TECH TIPS
Tour de 'Source
A Time-Saving Solution for Busy Music Editors
by Angie Rubin
As a music editor, one of my most time-consuming tasks is just finding music, and I have always clung to the wish that I could find a one-stop place to shop for source music. And, taking that wish a step further, that after finding, cutting and clearing those obligatory “name artist” soundtrack tunes, I wish I could type in a few keywords and then head off to the beach. For me, that wish was answered when I discovered MasterSource’s online music library and accompanying MasterSearch search engine.
I was skeptical of the idea that a single library could serve all my needs. With a background in songwriting, I understand the intricacies of a good tune, so I thought that tracking down a few source cues for a film would be a breeze. What could be easier, right? When I initially started reaching out and researching, I became absolutely inundated by dozens of libraries, artists, songs, CDs, and MySpace Music pages. It became a full-time job just fielding the correspondence. I quickly realized that finding music takes time, and finding good music that works perfectly to picture takes even more time. So, if there was ever a music editor desperate to find a more efficient, far less time-consuming process by which the perfect source cues could be found, it was I.
MasterSource was created by Marc Ferrari in the early 1990s, and it hosts a library with more than 6,000 songs by real artists, recorded in real studios that are competitive in price and require one stop to license. After starting with just Ferrari’s own songs (“dusty demos on the shelf,” he calls them), and those of his friends, MasterSource is now up to Volume 13, and one of its first recruited writers has penned over 500 songs alone. The catalogue sports a growing menu of Grammy-nominated writers and producers, many of whom have gone on to sign with major record companies. One producer, Ariel Rechtshaid, whose massive hit last summer, “Hey There Delilah” by the Plain White T’s, received a 2007 Grammy nomination for Song of the Year.
Many picture editors, music editors and music supervisors in television and film are familiar with MasterSource’s fire-engine-red boxed CD sets, but perhaps not so familiar with its revamped website, www.master-source.com. I wasn’t familiar with it until a few weeks ago. So I decided to jump right in and take it for a spin. Which tricky spots did I need to cover? What top-shelf, six-figure song did I need to replace? Did I need to shave some zeros off the accumulating source music cost in this film? I logged in, started a project and went shopping for songs.
The site is set up so that you can find what you need quickly and efficiently. At least a dozen pull down menus at the main level can be used to search by category, instrument, language, key, beats per minute and the like. There’s also an open search field in case you simply wish to type in a few keywords to narrow your search. It’s that straightforward (see Figure 1).
 Figure 1: MasterSource's search interface. |
Here’s how to really get some mileage out of your search: Set up a project and name it—for example, SATC (short for Sex and the City, my most recent film). You must create an account to do this, as you would with any online shopping site. Then, prepare to click (see Figure 2).
 Figure 2: My project window for the Sex and the City search. |
Let’s say you need an authentic-sounding song for a scene set in an Italian restaurant. You type in “accordion.” Twenty-three titles pop up. Here, you can easily audition all the tunes, one at a time, by clicking the play button. You can also decide whether to preview the vocal version or instrumental version depending on your needs. Then, go wild and type in “mandolin.” Another 23 titles come up. Some are the same; some are different. But the important thing is that there are enough titles to get a healthy sample of viable options to present to your collaborators––all laid out so that you can run through them very quickly (see Figure 3).
 Figure 3: MasterSource allows you to audition tunes. |
When you find something that feels right, you can also click on the title of the song and be taken to that track’s complete information page. Everything you need to know about the song—from its BPM (beats per minute), to its key, to its instrumentation—is listed here. You may easily audition the track again, and if a non-vocal version is available, you can check out a bit of that as well. To save editing time (careful now), there are :10, :30 and :60 versions too. Even the writer, publisher and affiliate information is contained on this page, which will prove very convenient for your later use on a cue sheet (see Figure 4).
 Figure 4: MasterSource's track information window. |
If this selected track is a contender, for instance, simply click on the + button to add it to your project. Once you have a myriad of options (because, as we music editors know, it’s all about options!), you may forward a link to your director, picture editor and/or music supervisor, who may audition the choices at his or her leisure. There is also a button on the Project page that will download all of your choices with a single click, either MP3s or AIFFs. One minor criticism of the site is its lack of .WAV files, and that’s one of several changes users may want to suggest to improve the site, along with updating the slightly clunky interface. Minor quibbles, though.
There’s even a custom feature where, if you can’t find exactly what you’re looking for from the thousands of songs available, MasterSource will create a song specifically for you with a turnaround time of 24-48 hours. You can check out some of the custom work they’ve done over the years by clicking Custom Workshop on the site’s Home Page (see Figure 5).
 Figure 5: MasterSource's Custom Workshop. |
As an example, at one point during Sex and the City, I was in a tight spot with a particular scene. There was an on-camera Mariachi band, which was fine as long as they were on camera and the on-camera song was playing. But I needed to find an additional song for them to be playing off-camera later in the scene. It was a specific setup for this band, with a fixed number of instruments that the viewers have already seen and heard. MasterSource was able to custom-create the song I needed—utilizing the exact orchestration dictated by the actual onscreen band. It has (literally) hundreds of writers at its disposal, and I happily placed four MasterSource songs in the film, which sit comfortably alongside artists such as Fergie, Jennifer Hudson, Aerosmith, Janet Jackson and many others.
On another recent film, I was hard-pressed to find versions of several familiar classical chamber pieces to replace the expensive, well-known masters the director has been wedded to from day one of the shoot. Though some of these pieces were in the public domain, thus potentially saving us the sync fee, we still faced the challenge of paying for, say, Glenn Gould’s master recordings of Bach. This ultimately proved impossible, given our budgetary restrictions, a dilemma we music editors and music supervisors face day-in and day-out.
Thus began my search throughout Southern California to find a classical pianist who had the touch of Gould to fulfill the director’s brief on how the First Goldberg Variation will realize the vision of the film’s opening. This was no easy task. I reached out to my usual suspects––and came up empty. Eventually, after a hundred e-mails and dozens of phone calls, I managed to locate the perfect musician. But to be honest, MasterSource’s custom feature could have saved me so much time––which is not something we have an abundance of in post!
In conclusion, MusicSource is a good place to go to satisfy all of our source music needs, without having to compromise anything in terms of options, quality or budget. It makes us immune to the “the director loves it but we can’t clear it” syndrome. With MusicSource, it seems that we might have a little more time to address some of our many other job responsibilities!
Angie Rubin is a music editor living and working in Los Angeles. She just finished Sex and the City: The Movie. Next up for her is James Gray’s Two Lovers, followed by Nick Cassavetes’ My Sister’s Keeper. She doesn’t do pilots.
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