hearing that word a lot in production music these days.
WC: [Laughs] Well, that is one of the trends. Sometimes people want it loud and fast and hard, and other times they want it cool and hip and mellow and sort of in the background; so I'm working on that.
BJ: And how do you pursue that? Are there composers you know would work well in that genre so you commission them to do tracks? Or are there musicians who are sending you audition-type tapes in that particular style of music?
WC: Both. We have a roster, and we're always looking for new and interesting writers, composers. I'll hear something and want to know who that is, and I'll chase them down. It's all of that.
BJ: As far as Killer Tracks' clients go, are most people still dealing with CDs as their medium of choice?
WC: We're still manufacturing CDs, of course, but we also have a very comprehensive website where people can search and download and license right there. That's really the trend. In fact, I think the BMG feeling is that that's the direction they want to move increasingly in the next several years—it'll be all-digital.
BJ: How has that been—being owned by a giant corporation like BMG? Not that I'm expecting you to say anything bad about your corporate bosses!
WC: [Laughs] No, it really has worked out very well for both of us, I think. I don't think we've suffered at all; if anything we've both flourished. The thing that we have is we're well-used; we're one of the big guys. So we get the top-quality composers and the top-quality clients because of that. And being part of the one of the largest entertainment companies in the world helps that even more.
BJ: What do you personally do to keep up? Do you listen to the radio all day?
WC: Oh, yeah! I'll tell you what I do. I listen to XM Radio. ... I'll be a commercial for XM Radio! It's pretty amazing. You hear a lot of things on XM that you're just not going to hear otherwise, unless you really keep your ear the ground. I read all the trades, of course—Billboard and Hollywood Reporter and Radio & Records, and all those. But I also read a lot of the underground, independent, cutting edge, tastemaker papers, like Mojo from the U.K., Magnet from the U.S.; just a ton of stuff. And also online there are a lot of great websites and web magazines. There are also some Internet radio stations that are really finding great stuff. Then there are the obvious things: MTV and VH-1 and all the stuff that everyone knows, and that's good, too, because we'll get a lot of clients wanting something that sounds like something they know. But if you want to be a trendsetter—and we do—you listen real hard to as much as you can.
BJ: Have you abandoned your once lofty hopes of being a successful artist on your own?
WC: Why thank you for asking! [Laughs] Actually, I'm going to make another album in 2006.
BJ: You can be crushed by the record machine one more time.
WC: Gee, I hope not ... but I'm not leaving my job at Killer Tracks any time soon! [Laughs]
Digging Deeper Into Some Rock SFX
Ever since we ran those lists a while back of rock tracks that employed sound effects in interesting ways, I've been trying to find out some more specifics about where various SFX came from. Recently I tracked down some specifics on a couple of the more famous ones:
The Doors' "Riders on the Storm": Ah, what glorious thunder and rain sounds wash through this atmospheric classic, recorded in the early winter of '71! Recently, I spoke with the producer/engineer on the track, Bruce Botnick, and of course asked him about the SFX. "When we recorded 'Riders on the Storm' [at The Doors' rehearsal studio in Los Angeles] it was a nice, light song, but when we got into mixing it [at Poppy Studios] is when it all came together," he says. "I was a nut for sound effects and I said, 'I want to try something.' Elektra Records [The Doors' label] had a bunch of sound effects discs, including one with rain and thunder. I took it off a disc and put it on a stereo tape. Then I just ran the tape in the background while I was mixing. When the tape [FX] ran out, I would just back up the tape somewhere and hit 'play' again, and then go into 'record' on the stereo [mixdown], and by serendipity, the thunder [claps] came where they did; nothing was planned. So, basically, I played it along with the mix as I was mixing. Later on, when I went to do the surround album [version], that became a complication because I didn't have the rain and thunder printed [on tracks of the original 8-track master], so I had to re-create it. I had the original stereo tape, but I wound up making surround rain and then physically cutting the thunder. I knew where they were supposed to go on the track, but I needed them to do special things in surround."
Pink Floyd's "Money": According to an excellent new book—Dark Side of the Moon: The Making of the Pink Floyd Masterpiece, by John Harris; Da Capo Press—the famous clinking coins and other monetary SFX from the track (recorded in 1972) started with a seven-beat effects loop made by bassist/songwriter Roger Waters. "I made those recordings in a shed at the bottom of the garden, throwing coins into a big industrial food-mixing bowl that my wife used for mixing clay," Waters says. "I recorded the sound effects on my first proper recorder, chopped them up and glued them together, stuck them in the machine, put a mike stand up to hold the tape taut and it went [he imitates the SFX]."
Later, though, because the album was to be released in Quad, they needed to re-record that and other effects on the album. Engineer Alan Parsons says in the book, "Instead of being on 1/4in. tape [as they had been], the 'Money' effects had to be on a 1in. loop, with all the sounds recorded on different tracks. The idea was that when the record was played, the sounds would go around the room. Lengthwise, each of the tracks lasted about a second—which is about 15in. of tape. Times that by seven, and you've got quite a big length of tape. And that had to be routed around a few obstacles in the studio.
"It would be remarkably easy now: You could do it in about 15 minutes [using a digital audio workstation]. But we had to record the sounds individually. Some of them, like the cash register, came from sound effects records that were lurking in the Abbey Road [EMI Studios] tape library. One of the sounds is something called a Uni-selector, which you'd find in a telephone exchange ... and we got bags of cash and recorded them being dropped from a height of 6ft. on the studio floor. There was another sound that was meant to represent money being torn up—that was just bits of paper. The Floyd weren't that rich then."
