er The Ink and Paint
of Music er
A
t 6:45 am on a w eekday
morning the routine begins:
O pen all doors, turn on the
office computers, server, an d the
printer. Turn on the po w er bars for
digital audio, samplers, and MIDI
and boot up. Check the Po wer Mac
and confirm no backup problems
the night before.
Coffee: decaf with one package
of S w eet and Lo. Your treat for this
morning: A Sausage McMuffin you
picked up on the w ay over. S avor
each bite as you load up the second
Mac in the MIDI room with spotting
notes. Four computers, tw o racks,
four digital samplers, a printer and
voice mail are standing by. Revie w
the w orklist database and decide
which music cues to do today. Close
the door and start. You have at least
t w o hours before any other staff
come in so get creative. Don’t come
out for a break until 2:00 pm. Don’t
go home till 9:00.
The above scenario, w hile par-
ticular to my studio, is typical of an
electronic composer in the middle
of a netw ork animation series. Just
as with the animator w hose ink and
paint tools have become digital
tablets and S GI stations, the musi-
cian’s tools have changed from pen-
cil and scorepaper, stopwatch and a
roomful of musicians, to digital audio
and MIDI workstations, and racks full
of synthesizer an d audio sampler
modules.
ANIMATIO N W ORLD MAGAZINE
A min Bhatia.
The musician’s tools have
changed from pencil and
scorepaper, stopwatch and a
roomful of musicians, to digital
audio and MIDI workstations,
and racks full of synthesizer
and audio sampler modules.
Disciplines and Deadlines
Nevertheless the discipline and
deadlines are still the same. Even in
the cases w here real musicians will
be brought in for the final record-
ing, a film composer must still use
his tools and techniques to perform
the arduous task of en hancin g a
group of images (in a very short
amount of time) with an underscore
that, at it’s best, becomes an uncon-
scious part of the w hole. This is the
by Amin Bhatia
fun and the nightmare that is film
scoring.
O n a live-action project, the dia-
logue and the sound effects are real-
ity. Sound effects are especially com-
plex with location audio, ambiances
and foley (. . .the added footsteps,
grunts, groans an d body move-
ments) . Music must carefully play
outside this and be the emotional
reaction of the scene, rarely leading
the story or accentin g a visual
moment.
This is not so in animation.
Because there is no location audio or
reality to simulate, music has been
granted the license to lead the
action and provide the extra ener-
gy and motion in the audio track,
to make up for the missing detail in
soun d. This philosophy hasn’t
changed, from the black and w hite
days of S teamboat Willie to the
cyberw orld of Reboot. The bottom
line for the composer is: You can get
a w ay with a lot more in animation!
Anythin g ever written about
music for animation inevitably pays
homage to Carl S tallin g, an d as
much as I tried to, I couldn’t avoid it
here. Most noted for his scores for
the classic Warner Bros. cartoons in
the 40s and 50s, Carl defined the
all too w ell kno w n musical style of
playing every visual gag with a musi-
cal soun d effect. W hether it be a
group of plucked violins tiptoeing
across the screen in perfect sync, or
the surprise “oh-no” orchestral phras-
April 1997 8

Screen shot from Studio Vision, a MIDI Digital Audio sequencing program by Opcode Systems.
es that preceded every exploding
Acme device, Carl and his peers cre-
ated a set of musical rules that have
sho w n up on every single animat-
ed project since then.
This business is about teamwork variations, ideas and anything that or sometimes overseas. I don’t get
and relationships, and you and
the producer will just have to
sweat it out with each other until played back to the producers, w ho of music dialogue and sound effects.
it sounds right to both of you.
Why Carl? And why always Carl?
I’ve seen cases w here producers of
a ne w series (especially a computer
generated one ) w ill plan for an
audio track that uses sound effects
and underscore in a conventional
live-action approach. Yet, w hen the
sho w is previe w ed, the inevitable
request comes through to “make the
music busier”. . . “play the gags”. .
.”it’s missing something”. . . All this
is Carl’s fault!
ANIMATIO N W ORLD MAGAZINE
The Process producer will just have to sw eat it
out with each other until it sounds
The process of initial writ- right to both of you. I’m fortunate
ing is a slo w and labori- in that Nelvana’s producers and edi-
ous process. It begins with tors are a good bunch of people . .
meetin gs an d spottin g . . O ne does not always get so lucky.
sessions with the produc- O nce the style and themes are
ers, w ho determine the shapin g up, the actual writin g of
overall style of the music, music to picture begins. In live
be it orchestral, rock, eth- action, one w aits until the picture is
nic, country . . . ( O n a “locked” and there are no more edits
recent project, I asked the in sho w timing. In animation, the
picture is usually
the last thin g to
sho w up! In my
w ork w ith
Nelvana, I start by
readin g story-
boards and listen-
ing to a prerecord-
ed dialogue track
that has beeps to
tell me w here in
the storyboard I
am. From this, I
can time out my
scenes and orga-
producers about style an d the nize my computer metronome track
answ er w as simply, “Yes, w e w ant to block out the beats and bars of
style.”) From these meetin gs, one music I have to write to. The picture
runs back to the hovel of a MIDI stu- itself is being rendered and colored
dio and experiments with themes, in another department across town,
strikes a fancy. These w orks of to check my w ork against picture
Wag nerian art are then eagerly until tw o days before the final mix
respond with, “O h . . . that’s. . . well, Thankfully, I don’t do this alone.
it’s . . . interesting . . .hmmmmmm. (Those glossy ads of one person sit-
. . No, that’s not quite right . . . I can’t ting in a room spouting music from
quite tell you w hat I w ant, but I’ll his or her electrified fin gers are
kno w w hen I hear it.” absolute crap!)
Like any creative art, there are I w ork w ith Mag netic Music,
semantic frustrations w hen a com- w hich is a music production / edit-
poser an d producer must w ork in g /supervision company run by
together, each using a totally differ- David Greene. The Magnetic cre w
ent vocabulary. It doesn’t matter supervise the meetings, and orga-
ho w cool your MIDI studio is, or nize spotting notes that give me a
your résumé, or musical back- breakdown of the action right down
ground. Those are already a given. to the hour minute secon d an d
But this business is about teamw ork frame. They also produce the music,
and relationships, and you and the and are my objective ears w hen
April 1997 9
 after w orkin g on a t w o minute
piece for eight hours, I can’t hear it
anymore. It’s w onderful because I
actually rent my studio space from
them for my MIDI w orkstation. We
bring each other a lot of w ork and
they’re always down the hall when
I need them. The relationship is well
w orth the added expense an d
much better than a second bed-
room studio in my opinion.
Examples
The follo wing audio exam-
ples give you an idea of the
writing stages. Care has been taken
to process these so they sound the
least offensive in eig ht bit mono
(ugh!!), and I look forward to the day
w hen you can do w nload a Q uick
Time movie of this w ithout dyin g
from graybar fatigue on the World
Wide Wait!
Yes, it’s fun, but just as a word
processor cannot write for you,
a sequencer cannot compose
for you.You’ve still got to know
your stuff.
The scene is from Nelvana’s Tales
from the Cryptkeeper, episode 14,
entitled Game Over. O ur hero, that
snickering punster the Cryptkeeper,
is tryin g to get some peace an d
quiet w hile his t w o enemies, the
Vaultkeeper and the Old Witch, are
trying to steal the sho w from him.
The Vaultkeeper has hijacked his cab
and the witch is follo wing behind
on her broom. (Listen for a musical
quote from The S orcerer’s
Apprentice for the broom. This job
has it’s perks.)
The first audio example is a skele-
ton sketch ( no pun intended!). Just
as an animator w ill first do a line
dra wing or pencil sketch to deter-
mine speed and pace before filling
thin gs out, I use only one or t w o
synthesizers to flesh out the actual
ANIMATIO N W ORLD MAGAZINE
Nelvana’s Tales From the Cryptkeeper.
melody and make sure it w orks to
the picture timings. Working with a
MIDI sequencer is akin to a w ord
processor. You can juggle notes and
tempo about, just like w ords and
fonts, and never commit to anything
till you finally “print” it to tape. Yes, it’s
fun, but just as a w ord processor
cannot write for you, a sequencer
cannot compose for you. You’ve still
got to kno w your stuff.
Audio Clip 1: Skeleton Sketch
The analogies betw een anima-
tion and music making are many.
Both require imagination preplan-
nin g, an d perspiration! O nce the
skeleton sketch is done it’s hours of
adding in all the other instruments:
w ood winds, strings, brass and per-
cussion.
A note to potential MIDI com-
posers w ho expect to play a key-
board patch called “ O rchestra.”
Forget it. In animation, you can’t
copy and paste a water texture. You
have to paint it, one wave at a time.
It’s the same with music. The only
w ay to sound like an orchestra is to
build up each part one note at a
time!
Audio Clip 2: Finished Music
After I’ve finished writin g, I
entrust the staff at Magnetic to do
the final mix of all the various
audio tracks ( never mix your
o w n music), w hich can have as
many as 40 different synthesizer
sources. Nelvana’s producers are
present durin g this an d, if all
g oes w ell, w e tell jokes an d
drink coffee durin g the mix-
do w n. If somethin g feels
“wron g” to them, everythin g
grinds to a halt. I dash to the
computer to re write sections of
music, w hile they sit patient-
ly and ponder hiring a differ-
ent composer next time.
The music mix is the second last
step in the process. The inevitable
final mix or dubbing is w here sound
effects, dialogue, and music meet. If
everyone has done their job w ell,
the dialogue presents the story, the
sound effects provide the reality (or
hyper-reality), and the music empha-
sizes the emotion an d “fun.”
Hopefully, you hear them all w ork-
ing together. That’s the goal . . .and
sometimes w e achieve it. Take a lis-
ten.
Audio Clip 3: Final Mix with
S FX and Dialogue
All audio Copyright 1994 Nelvana Ltd.
Music Composed by A min Bhatia,Theme
by Danny Elfman
Composer/synthesist Amin
Bhatia has been writing for film
for nearly 20 years. R ecent pro-
jects include O nce a Thief,
directed by John Woo, and
Nelvana’s animated series
Blazing Dragons. He has
w orked on album projects with
David Foster and Steve Porcaro
and is currently w orking on the
sequel to his solo CD Interstellar
S uite.
April 1997 10