My First Save Out Of The Bullpen

I’m a big baseball fan. The title of this post (for the un-baseball fans out there) refers to the situation where a pitcher – known as the ‘closer’ – is brought into the game with his team leading in the 9th inning to get the final three outs – sometimes only one or two outs. If he is successful in maintaining the lead and winning the game for his team, he is credited with a “save”.

I received a question in the comments from Phillip yesterday:
“My question for you is regarding Season 1 Episode 9 ‘Life in the Fast Lane’. What song is played during the scene where Homer carries Marge out of the Nuclear Power Plant? It sounds like “Up Where We Belong” however it is a different version. I’ve been looking around the internet for quite some time now with no luck in finding it. Thanks so much for your help!”

I thought I covered this in a previous post, so I spent some time word-searching the blog for the answer to point Phillip to that post. Alas, my memory is playing tricks on me as I cannot find any such post. If, by some weird chance, I did already tell this story, forgive the rerun (or “encore performance” as they like to call it now).

At the end of the music spotting session for 7G11 “Life On The Fast Lane”…

SIDEBAR:  OOH! WAIT! Fun story about the title. It was originally titled “Bjorn To Be Wild” because the man that Marge almost had her affair with was first written as a Swedish tennis instructor. Then it got changed – don’t know if it was the writers or Albert Brooks – to the French bowling instructor Jacques. For a while the title became “Jacques To Be Wild”
which was kind of fun and quirky, but didn’t make much sense. Eventually the episode was renamed “Life On The Fast Lane” which has a punny bowling reference in it.

…where was I? At the end of the music spotting session for 7G11 “Life On The Fast Lane” we came to that final scene that parodies “An Officer And A Gentleman” and the music that you hear was temped into the cut we were watching. I piped up and asked, “Did you clear that music? Is that what we are going to use in the show?” And I was told, “Yes, we are. We cleared ‘Up Where We Belong.'” I immediately had the same reaction Phillip had. The cue is an instrumental that has some of the melody line from “Up Where We Belong”, but it was not the song version that was a big hit at the time the movie was released. I pointed this out to the producers and they said they’d look into it.

A few days later I received a “thank you” call from the producers telling me that I was right and that they had cleared the wrong cue. The name of the instrumental is “Up Where We Belong (Zack Gets Paula)”

I was credited with my first “save” as music editor on THE SIMPSONS. I’ve had a few more since then, but the timing of that one was pretty significant because the show was still new, I was still new to the producing team, and I had showed them that my head was in the game and an asset to the production.

That’s it. A cool anecdote from nearly 26 years ago that I still remember clearly. Where are my car keys?

Lights, Camera…

At the end of last season, the very nice folks over at SEA (School of Audio Engineering) contacted me and asked if they could record a video interview to ask me about my job as Music Editor for THE SIMPSONS. I said “sure” and they dropped by The Bridge Recording to conduct the interview.

As is the case for many people these days, I was “discovered” thanks to social media. Jesse Hagen of SAE contacted former showrunner Bill Oakley via Twitter asking about people to interview and Bill pointed him to my blog.

If you’re a long-time reader of this blog, then much of the info in the interview you already know – newcomers should find it informative and it might motivate them to check out my earlier posts, especially under the “Music Editing 101” tab at the top of the page.

Thanks to Jesse, Bayan, and Sara of SAE for doing such a professional job. It all turned out great.

(email subscribers to my blog need to click the title “Lights, Camera…” to be taken to the page where you can see the video)

Almost 500 and Almost 29,000

You’d never guess it to look at my desk, but I like to keep things on THE SIMPSONS pretty organized. 22 episodes per season times approximately 30 cues per episode means nearly 700 cues each season to catalog and archive. Then as we go into each new season, someone inevitably asks “How about that cue we did ‘x’ seasons ago? Let’s do that again or something like it.”

Music Editing 101 – Library Music and Re-Use

I just received a question via twitter from user @cook879 asking, “What does the (Lib.) mean” in the music spotting notes? Rather than reply privately, I thought I would answer with a brief blog post.

“Lib.” stands for “Library” and once again, we’ve encountered a term with two meanings in my biz.

Music Editing 101 – Music Clearance

Well, we’ve finally reached the last of my seven steps of music editing: Music Clearance, or preparing the Music Cue Sheet.

In my post on dubbing I showed you how I prepare a music cue sheet for the dubbing mixer to follow so he knows when and where the music will play in the show. I also pointed out that many terms in film making have multiple meanings. The music clearance cue sheet is different than the dubbing cue sheet.

Music Editing 101 – Dubbing

You were probably starting to think I’d never get around to explaining dubbing. I’ve mentioned it here and there in some of the posts leading up to this one and if you’re not familiar with film audio lingo, then you might have been asking yourself what the heck I was talking about.

Music Editing 101 – The Scoring Session

We’ve reached step 5 of 7 in the music editing process and it’s one of the most fun and anticipated steps: The Scoring Session.

Music Editing 101 – Editing

I hope the title doesn’t sound too redundant. I’m up to step 4 of my 7 steps of music editing. To be more precise, I’m up to step 4A – the editing I have to do before the scoring session to get everything prepared. After the session, I’ll do additional editing. That will be step 4B.

Music Editing 101 – One More Thought on Scource

One of my favorite films has an excellent example of scource. THE BIRDS, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, has no score in the film, only a few source cues and this brilliant use of a children’s choir as scource. The masterful use of this music is subtle, ironic, and suspenseful. Enjoy.

Music Editing 101 – Scource

In a previous post I told you there are four types of music cues in a film or TV show: score, source, montage, and musical production number. After I spotted this week’s episode I realized I forgot to include one other type: scource (pronounced skorss). The name comes from score + source = scource.