Another Season Comes To An End

24 years on any job these days feels like a mini-miracle. 24 years on a single, scripted, prime-time television series is unprecedented. I’ve stated many times on this blog (sorry if I’m boring you) how lucky I am to be a part of this amazing experience. I’m happy to report (as I’m sure you already know) that season 25 is already underway and we will be back on the air with new episodes sometime in September, 2013.

The final few weeks of this season, just like every year at this time, were a flurry of many musical projects happening all at once.

For RABF12 THE FABULOUS FAKER BOY there was the final editing and polish on Jane Krakowski’s performance of “Makin’ Whoopee” (in Russian, no less!), as well as preparing all the Chopin pieces played throughout the episode. I got to direct Jane’s singing about six months ago and I was blown away by her ability to phonetically sing the Russian lyrics. She laughed and said she had no idea what she was singing. I’d love to hear from anyone who speaks Russian to let me know how she did. We hired amazing pianist Robert Thies to play all the Chopin works and he was an absolute pro and a joy to work with. I did all the pre-editing of the pieces on paper (on digital?) while mapping out the placement and tempos. It all worked out great. Alf was very generous in giving me the arranger credit on those pieces so I could earn a little royalty when the show airs. Thanks, Alf!

As if there wasn’t enough music going on in this episode, we were paid a visit from the producers of Robot Chicken. Continuing our new tradition of surprise couch gags by guest animators, the Robot Chicken crew did a crazy, extended couch gag for us. All the music was composed by Alf Clausen & Dell Hake incorporating new music with the SIMPSONS theme and the ROBOT CHICKEN theme.

For RABF14 (premiering tonight, May 19, 2013) THE SAGA OF CARL, about half of the score was provided by the Icelandic band Sigur Ros. Once again, the magic of the Internet allowed us to audition, sample, score, and edit their music from half-way around the world.

For RABF15 (also premiering tonight, May 19, 2013) DANGERS ON A TRAIN, Seth MacFarlane is our guest voice and he even gets to do a little singing. He sang his part a capella, so I didn’t get to direct him, but we did put a cool big band track behind him in post-production. You’d never guess from listening how piece-meal this song was assembled.

The last few episodes this season had a slightly accelerated schedule because, for the first time, we are airing back-to-back new episodes for the season finale. THE SAGA OF CARL airs first at 8e/p, 7c, then DANGERS ON A TRAIN at 8:303/p, 7:30c on FOX.

While all the above was going on, voice recording for Season 25 is underway and we’ve already pre-recorded three new songs for which I did direct vocals. I’ll blog more about those later in the year.

So, if you haven’t seen enough blogging from me these past few weeks, now you know why. Now that the post-production part of the show is on hiatus (writing and recording of new episodes continues though), I’m going to take a little break. I’ll be back here in a few weeks with more on the show and my various random musical thoughts.

Thanks to all who take the time to stop by here. You seem to enjoy reading, and I certainly enjoy writing.

Scoring “Dark Knight Court”

Sidebar: Before start this post, I wanted to say “thank you” to everyone who has stopped by to read the blog in the past week or so. I have gotten quite a bump in page views since posting about the “Homer Shake” couch gag and my small tribute to Sam Simon. These two recent posts seem to have touched a nerve – a good nerve apparently – with my audience. Also I’d like to point you toward Scott Clausen’s blog post about working on the “Homer Shake” phenomenon (a hair under 26 million views as of this writing). At the bottom of his post, he points you back here. You can just keep clicking these two links forever and stay in our endless loop of Simpsons fun! OK, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

It’s been a very busy couple of weeks in Simpsons Music Land.

On March 1, 2013 we music-spotted RABF10 “Dark Knight Court”, written by Billy Kimball and Ian Maxtone-Graham. The title is like a “before and after” puzzle on “Wheel of Fortune”. The “Dark Knight” part referring to our parody of “The Dark Knight” movie series; the “Knight Court” part referring to the TV show “Night Court” and the B-story this week where Bart goes on trial with a jury of his student-peers while being represented by Lisa, and the trial being adjudicated by former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno in a guest-voice appearance. Bart is accused of yet another prank on the townsfolk of Springfield, but this time he swears he didn’t do it.

I’m very excited for everyone to hear the score for this episode. At spotting it was clear that Ian & Al Jean wanted the score to evoke the same emotion and drama as the scores for the “Dark Knight” movies. This would mean a lot of music and a big orchestral sound. I think we pulled it off in every way possible. In a nice bit of serendipity, the scheduling worked out in such a way that we scored this episode on the Warner Bros. scoring stage (Warner Bros. produced the “Dark Knight” movies) and we were able to take advantage of one of the best sounding stages in the music business.

Long-time readers of this blog know that I’m very careful not to give away secrets or surprises ahead of the air date, but recently FOX created their own YouTube channel where you can see classic clips and sneek-peeks of upcoming episodes across their entire Sunday Animation Domination lineup. So, since it’s not a secret anymore, here are a couple of clips from this Sunday’s episode that feature our fabulous score. Turn up the speakers as loud as your boss will allow, or on Sunday night, especially if you are lucky enough to have a 5.1 surround-sound home theater setup, crank it up and enjoy. (RABF10 “Dark Knight Court” airs on Sunday, March 17, 2013 on FOX)

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)

A Short World Series Means We Need To Scramble

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 dubbing stage as we finish up this little period of rush-work and prepare for a little time off for Thanksgiving.

The Start of Season 24

Every year at this time for the last 19 years or so, I wake up pinching myself and marveling at the fact that THE SIMPSONS is on the air for another year. Another year of laughs, great music, food, clothing, and shelter. What a life.

The 500th Episode Scoring Session

• Gunsmoke – Weekly Scripted Prime-Time Drama – 635 episodes
  final episode aired March 31, 1975
• Meet the Press – Weekly News/Talk – 4991 episodes – still running
• As the World Turns – Daily scripted Daytime Drama – 13,858 episodes
  final episode aired September 17, 2010
• The Tonight Show – Daily Late-Night Entertainment-Variety
  10,680 episodes – still running
• The Today Show – Daily Morning News/Talk/Entertainment
  17,937 episodes – still running
• The Simpsons – Weekly Scripted Prime-Time comedy – still running
  498 episodes (as of February 5, 2012)

As you can see from the above list, we are the baby of the group and in very lofty company. We spotted PABF07 “At Long Last Leave” on Friday, January 27, 2012. The episode is written by Michael Price and will air as the 500th episode of the series on Sunday, February 19, 2012 on FOX. Music-wise, there are 31 cues in the show including a couple of cues provided by a special musical guest and, as I’m sure you would expect, a special cue for a very special couch gag.

Finishing “Politically Inept with Homer Simpson” & “The D’oh-cial Network” and Starting “Moe Goes from Rags to Riches”

2012 has been pretty busy right from the get-go.

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.

Wrapping Up 2011

After working nearly non-stop since mid-October, this week slows down a little as we head into the Christmas/New Year’s period. We’ve been having many “finals” of late… last Friday we had our final scoring session of 2011 for PABF03 “Politically Inept, With Homer Simpson”; tonight (Tuesday, 12/13/11) we’ll have our final dub of the year working on “Politically Inept”; later this week We’ll have our final music spotting session for 2011 as we begin work on PABF04 “The D’oh-cial Network”. More details on that episode next time, after I’ve spotted it.

Politically Inept, with Homer Simpson (and other musings)

Sorry for the two-week hiatus from the blog. Between making so many new episodes in a row and spending quality time with my family for Thanksgiving, Simpsons Music 500 has had to take a bit of a backseat. Let me try to catch you up.

This past Friday (12/2/11), we spotted PABF03 “Politcally Inept, with Homer Simpson” in the afternoon and scored NABF18 “Holidays of Future Passed” in the evening. “Politically Inept” will air on Sunday, January 8, 2012 – the 10th episode of season 23, episode #496 as we inch closer to 500. The show was written by John Frink and will feature guest star Ted Nugent.

“The Ten-Per-Cent Solution” and “Holidays of Future Passed”

I’m a little behind in my reporting on the episodes we’re working on. I was afraid this would happen once we hit November “sweeps”. This is one of the times of the season where I’m juggling three, four or even five episodes at once in various stages of production. This past Monday we spotted NABF18 “Holidays of Future Passed” and scored PABF02 “The Ten-Per-Cent Solution”.