Before we dig into this post, let me send a personal message out there to all my readers.
If you’re a regular reader since the beginning, you know that I’m not only lucky enough to work on one of the greatest television shows in history, but I’m also a grandfather to one of the cutest little girls in history. OK, maybe that’s stretching it a bit, but I’m prejudiced. Anyway, my granddaughter Abigail almost didn’t make it into this world to become so cute. She was born as what’s known as a “micro-preemie” and wasn’t given great odds of survival. Well, she beat the odds and will celebrate her 3rd birthday in a few weeks. If all my readers and Twitter followers donated just $1 or $2 each to The March of Dimes, I would be be very grateful and you would help ensure that future micro-preemies could get the same level of medical care that Abby received – care that certainly saved her life.
To donate, visit my donation page by clicking here and consider giving up one cup of coffee this week or one song download. We’re trying to raise as much money as we can by Saturday, May 11, 2013. Check out this little video that tells Abby’s story in just over two minutes, then continue on with our regularly scheduled programming. Thank you so much!
This post is for music geeks. You’ve been warned.
In the episode that aired this past Sunday – RABF11 “Pulpit Friction” I once again was able to put on my classically-trained-in-music hat. There is a scene in the episode that used “The Sorcerer’s Aprrentice” as temp music for the scene. Al Jean liked the way it played and he wanted to use that work in the final version of the show.
It fell to me to find a copy of the score and then “mark it up” so that it could be orchestrated and copied. “Mark it up” means to pick and choose the bars that we’ll use to fit the scene. It always sounds better to do the music editing on paper and have the orchestra play the edited score rather than have the work played in its entirety and then edit it Pro Tools. Playing the edited score always sounds more natural and “un-edited” (except to the music geek who realizes that bars are missing or have been repeated).
I start my process by finding a recording of the work and editing the track in Pro Tools by cutting it, looping it, speeding it up or slowing it down – whatever is necessary to have the music “hit” all the right “spots” in the cue. The final edited track sounds awful but I never worry about that because I know the final recorded version will wash away all sins. I send the edited version set to the picture to Alf Clausen & Al Jean for their thoughts. If they have notes, I tweak and we go back & forth until I get approval.
Next, I “mark up” the score according to the editing choices I’ve made. I take a PDF of the score pages and cross out the bars we’re not going to use, indicate where the music will start and stop, indicate cuts and jumps in the music (e.g. “go from bar 25 to 45″), etc. If you’d like to see my marked-up score click this link: Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Then this score goes out to Alf & orchestrator Dell Hake. The toughest part preparing these classical cues is that often they were written for large orchestras of 75 or more players, often with six french horns or two bassoons, or 4 trumpets. We record with an orchestra of 35 players, with only two each of trumpets, french horns, and trombones, and only one each of the woodwinds (flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon), and our entire string section is smaller than just the violin section of most orchestras. Whittling down a large orchestra score to be played by a group one-half or one-third the size than originally intended is an art form unto itself. Then when it’s recorded, mixer Rick Riccio performs his own magic with microphone choice and placement, digital reverb, and equalization to make the group sound larger than it really is.
Here is my original edited track, complete with click track, that was the basis for the mark-up and orchestration. You may notice that the click “drifts” away from the orchestra from time to time. This is OK, because I knew that when we recorded it, the orchestra would follow the click and would be spot-on the timings.
We spent the better part of the first hour recording this cue at the scoring session, but it was well worth it when you hear the final result. FOX has been kind enough to post it on their YouTube site so that we can all enjoy it together.
I hope this post wasn’t too geeky for you, but this part of the job is one my favorites … one that lets me be more musician than editor.
I was never much of a country music fan until my wife and daughters started listening to it in the early 2000s. Then I discovered The Dixie Chicks and was blown away by their musicality. I was very excited when I heard they were coming on the show and that a special song was being written for them. Directing them was a personal thrill and one of the true perks of having my job.
What a great homage to all those muscle truck ads and what a “get” to have Hank Williams, Jr. singing the jingle for us. He had a real hard time with “squirrel-squashin’, dear-smackin’ drivin’ machine!” but you could never tell from the final take. He was a great sport and fun to work with.
This was our first time doing a full-fledged musical episode. What about “A Streetcar named Marge” you ask? Well, that was a show-within-a-show. Our characters didn’t break into song to move the story forward. We had done many musical theater-type songs before this episode, but this was the first that presented an entire episode in the style of a Broadway musical.
This song come from one of the show’s most beloved episodes with one of its most beloved characters, Hank Scorpio. This was performed by the amazing Sally Stevens doing a great Shirley Bassey/Goldfinger impersonation. Did any of you think of this song when Ms. Bassey made her surprise appearance on the Oscar telecast this year?
All I can say is this in one kick-ass chart! Horns blazing, Hammond B-3 organ whirling, Nancy Cartwright belting it out and loving every minute of it. When I recorded her singing, she had the most fun I think she’s ever had doing a song and she didn’t want the session to end. Before composing for THE SIMPSONS, Alf used to be the music director for “The Donny & Marie Show”. This type of arrangement was right in his wheelhouse and he did not disappoint. This is one track I never tire of.
A take off on Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire”, we have another great track from Alf that has all the essence and flavor of the original while deftly avoiding a lawsuit. Dan’s reading (singing) of “What else do I have to say?!” is the best moment in this song for me. You should have seen his head-banging when he performed that line. Fabulous.
This song stands out for me as a unique musical contribution to the show. I don’t think there is a song anywhere else in the 24+ seasons of the show quite like it. This also has one of my thumbprints all over it. When I was directing the cast to sing “Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star?” we would check playbacks and it was hard to hear the “G” at the end of Guttenberg. So after many attempts without much success, I had them sing that final “G” as its own syllable – “Gut-ten-ber-guh”. You can clearly hear it on the track. Looking back, maybe it was a bit over-the-top, but you cannot mistake the name in the song.
A song that, sadly, hit the cutting room floor. This was a take off on “I Love to Laugh” from “Mary Poppins”. As sometimes happens in our biz, there just wasn’t room for it in the final cut of “Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiali(Annoyed Grunt)cious”. What I’ve posted here is the pre-record version that was used for animation. The song was cut before post-production so we never put the full orchestra version behind it. Poor Julie had to do numerous takes of this while coughing and wheezing her way through each one. She could barely speak when we were done. I would have kept this song in the show instead of “A Boozehound Named Barney”.
One of the best songs ever written for the show, this song won Alf the first of his two EMMY Awards for Best Song. It also had the most singing parts of any song to date. This was recorded LONG before the days of Pro Tools and digital editing. It was all captured on 24-track tape, and all the multiple takes had to be stitched together by me by “bouncing” (recording from one tape deck to another) all the tracks one at a time. Also, the cast did not sing this in a group recording. Each cast member sang their part individually. Of course, Dan, Nancy, Hank, and Harry each had multiple parts to sing. It was a huge accomplishment, one of my proudest moments in the show’s history.
The title of this post refers to an old adage that’s pretty self-explanatory: when someone falls short of doing their job well and claims, “I didn’t have the latest widget (or doo-dad, or thingamajig),” or “I have the latest widget (or doo-dad, or thingamajig) but it’s broken (or the batteries died, or running last year’s software),” it often means that their skills are weak and it’s easier to blame their tools than accept responsibility for their own shortcomings.
We’re normally off for most of October each year. Ever since FOX Sports started broadcasting the MLB Playoffs and World Series, THE SIMPSONS has been mostly off the air in October and often the first Sunday in November. Well, this year the San Franciso Ginats cut through Al Jean’s beloved Detroit Tigers in four straight games and suddenly we had to fill a couple of Sundays that were supposed to be preempted. Fortunately we had one episode “in the can” but we had to hurry up a bit to get more episodes ready to air. I am composing this blog from the 
while Bart & Milhouse, inspired by The Mythcrackers television show (with voices from special guests stars 
We started off by airing PABF03 “Politically Inept with Homer Simpson” on January 8. We actually finished dubbing this episode back on December 13, so it was really nice to be so far ahead of the airdate. That luxury will be rapidly evaporating as we get deeper into 2012 and more episodes start airing back-to-back. 
