have you worked on any music for the asian leg(s) [not saying which just in case it is a spoiler] visited this season and if not, will you be deconstructing some local music to create possible appropriate music for different various scenarios?
This is a big question, and a great one. Let me answer that this way: Researching musical styles is part of what we do for nearly every location. Even in the case of countries we've visited before, there are regional variations which can make huge differences. And part of my job is to be aware of that, and knowledgeable about those nuances. You mention Asian-location cues for this cycle, and I think I'm in the clear to answer that yes, I've written some of those recently.
But.
There are a few other factors at play. First, the style and instrumentation of the local music may not lend itself well to the emotional needs of the scene. Styles that feature smaller, more delicate instruments, for example, often have to be augmented
a lot to serve tense, active events. So that's a balance that we're constantly trying to achieve.
Second (and this is something I talk about on the podcast), the show editors are placing quite a bit of the music you hear. To do that, they're drawing from cues that have already been composed. They are phenomenal at their job, and they're consistently careful about keeping the music location-appropriate, but you can imagine the challenge they're facing.
We do several things to make that job easier for them (every cue, for example, has a number of alternate mixouts, that omit certain elements… so, for example, a cue might be delivered in a FULL mix, a NO ORCHESTRA mix (i.e., drums and ethnic instruments only), a NO SITAR mix (if, say, a sitar was carrying the melody line—these types of mixouts help a cue "get out of the way" during dialog-heavy moments), etc. Sometimes a cue will have eight or nine additional mixes! Cues are also organized and databased in a proprietary way once they arrive at the show.
Last thing I'll mention here (I've written a book already—!): In some cases, it's just not possible to replicate a given style. Rare, but it's happened a couple of times over the years. Usually it's because the style is dependent on local performers, or on extremely exotic instruments. It's beyond the scope of our schedule and budget to travel to, say, a certain village in Indonesia to find this
one gamelan player who uses this
very specific tuning.
That's the kind of thing I would
love to do, btw, but it's just not realistic under the time and budget demands of the show. So again, we strike the best balance we can.
Hope that answers the question, Jobby!
