The Amazing Race > The Amazing Race Discussion
TAR 25: Lee Sanders' Music Podcast!!
Lee Sanders:
--- Quote from: Neobie on October 28, 2014, 06:12:34 AM ---…Missed its use in Sant'Agata though.
The first statement of that theme, in the "Previously On…" segment on show 107, was written on my first 'official' day as a Race composer (!). So it's pretty much as old as my Race music gets. Kids who are the same age as that theme are now beginning to dream of getting their driver's licenses. Oboy. :)
And you came up with a second Hawaiian Adventure for TAR 3 - I remember a ukelele steel guitar (?) playing the theme over Flo complaining about being hungry!
That's right—there were quite a few Hawaiian cues for those episodes. And there are a bunch more cues that use the Adventure Theme (prepping through that podcast, I skimmed my Race scores, and grabbed 30 cues "off the top of my head" that used the theme in some way).
Separate question: I remember you saying all the music on TAR is original (except Now We Are Free?), but how often does the music you produce get adapted for use in other shows? I distinctly remember an African tune (women vocals going ay-ay-ay...) being used "wrongly" in some Pacific location on Survivor!
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That's a great question, and if the answer is what I think it is, it's actually kinda interesting but a little "inside baseball." If you want to know how the sausage is made, read on.
No, seriously. This might spoil it a little too much. Don't read any further if you want to retain some of the mystery. If I were a magician, this would be me explaining the tricks.
OK. You asked for it.
The African women's chorus snippet is almost certainly not a cue at all!
It's a sampled loop, available royalty-free for usage by anyone who purchases the sample library of which it's a part (there are lots of these sample libraries out there). It's infeasible for me, or David Vanacore, or anyone else writing music for reality shows, to record these choirs in situ, of course, and recording local vocalists is sub-optimal, as well (LA session vocalists are amazing, but you lose authenticity).
So the trade-off is to use those voices, accepting the compositional limitations that come with them (and the fact that someone else might use them on another show, as is the case here—!), and taking those negatives along with the positives of legit regional style (the sample library was recorded in Africa, in this case) and affordability.
For me, the trick with that is to use the sampled loops as a seasoning, rather than the main ingredient. Here's one more example: the horn that opens the Survivor Main Title is also a sample! I own it, too—it's from an older library (of course) called Heart of Africa, and had been around for a little while even when Survivor premiered.
So nothing is prohibiting me from using that sound in some piece of music… nothing, of course, except that it's so indelibly linked to Survivor that I'd be run out of town. So if I were to use it, I'd have to bury it sonically into a thick palette of other stuff, rather than solo it (as it's heard in that Main Title).
Oh, OK. One more, since I can't resist this subject: The opening credit sequence of Lost features a sound called "Armenian Sun" (from the Omnisphere software synth) incredibly prominently. As in, it's nearly the entire main title.
None of this is a criticism, by the way! Those main titles are incredibly effective, and sometimes you find the perfect thing "right out of the box," so to speak.
Hope that answers the question, Neobie! I'm dropping by here as often as I can, so keep 'em coming. This is fun (as long as I don't spill the beans too much, and a Music Enforcer shows up at my door with brass knuckles to punish me for breaking the Code of Silence).
tarflyonthewall:
I remember hearing someone confirm Survivor's "tribal chanting" is actually a chorus of elderly Ukrainian women about a year or so ago, so there's a long way to go before the Music Enforcers kick down your door.
I've been rewatching a bunch of the old seasons recently for something else I'm working on, and now that you've mentioned it I keep hearing that theme everywhere. My personal favourite variation is this panpipey one that randomly plays in Seattle for a few seconds right when Flo's doing her "you're supposed to say I haven't been a massive pain in the ass this entire trip" rant. So unexpected and haunting, and then it segues right into the "Flo is the Winner!" piece of music (still, after all these years, my favourite piece of music the show has ever used). Amazing.
Here's a question: When you riff on an established piece of music (such as Turning Japanese for the rollercoaster Road Block in TAR9, for example), is it hard to compose the music so it's easy to tell what the reference is without actually using the piece of music itself?
Lee Sanders:
--- Quote from: tarflyonthewall on November 05, 2014, 11:06:44 PM ---When you riff on an established piece of music (such as Turning Japanese for the rollercoaster Road Block in TAR9, for example), is it hard to compose the music so it's easy to tell what the reference is without actually using the piece of music itself?
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"Soundalikes" can be extremely tough. All you can do is fail to the least extent possible ("succeeding" would mean you've opened yourself to a lawsuit—i.e., you've come too close). If I'm working with filmmakers who want a certain piece of music, I encourage them to license it rather than asking me for a soundalike. Because nine times out of ten what makes it cool/funny/dramatically effective is that it's that piece of music. That's the punchline, so to speak, and anything else is inferior by definition. It's an external limitation on the success of the final product. It's nearly always done to save money, and that's just not how anyone would prefer to work.
In the case of Race it's different, because we're generally adapting long-standing themes to be played in the style of, say, Hawaii Five-O. That makes it a little more of a knowing wink. The theme is ours, but the palette, style, tempo, orchestration, etc. all refer back to something else. The homage deepens the connection of the existing theme, and the resulting cue is stronger, funnier, and/or more emotionally effective as a result.
BTW, I'm still working on this week's podcast. Haven't forgotten. Hoping to post today (Thursday, Nov. 6).
georgiapeach:
Love these themes!!
Episode 5!!
https://www.youtube.com/v/-1wFmx4kkfo
Published on Nov 6, 2014 In this episode, Lee talks more about music for Morocco, and about the various mixouts he delivers for every piece of music on the show. Two more long-running themes for the show are also featured in detail—one of which is named completely WRONG.
Jobby:
I. absolutely. love the mystery theme!! :hrt:
Brings back so MUCH memories. Thank you Lee!
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