Russ Landau could be, in reality, the hardest-working man in television, but it would be most accurate to say he's the hardest-working man in reality television. Since writing “Ancient Voices,” the theme for the megahit series Survivor, Landau has cranked out scores for more reality shows than you can shake a tree vine at, including Survivor: The Outback, EcoChallenge, and Fear Factor. He is currently in production for Survivor: Africa and Combat Missions, hosted by Rudy Boesch, the popular, gruff former Navy Seal from Survivor's first season.
Raised on a farm in Connecticut, Landau received a music degree from University of Connecticut in Bridgeport. Because the university had a strong film school, he spent a lot of time scoring student films; thus, he gained his first experience writing music for picture. After college Landau headed to New York City, where he became a session bassist as well as a member of the Folk Squad, a group of musicians that backed up artists such as Judy Collins and Mary Travers. He also became a longtime mainstay of the proto-new-age/world-music ensemble the Paul Winter Consort.
Landau migrated to Los Angeles in 1990 and picked up some work but found it tough going. When his father's health was failing, he decided to pack up his family and belongings to return to the East Coast. As fate would have it, no sooner was the moving van loaded than he received a phone call to try his hand scoring the Steven Spielberg — produced series SeaQuest: DSV. Landau received an Emmy Award nomination in 1996 for his work on that show, and he hasn't stopped since, progressing from session player to one of Los Angeles's first-call TV composers in the process.
For Survivor, Landau melds recordings of traditional instruments and themes with a mountain of samples, orchestral and otherwise, to achieve the ancient-futuristic blend that drives the show. He received an Emmy nomination this year for “Theme for Survivor: The Australian Outback.” He shares the series-scoring duties tag-team style with composer David Vanacore.
In the studio of his bucolic Topanga Canyon home, the interview was highlighted by Landau's excited discussion of his then-upcoming trip to Kenya to do field recording and on-site composition for Survivor's third season and was punctuated by appearances of his two sons. Clearly a happy musician, Landau has struggled, worked, and finally made it to a place where he can make his mark and live his dream.
Why did you begin doing music for picture?
Ever since I had the first opportunity to do music for visuals, I loved marrying music and picture. I love writing music, but it's much better to have it heard than have it just exist in a vacuum. I found that in writing for picture, even though music wasn't the primary focus, my music was heard: there was an audience, and I got to have some kind of response from people.
How did you hook up with Paul Winter?
Gordon Johnson, a friend of mine and an incredible musician, was Paul Winter's bass player. He took another gig, so I subbed for him. He kept doing his gig, and I kept doing my gig, and it turned into a ten-year relationship where I went from bass player to bass player — writer — producer.
Gordon brought me into the band; then Paul Halley, Winter's keyboard player and “master composer,” hired me. He was based at St. John's Cathedral in New York, and I started helping him with all his projects there. We became very close, and I produced his first album for Paul Winter's label. I coproduced [Winter cellist] Eugene Friesen's album, and then I started producing Paul Winter because I was good in the studio. It became very convenient for them because I played bass and manned the tape recorder.
What I'm doing now seems to be following in Winter's tradition. In Australia I went into a cave — a huge underground cathedral, if you will — recording on location in the homeland of the aboriginal musician David Hudson. It was inspiring to me in a similar way to what Paul did in the Grand Canyon and Lake Baikal.
You must have been introduced to many ethnic and world influences.
Yeah. We'd do a concert in Israel, and we'd jam with Israeli and Palestinian musicians. We did a concert in Brazil, and it was great to meet all those fantastic Brazilian musicians. I feel that music transcends boundaries, and the boundaries that are imposed on music are often demographic ones: a record label will ask, “Is it pop, dance, hip-hop, urban, rap?” It's commercial stuff. The most incredible thing for me is that with music for picture you don't get pigeonholed into any demographics; you can do whatever fits the scene.
How did you get Survivor?
I met Mark Burnett [one of Survivor's executive producers] through our wives, who got into a fight over a parking space at the Montessori school and then became best friends, as those things usually go. Mark was producing EcoChallenge at the time. I really wanted to do his show, but that didn't happen then, because EcoChallenge was produced by another production company.
Then he got this show from England, Survivor, and he wanted to do his version of it in the United States. I started working with him on budgets a year before it ever got into production. As it got closer and closer, I started working on themes for it. Sixteen themes. Big orchestral themes. But they weren't really saying what the show was about. Eventually all were used, giving the show a big orchestral element.
Finally, we realized we needed to come up with a [common] musical language. Mark doesn't speak music in the same way I speak music. We decided to do a family vacation and drove on a ski trip to Mammoth [in California]. Our wives and kids all went in one car, and Mark and I went in another car and just listened to music and talked about music for six hours. We developed a way of speaking that made sense. After we came back from that weekend trip, I put “Ancient Voices” on his desk. Everybody flipped because it was the marriage of tribal with modern — Lord of the Flies meets MTV.
One of the noticeable things from the first season was the blend of traditional percussion with synthesized textures. Do you make a conscious effort to do that, to juxtapose a modern context with the traditional context?
Sometimes. In the theme, for sure. I have electronic percussion going alongside traditional percussion; I have an ancient Russian folk song as the motor interwoven with a modern orchestral arrangement. I just had the ancient Russian chant translated into Swahili and some lesser-known languages, and I'm weaving some little elements in and out [for Survivor: Africa]. For me it's tremendous. I love being able to explore and hear the Africans singing the chant. People often think it is an African chant and it isn't; it was Russian, but now it is African!
So you get the continuity yet at the same time …
… a change in elements, and it's a major element to change.
Survivor is really fun because I get to do African music when I'm in Africa; I can do Australian-influenced music when I'm in Australia. So it's a palette with a framework. Obviously, I'm not doing traditional music; I'm doing my impressions from listening to the music, and then I take it back and use elements and try to do something that works well to picture.
Talk a little about how you work with David Vanacore on Survivor.
David and I are basically two independent composers that are working together on the series. There are two executive producers on the show: Mark Burnett, who created it, and Craig Piligian. Mark brought me in on it, and Craig asked me if I didn't mind sharing, seeing that there were 40 minutes of music to do on the show each week. He had a very talented composer that he wanted me to work with, and after I heard David's stuff, I thought he was great. So they put us together, and we've been having fun.
Do you guys coordinate at all?
Yeah, on some things. We spot the shows together and decide what [cues] we're [each] taking. We flip a coin sometimes.
What about on an aesthetic level, coordinating the sorts of orchestration and ideas you're going to use?
When we spot, we're both coming from a similar place in terms of our synth and orchestral scoring, but we bring different things to the table as far as that goes. We both like long-line melody; we both write cinematically.
David came up with the cool tribal council music that's used all the time, and I wrote the theme, so we each bring an element to the show. In some ways, with two of us scoring, there's a little friendly competition between us to see who can write the next cool thing.
Did you go on-site at all for the first series?
No. I had no interest in going to Borneo. Last year, for Australia, it was not in the budget for the composers to go, but David and I decided that we both wanted to go. It worked out so well that [sending the composers on-site] is in the budget now. This year Survivor is flying me to Kenya.
It's great because I go on-site for five days in the middle of [production] and score a bunch of stuff for the editors. As soon as they start shooting, they're editing, and they like to edit to music, so I dump all the stuff that I'm doing right onto the Avid [video-editing systems].
When you go down there, what kind of rig are you going to take?
I'll be recording for five days in the field on a PowerBook G3/500 with a Sound Devices USB pre as well as an HHB PortaDisc recorder. We'll be documenting it on digital video, which will also be recording sound as a backup. Then, I'll have five days on the Survivor site where I'll be composing. I'll be using my PowerBook running Emagic Logic [Audio] with Logic Software Instruments and EXS24 as well as [BitHeadz] Unity DS-1.
I have a little Yamaha keyboard, and Yamaha is also providing me with one of its new Compass Series guitars to bring down so that I can jam with the tribes. Hopefully it won't get wrecked — stampeded by a herd of water buffalo or something.
What are you going to be recording in the field?
I'm going to 12 different remote villages and recording their ancient folk music. I have a guide, Anindo Marshall, a former pop singer from Kenya who's well loved and recognized, and she'll be my liaison. She's taking me to all the tribes and helping me with translations.
Are you going to get singing and instrumental music?
Mostly I'm interested in the old tribal traditional stuff that I can incorporate into some of the more modern things that I'm doing. The truth is that Los Angeles has a fairly strong population of Kenyan musicians. I've had some of them over here already working on arrangements and recording; I can do that here. I want to get the raw materials there. I want to find the real ancient, rough stuff: the kids' group that's singing the traditional tribal song from 1,000 years ago. I want to learn from that and use it in what I'm writing. I want to put the viewer in the bush. It's as much of a learning experience for me as it is for the viewer.
The show is currently done in stereo. Nothing in surround?
No, just in stereo. Most people have mono TVs, a lot of people have stereo TVs, and a growing number of people have surround systems on their televisions, but [the score] better sound good on the lowest common denominator. When I do a show in surround, a lot of times when it's played back on stereo TV, the music disappears or one element of the music pokes through in a way that's very strange. I don't feel that the standardization of down mixing is really there yet.
We did mix a version of the theme in surround, and it was fun because we got to do all kinds of cool effects. As far as the music goes, left-center-right is where we would be anyway in a surround system. We would put other things like ambience in the surround speakers, but not the music. If I'm in a movie theater, I don't really want to hear the music coming from behind me; I prefer the center spectrum. That way the music becomes part of the picture.
I have two ears; I'm kind of a stereo person.
From what you say, you're able to work in a traditional post fashion in which you can spot the footage, so you're not writing blind.
I am writing a lot of music blind to give them music to cut to. A lot of music is earmarked for certain kinds of scenes, and the editors get to choose from a library's worth of material.
Picture editors, not music editors? That seems unusual.
We have a great team of editors, and it's really the only way a show like this could work. That's why the music pops so well: the picture is cut to it, so a lot of it plays like a music video. I'm really enjoying it. Sometimes I'm surprised in a painful way, but if I don't agree with something, I can change it. I have that option.
Then, when the picture's locked, we have a spotting session and decide what stuff has to be replaced or where they couldn't find perfect cue in the library. If I see something I can do better, I'll say, “I can score that with a lot more emotion.” So it's a combination of traditional scoring and letting the editors have their way with a library of original music that's been composed for the show.
Survivor: Africa is taking up a lot of time right now because of all the conceptualization of what I am doing with the theme and the languages and how to incorporate the Masai stomps and heavy breaths with the Swahili chanting.
How do you research that?
I have my Kenyan experts; they come over, and we talk. I'll throw a rehearsal together with some Kenyan singers, and we'll just experiment with the microphones on. I'm messing with stuff. I've worked with a lot of Africans throughout my career as a bass player, so I've been dying to sink my teeth into this stuff. The groove is forever.
The last episode of Survivor [Outback] had a live portion of the show. This was maybe the coolest thing I've done in my career. I scored the last 15 minutes of Survivor into the next hour of the Bryant Gumbel portion when he interviews all of the cast members. They determined the winner with a live vote on live TV all over the world, and I scored it with an on-camera 13-piece ensemble, conducted and played.
We were at CBS in Television City [Los Angeles], and it was a live gig in front of 70 million people. It was really nerve-wracking and scary but incredibly exciting. That went over so well that I'm already booked for the next live Survivor gig.
Talk a little bit about orchestration and tools. What is the mix of stuff that you do — synths versus sampled instruments versus instruments performed live?
For the live orchestra performance, I had a sample of a sawtooth loop playing, and that was my click track to keep everybody together as well as a major element in the theme. So I am holding that down in one hand, playing a sort of a soft pad in my left hand, and then everyone is playing along with it. So I'm totally mixing in the synthetic elements, even live.
What about day to day?
I bring people in once a week for a recording session, but most of the framework of the cues is done between my E IVs, GigaStudio, Kurzweils, and EXS24 using a wealth of samples that I've bought. The Spectrasonics stuff is incredible, but with samples you have to be the first guy to use them; otherwise, you've heard them before, so I try to create a lot of my own samples and percussion loops.
It's fun working with loops; it's a good way to get a little motor going instead of a click track playing. Often I'll change the loop after I'm done writing to it. I don't always love writing to loops. I do it when I need what I call a “tasking cue” that needs a groove motor running through it. Otherwise, I just love putting my hands down and writing what comes to mind out of the blue.
You're using a lot of different samplers: you have the E-mus, an Akai, a Kurzweil, and GigaSampler, EXS24, and Unity. What makes you choose one rather than another?
I have them set up to do different things. My brass and a good section of my strings are living on the E-mus. A lot of my synthetics and choirs are on the GigaSampler. GigaSampler is great because I can dump everything in there; it's the bin for every sample I have. It can't play all of them at the same time. It does a pretty good job on a fair number of voices, but it's always there when I need it. It's great because I can have this palette of 1,000 sounds available to me all of the time without having to go stick in a sample CD, and I can audition them really fast.
EXS24 is sort of like that; I'm just getting involved in that. For my portable stuff, I need EXS24 and Unity because I can't take all my racks.
The more software synths and samplers you try to cram through a single output of an audio device, the more it all starts to sound kind of mushy like an organ. So in the studio, I like to have my separate outputs.
Do you sequence everything and mix down from that, or do you print the samplers and synths back to hard disk and mix from those tracks?
I mix from the MIDI. I don't see any reason to dump all the audio on. The only reason to print all the synths as audio would be if I wanted to take it to another studio and mix it on an SSL.
Getting those exact sounds might also be easier.
Yeah, but there's something kind of cool about the random nature of what could happen doing it again. It's a score, so it's a very liquid medium. It's never really done until you say it is. It's kind of the same thing with a song: it's subjective.
The difference being broadcast dates, which don't move.
Yeah, deadlines. It's done. We love that. It limits you. And really, does the music change that much? Is it going to have that much of a different effect on you if I brought up the EQ on the hi-hat another decibel? I'll hear it a little bit, but is it going to change the impact of the cue?
I'll sit and mix for hours, and sometimes the first demo rough mix is the one you go with, because it has the most life before you kind of EQ the life out of it.
Do you have any parting words about your work?
Everything I do is for one reason only: that I hope to get to meet Poe. [Laughs.]
When you're doing music for hire, the hardest thing is to find your own identity. You have to be flexible and not be attached to the individual things that you write. Eventually, you're going to end up working for people that hire you because they love your sensibility and love that little special thing that you bring to their projects. But you can't jealously guard your notes. You're writing for hire, and the grace in what you do will come out in subtle ways. It's a collaborative effort, and your producers will be your collaborators. You have to help them to be successful. The hardest thing to give up is that jealous protection. It's just music. [Landau's son] Max asked me, “Dad, why is music so much fun?” It doesn't all have to be so important; it should somehow be fun. It is the best job in the world if you can do it and have fun with it.
Larry the O is a musician, producer, engineer, and sound designer in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has been a contributor to EM since 1986.
RUSS NEVER SLEEPS
In his 15 years of professional playing and recording, Russ Landau has crossed some diverse musical terrain. Here are the highlights of his career in producing, scoring, and playing.
Film Scores
Senior Week (Vestron, 1988)
Voices from the Attic (Siren, 1988)
Cat and Mousse (nominated Grand Prize, Cannes; HBO, 1989)
Project: Tin Men (movie cut; Orion, 1991)
Bonnie and Clyde (Fox Television, 1992)
Other People's Secrets (Rich Pix, 1992)
Viva Terra Viva (Modern Pictures International, 1992)
Sea Scapes (PowerSports Productions, 1994)
Visions of the Orient (Millennium International, 1995)
The Rock (additional music; Simpson, Bruckheimer/Hollywood Pictures, 1996)
Telling You (Division I/Cinetel Productions, 1997-98)
Nowhere Land (Prosperity Pictures, 1998)
Love and Action in Chicago (Prosperity Pictures, 1999)
Totally Irresponsible (Prosperity Pictures, 1999)
Racehoss (Breezeway Entertainment, 2000)
Television Scores and Themes
Fortune Dane (pilot; ABC/Orion TV, 1987)
Down Delaware Road (pilot; NBC/Weintraub, 1989)
Bodyguard (pilot; NBC/Weintraub, 1990)
Project: Tin Men (pilot; ABC/Weintraub, 1990)
Ren and Stimpy (score; Games Productions/Nickelodeon, 1993)
Carrier: Fortress at Sea (Discovery Channel, 1994)
SeaQuest: DSV (12 episodes; Amblin/NBC, 1994-95)
SeaQuest 2032 (Emmy Award — nominated score; Amblin/NBC, 1995-96)
L.A. Firefighters (20th Century Fox, 1996-97)
Moloney (Tristar/CBS, 1996-97)
Baby Animal Tales (Stone House/Discovery Channel, 1997)
Four Corners (score; Tristar/CBS, 1997-98)
The Net (Winkler/Tristar/USA, 1998-99)
Combat Missions (NBC, 2001)
Fear Factor (NBC, 2001)
Survivor: The Australian Outback; Survivor: Africa (CBS, 2001)
Survivor U.K. (British ITV, 2001)
Jingles, Commercial Score, Logos
Kirin Beer (with Paul Winter, 1990-91)
Coors/Zima (O & M, 1993)
“PowerSports Theme” (logo; PowerSports Productions Syndicated, 1993)
Papazian Hirsch (logo; Papazian Hirsch, 1997)
Calgary Lane (logo; Calgary Lane, 1997)
Winkler (logo; Irwin Winkler, 1998)
Good Neighbor Pharmacy (Engle & Murphy, 1999-2000)
Make-a-Wish NASCAR (Make-a-Wish Foundation, 2000)
Survivor (logo; Burnett Productions, 2000)
Record Production
In Action, Missing (Island/Tuxedo, 1986)
James Johnson, Never Enough (Island/Tuxedo, 1986)
Cheri Brandon, Sleeping with the Enemy (Geffen, 1987)
Ilene Kristen, Give Away (Island/Tuxedo, 1987)
Paul Halley, Piano Song (Living Music/AG, 1989)
Paul Winter Consort, Wintersong (Living Music/AG, 1989)
South Side Johnny, Highway to Your Heart (Disney, 1989)
Guire Webb, New Frontier (Proxima/BMG, 1989)
Cheri Brandon, Too Late to Be Good (Geffen, 1990)
Paul Winter Consort, Earth: Voices of a Planet (Living Music/AG, 1990)
Paul Winter Consort, The Man Who Planted Trees (Living Music/AG, 1990)
Paul Halley, Angel on a Stone Wall (Living Music/AG, 1991)
Rise, Rise (Proxima/BMG, 1991)
Lui Collins, North of Mars (Molly Gamblin, 1992)
Eugene Friesen, New Friend (Living Music/AG, 1992)
Guire Webb, Leona (Proxima/BMG, 1992)
Paul Winter, Solstice (Living Music/AG, 1992)
Ol' Paint, Ol' Paint (Fresh Jazz/LMG, 1993)
Paul Winter Consort, Solstice Live (Living Music/AG, 1993)
Paul Winter, Prayer for the Wild Things (Grammy Award winner; Living Music, 1994)
Noirin Ni Riain, Celtic Soul (Living Music, 1995)
Ancient Voices (“Survivor Theme” remixes; TVT Records, 2000)
Dinosongs: Poems to Celebrate a T. Rex Named Sue (Stone House/Scholastic, 2000)
Survivor (soundtrack; TVT Records, 2000)
SURVIVAL GEAR
At press time, Russ Landau was expanding the number of his studios at his home from two to three, adding, subtracting, and moving gear between the three rooms in the process. As a result, he wasn't able to give actual quantities on some of his gear, but the bulk of his working rig is given below. He adds that his arsenal has a few constants: “Always, a Sadowsky bass, a Taylor guitar, and an old Fender Strat [are] by my side. But I really love the new Yamaha Compass edition guitar, which traveled with me throughout Africa.”
Computers
Macintosh G4s (2); 9600 (1)
Emagic AMT8s
Emagic Unitor8s
MOTU MTP2 MIDI interface
MOTU MTPAV MIDI interface
General Recording Setup
AKG C 414 EB through Avalon VT-737
Daking 52270H preamps
Grace Model 201 preamps
Hardware
Akai S5000s (a couple)
Digidesign Pro Tools/24 Mixplus (room A)
Digidesign Pro Tools/24 (room B)
Digidesign Pro Tools Digi 001 (room C)
E-mu E4 samplers (lots)
Kurzweil K2500s; K2600s (a mess of them)
Kurzweil K2600 as controller
Mackie Digital 8-bus console
Mackie LM-3204 submixers (plenty)
Tascam GigaStudios (a few)
Yamaha ProMix mixers
Mixdown
Alesis M20
Alesis Masterlink
Panasonic SV3700
Tascam DA-88
Monitors
Dynaudio Acoustics BM6A
Tannoy 6.5II
Yamaha NS10s
Remote Setup
AKG C 1000 mics
AKG C 480 B mics
Digi 001 chassis
Earthworks M30BX mics
HHB PortaDisc MiniDisc recorder
Mac PowerBook G3/500
Magma chassis
Sound Devices USBPre 1.5 preamp
Software
BitHeadz Unity DS-1
Emagic EXS24
Emagic Logic Audio
Digidesign Pro Tools
MOTU Digital Performer