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MillimeterThe Sampler — November, 9 2005
Nov 9, 2005 11:39 AM
More SFX on Pop/Rock CDs
Our little list in the last Sampler of pop and rock songs that creatively employ sound effects generated quite a few new suggestions from readers.
Drake Giles wrote to say, "You gotta mention how hip-hop has made sound effects in songs a normality. It's hard to find a hip-hop album that doesn't have at least a half-dozen sound effects in it. Granted, it's become a little generic, with the guns and all, but there is still some [innovative] stuff going on—and when it first started in hop-hop, it was the coolest thing to hear guns, screams, etc. A good song that incorporates SFX into the story is from Puff Daddy's album, Forever, titled 'Is This the End, Pt. 2.' The sound effects follow what's happening to him in the song, from guns and police to foley effects."
Jim De Francisco offered up the macabre 1956 novelty hit "Transfusion," by Nervous Norvus (a Dr. Demento favorite). He says, "[It's] about a guy who got in a massive head-on accident and then needed a transfusion. The SFX used was the classic 1950s car skid and crash—about 11 seconds complete with hubcap drop and spin, as well as a great glass shattering decay at the end." He also provided a link to a fascinating website about Nervous Norvus (a.k.a. Jimmy Drake), songpoemmusic.com/drake, which contained the following tidbit about producer/songwriter Red Blanchard's use of SFX on the track:
"Working on a whim, [Blanchard] pulled a 78 from the Standard Sound Effects series out of KPOP's record library, cued it to 'Auto Skids and Crashes,' and played the brief track repeatedly to punctuate each mini-tale of reckless driving that form the song's verses. ... He added the effect on the fly, manually cueing and re-cueing while Drake's demo played from another tape deck."
Alas, the sad part of the story is that the creator of the FX library recognized the effect on the record and demanded to be paid royalties: They got $0.03 a record on sales of more than $300,000! That's an expensive car crash!
A few others: Joe B. Jones mentioned The Cure's "Same Deep Water as You," for its thunderstorm. Max Rod 3 noted (correctly) that David Byrne and Brian Eno's groundbreaking album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts "is like SFX with some music added!" Gina added "Autobahn," by German techno titans Kraftwerk (highway noises); Luka Bloom's "The Acoustic Motorbike" (bicycle and animals); and "Ripplin' Waters" by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band (a stream).
Some others that I found or occurred to me include: the crowd and other effects on Buffalo Springfield's "Broken Arrow"; the fake crowd noise on The Byrds' "So You Want to Be a Rock 'n' Roll Star"; the guns and bombs at the end of Country Joe and the Fish's "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag"; the frightened crowd and assorted mayhem on Blondie's "The Attack of the Giant Ants"; the marching soldiers and firing squad on The Doors' "Unknown Soldier"; the stereo crickets that kick off "Eternal Caravan of Reincarnation" on the fine Santana album Caravanserai; and, though we could be here all day listing Pink Floyd songs, I wanted to make special note of the obscure track "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast" (from Atom Heart Mother), which features some very appetizing-sounding bacon and eggs sizzling in a pan. Yum!
In the Trenches: A Studio Musician Talks About Production Music
With stints of about three years each in his native Miami, New York, Chicago, and now Los Angeles, Roberto "Choo-Choo" Sanchez has seen a lot of recording studios and played on more sessions than he can remember. "I suppose I should keep track," the reeds player and percussionist says, "but I keep forgetting. I try to stay focused on what I'm working on and also keep an eye up the road to find new projects."
Over course of the past decade-plus, Sanchez has done plenty of album and film soundtrack work, and he's also done numerous sessions for production music libraries. "I never get credit for those," he says, "but at least it helps pay the bills." Sanchez says his work has turned up on libraries put out by APM, DeWolfe, Killer Tracks, and others. "Maybe it's because of my name or my background," he says, "but I get a lot of calls for playing on Latin tracks, but actually I enjoy playing other types of music more, particularly Big Band and jazz."
On the surface, at least, sessions for production music would seem to be quite different than conventional album sessions. After all, occasionally the musicians are asked to play in short bursts—15-second, 30-second, and minute-long takes. "You have to nail the feeling immediately; you don't have time to ease into it," Sanchez says. "It takes a different kind of concentration than a song where you have an intro and a verse-chorus-verse-bridge structure. Sometimes the 15 and 30 will come out of longer take—but not always. If you've got good musicians and good charts, it's not a problem working like that. And I found that the time I spent in Miami and Chicago working on music for commercials helped me do the [production music] stuff. The problem sometimes comes when a producer doesn't really know exactly what he wants—he wants you to get, like, a '50s rock-and-roll feel, or some Latin feel, but he wants the musicians to come up with it on the spot without charts. I have no trouble doing that, but it always takes longer. The musicians and producer have to come up with a key to play in, agree on a tempo, a feel—there's more guesswork."
Sanchez has learned through the years that most producers are open to suggestions from him, "but I learned early on not to get too creative," he says with a laugh. "I was on one [library] session for, I think it was called, 'Hot Tomale' and I blew this incredible sax line. The producer cut me off in the middle and said, 'You can't go that high, and no screeching!' I'm thinking 'Hot Tomale,' but he wanted something a little more down-to-earth, like 'Rice and Beans.' That only happens, though, when you don't have a chart to work from."
Increasingly, too, Sanchez has seen library composers come into the studio with both charts and elaborate demos. "They'll have all the parts worked out in advance on a synth of some sort, and a lot of times they sound pretty darn good," he says. "Why not just go with that? Well, because they want real musicians and a synth sax or flute, good as they have gotten, is no substitute for the real thing. So we'll sit in the studio and listen carefully to the demo, and that's a good jumping off point usually."
Asked about other issues peculiar to recording production music, Sanchez says, "This isn't really about playing it, but I have noticed that in the mastering, engineers definitely won't make it as 'hot' as a pop record. I think part of it is that a lot of times it's supposed to be background music, so you don't want it to jump out too much. Usually, they still sound really good, though."
Has Sanchez ever been called upon to record library music that he hated? "Oh, sure," he chuckles, "but that's part of being a musician working in the studios. I did a two-day working on these 'romantic' themes that were so boring and corny. Even the composer was sort of apologizing: 'Look, this what I have to do. It's what [the library company] wants.' Even with that, though, you're still playing music with other people, which is the greatest thing in the world."
A scene from Jarhead.
Light My Fire: The Sound of Oil Fires in Jarhead
Have you had a chance yet to see Jarhead, Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes' hit film about the first Gulf War? Last month, I had the opportunity to go up to Skywalker Sound in Marin County, Calif. (north of San Francisco) to interview the sound designer on the film, Kyrsten Mate, for an article which will be appearing in the December issue of Mix. Mate's credits as a sound effects editor include such films as The English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley, K-19: The Widowmaker, AI: Artificial Intelligence, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Minority Report, and The Incredibles.
I asked her if there was one particular effect in Jarhead that was particularly fun and challenging to create. "The oil fires are almost like a character in the film," she said. "I didn't realize what those fires were like until I saw this film that Sam [Mendes] recommended I watch, Werner Herzog's Lessons of Darkness [1992], which is a documentary about fighting the oil fires in Iraq and Kuwait during that war. Each of these fires is so big and forceful. It's like 10 fire hydrants together all blowing this thick, viscous liquid up into the air, and then it catches on fire."
To capture the sound of the oil fires, Mate says, "I used a large variety of odd things: water pressure, obviously—a fire hose; also propane tanks dumping out compressed air; the sound of a [paint] spray booth ... anything I could think of that has force and power. I had worked on Lord of the Rings, and from that library I got lava flows, geysers, and things that had been recorded by the New Zealand crew that were good for the low end. Then, to give it some personality, I added some leopard exhales and inhales—they push a lot of air through their body cavities. Of course, you process it so it doesn't sound like a leopard." In the end, Mate had combined and processed about 20 tracks in Digidesign Pro Tools to create the oil fire effect. "Digital editing systems make layering so many elements fairly easy," she says.
