Music supervisors are often the first to discover new talent and are becoming strong career catalysts. Whether it’s advertising, television shows or film projects, they can provide a much-needed financial lifeline for songwriters that can potentially add a lot of money to an artist’s bottom line.

But if you’re considering a career move, be forewarned: being a music supervisor involves long hours and a huge chunk of time listening to new music. Not that East End Music’s Velma Barkwell is complaining. “It’s the best job in the world if you love music,” says the Ajax, Ont.-based Barkwell, who handles music supervision for The Trailer Park Boys and 4Real. “You get advance copies of material pretty much before most people do, and it’s offered up to you to take, disseminate, love and fit into every corner of a TV program or a film that you can.”

Toronto-based Belmont Music Supervision founder Amy Fritz also relishes the wealth of music that comes through her office door. Her decade of experience includes music-supervision credits for Queer as Folk, Shake Hands with the Devil and Da Kink in My Hair. “I probably receive five to 10 packages of music a day, so I’m in a constant flow of new music,” she says. “I try to listen to it all, and part of that is I’m searching out new music. It’s finding the music but also building the relationship as well.”

Contrary to popular belief, music supervisors are not A&R people sifting through piles of CDs so they can discover new talent (see sidebar [LINK here to “Reality Check” sidebar]). Their first priority is the production they’re working on and filling that program, be it film or TV, with the right music. “Ultimately, you want a happy director and a happy producer,” Barkwell says. “Every show is different, and every producer/director is different. Some people have no musical knowledge whatsoever, and they really depend on their music supervisor or their musical director to give them that tapestry — that template. And some people know exactly what they want. So the music, for me, is very much predicated on the talent I’m working with, and what they know and what they don’t.”

Because music supervisors are expected to supply the appropriate music cues, stings, bumps, underscores and yes, songs, with jigsaw-puzzle precision, they have specific criteria for what makes the grade. “I find the majority of the listening I’m doing is from a technical point of view,” Fritz says. “Does the whole structure work? Does it have the potential to work lyrically in a scene? How is it sonically? So with my various criteria in mind, I’ll set aside tracks I think might have potential for use down the road.

“Sometimes I’m just familiarizing myself with the artist so that, on recall, I can recommend something that might work. I’ll also quickly advance through a CD. I’ll listen to 30 seconds and then skip to the middle of a song just to get an idea of what the song is about.”

For Barkwell, it’s keeping track of particular emotional responses. “I file things in an unusual way — alphabetical doesn’t work in my mind,” says Barkwell, who operates her business after hours so as not to conflict with her day job as Sony BMG Music Canada’s director of licensing. “Genre-based, event-based — where it brings me, or where it brought me when I listened to it…. If I felt sad or I remembered someone I hadn’t spent as much time with as I wished I had — those emotional moments are the kind of references I need when I’m looking at a visual. I have great car-driving CDs for going down the highway, CDs with music to mix martinis by. So when you need that moment, you can find it.”

Supervisors don’t only deal with canned or pre-recorded music. They often commission composers to provide cues, scores and incidental music. Fritz recalls dealing with composers during her days working with Nelvana on animated children’s programs. “I would say 95 percent of what we did was live — primarily underscore,” she recalls. “We also did scene songs and worked with recording artists and name talent, but for the most part, we worked with score composers who were often challenged to write in very, very different styles, from klezmer to late ‘20s jazz to sci-fi rock ’n’ roll.”

Besides sourcing the music, supervisors also have any number of simultaneous duties. “I probably have about three projects on the go at any given time,” says Fritz. “I try to stagger them so that the schedules land at different times. I’ll be involved in a project from script right through to final delivery for broadcast or festivals, whatever the case may be. So at one point, I might be mixing a show or, at another point, a show might be in production, and on top of that I’m reading scripts.”

Supervisors read scripts and mark them for potential music plug-ins. “At the end of a scene,” says Barkwell, “if someone stops and looks at somebody — there’s a sting or a cue in there. If there’s a scene where someone’s driving in a car and the radio is on, something is playing on the radio. If somebody’s walking past a club and the door’s open, you need something to play until the door closes. So you plug in exactly where you need to hear it. That can be changed, but you’re making a template — you’re building something from start to finish. You have opening and closing music. You have event-based music, since the script tells you where it is, so you cue those up as well.”

She says clearing the licences for music — which includes contacting both music publishers and record companies — can take “a good six to eight weeks, sometimes longer.”

Then, there is the unforeseeable: for whatever reason, the song doesn’t clear. Fritz says a good supervisor always has a back-up plan. “I’ll have multiple licence requests for each spot out at any given time — especially with a tight deadline and more established artists — because with those artists, you have the layers of bureaucracy you have to go through. The approval process is often delayed thanks to that, so I’ll have to have a few requests out for alternatives for the scene, because sometimes the approval or denial doesn’t come in on time and we’ll have to make a quick decision to go with something else.”

Barkwell admits a project is never really done until production is locked, and that things can often change during post-production editing. “It really is a shuffle. It’s a mixed deck and it’s a moving target — every scene, everything — until they lock it. You can work on it for a long time and never be quite sure, until it’s absolutely finished, what’s actually going to end up in there.”

Barkwell admits a project is never really done until production is locked, and that things can often change during post-production editing. “It really is a shuffle. It’s a mixed deck and it’s a moving target — every scene, everything — until they lock it. You can work on it for a long time and never be quite sure, until it’s absolutely finished, what’s actually going to end up in there.”

Nick Krewen contributes frequently to Words & Music and the SOCAN website.

Uploaded Fall 2008

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