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Composer Russ Landau Reality Check with Sample Libraries from ILIO and SpectrasonicsRuss Landau got his first taste of the pressures involved in composing soundtracks for a weekly series by working on the mid-90s TV show seaQuest DSV/2032. “Each week, I had 4 days to write 25 minutes worth of music, using a pencil and paper,” he recalls. “I remember scrambling trying to check my cues with a midi-sequencer trying to write. You just have to experience it, and hopefully it doesn’t roll over you.” In the years since, Landau has rolled over a long list of credits, including Survivor I, II III, IV and the upcoming V; Fear Factor; USA Network’s Eco Challenge and Combat Missions, and the ABC mini-series, Superfire. While each show presents unique scoring requirements and challenges, two constants that Landau has learned to rely upon are the sound and sample libraries from ILIO Entertainments and Spectrasonics. “ILIO and Spectrasonics products are a part of everything I do,” he says. “These libraries are so well organized and so well done that I can always count on the highest-quality elements being incorporated into my music, for whatever project I’m doing.” He’s not only relied on the sounds in the libraries for his work, but also on the people behind those sounds as well. The primal yell used in the Survivor opening actually contains the voice of Spectrasonics president Eric Persing screaming in a warehouse, as well as the now ubiquitous conch shell sound from the company’s “Heart of Africa” library. Over the years, Landau notes that the changing economics of television production have made high-quality and diverse sample libraries an extremely valuable commodity. “Budgets have dwindled, computers and samplers have gotten stronger and samples are better,” Landau says. “As a result, TV producers, especially the heads of studio music departments, who are very budget-conscious, decided that composers should be able to deliver a score without hiring as many musicians. That made us all scramble for better sounds, better samples, better samplers. “While sample libraries don’t exactly compare to working with a live orchestra, as far as the process involved, the quality of samples—especially those from ILIO and Spectrasonics—has matured to the point where it’s almost impossible to distinguish between the two.” “It’s approached that point where the sample instruments really do sound, under the technical prowess of an adept composer, like the real thing,” says Landau. “You can fool most of your listening public into thinking that it’s a live orchestra.” As libraries have evolved in terms of content, they’ve also evolved in terms of flexibility and ease of use, offering composers like Landau the ability to quickly find just the right sound to fit any specific scene or mood. “The difficult thing about reality shows is that they’re wall-to-wall music,” he says. “So it involves working fast and furious, creating a library of cues that editors can pick from and hopefully use to lessen the weekly scoring duties for each show. Obviously, if I had to score 3 different series that had 40 minutes of music in them each week, it would be impossible to do myself. So the fact that I can create a library of cues and let the editors pick from those cues as much as possible lessens the workload to each of the shows maybe requiring 10 minutes of original music per week.” One thing that hasn’t changed much since his seaQuest days is the tight timeframe usually required to score an episode. “In Survivor,” he says, “the big panoramic scenes of the helicopter coming over mountains down into those beautiful water vistas, where you see the survivors paddling their canoes over these pristine bays… those all have to be scored. Those are big orchestral cues that take a lot of effort, especially if you’re doing them with samplers. Sometimes you get a week to do a score, and sometimes we’ll have 4 days to do 2 scores. Or in the case of the Survivor finale we had a day and a half.” For Landau, this type of task might be just one of the projects he’s working on in any given week, in between composing scores for as many as 4 other shows simultaneously. “I try to compartmentalize the projects,” says. “It depends on what the duties are each week. Fear Factor might need a techno groove thing with an orchestral flavor to it. I can do that very quickly; it’s almost like a diversion. Maybe I’ll even do that in the middle of a Survivor score just to check out my ears a little bit. [Using these libraries] I can get this fast type of work out of the way quickly, so I can spend more time on the bigger cues.” What keeps the work challenging and interesting is the fact that no two shows involve the same initial workflow, but once the work is underway, Landau is able to rely on his experience, and on the sample libraries from ILIO and Spectrasonics, to keep things moving. “Once you start, it’s all automatic,” he says. “The hardest thing is to just begin. So, I just begin.” + Post comment/question/reply
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