DESTROY: Cliched Radio Spot Music

problem is i usually place these things and then quickly forget them...

almost never with any imagination.

often it's just some lazy correlation between a lyric and the preceding feature.

often it's some really heavy-handed "mood music" like, oh, i guess that was supposed to be "thoughtful" or "heavy."

often it's "selections from the reckless records used bin."

he's cool.
http://www.chartattack.com/pics/2002/06/14-moby.jpg

My post from the movie music thread:

My best friend just completed an internship for This American Life -- one of her goals, at my encouragement was to try to get Ira to vary the underscoring music. I don't know if she succeeded or not. The one that drives me crazy is Uaxti's Aguas de Amazonia, which is a South American band covering Philip Glass -- they play that ALL THE TIME. (I think Glass Solo Piano sometimes, too.)

the whole way the show is presented bugs me. some of the stories are really good, really intriguing, but the way they are often read/edited/score/etc. seems to presume zero intelligence on the part of the listeners, like our emotions have to be guided through the whole process so as not to worry about forming our own thoughts. i'd like it a lot more if it was a bit more...spartan...overall. if there weren't so many clues to the reporters' tone in the inflections of the VOs...and of course if they didn't lay that "mood" music between bits (or in the pauses within bits) so often.

NPR IN NEPOTISM NON SHOCKER.

We've actually been experimenting with using less music on the radio show lately. Some of the producers - Alex especially - are tired of how it feels. I think we used to use so much music because we were worried if the stories were holding the audience (and to make up for mediocre readings by non-radio reporters) ... and one reason we use less lately is that we're all feeling more confident that the stories are strong enough without the music.

As for worrying about whether it tugs at emotions ... I don't worry about that at all. We always try to avoid using the sappy music under the sappy moment - it's easy for that to get really corny. (The same is true for how you perform the big emotional moment in a script. I remember one of the old All Things Considered hosts, Noah Adams, explaining that's when you have to go for flatter readings; if you get all emotional with emotional material, it can sound cheesy really fast.)

Generally the kind of music we use is more emotionally neutral. Its goal is more to keep a sense of motion, to keep things moving. And to underline the turns in feelings. I'm not against manipulating feelings. The whole job is about manipulating feelings. If you don't get in front of that and embrace it with a big bear hug, you're not doing your job as a radio producer. You just don't want to be all corny about it.