Nickelodeon’s Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Pictured (clockwise): Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello and April O’Neil.
Matt is a multi-instrumentalist, multi-platinum record producer, Emmy Award and Annie Award nominated composer, best known for his band Self. Prior to RTMNT, he wrote and composed original music for soundtracks of Nickelodeon's Ni Hao, Kai-Lan (in which he also served as a musical voice director) and Sanjay and Craig, as well as for Nickelodeon Movies' Fun Size film.
Check out Animation Magazine's fantastic article about how music is one of the most integral elements of animated television series, including an interview with Matt, below, and visit animationmagazine.net to read the article in full!
Music is one of the most integral elements of animated television, bringing to the fore emotions and subtext that may not always be gleaned from dialog alone, and yet it’s often one of the most overlooked. “[The underscore] is oftentimes underappreciated, which is a blessing and a curse,” admits composer Tim Kiefer, one of the two musical masterminds behind Cartoon Network’s Adventure Time (the workload is divvied up between Kiefer and his colleague and former bandmate, Casey James Basichis). “Because it’s kind of a sign of success when everything melts together beyond its individual components.”
Sometimes, however, if music is more central to a show, composers will be brought on earlier in the production process. Netflix’s BoJack Horseman, for example, with its satirical take on Hollywood, is big on music — whether that’s incorporating parody-style jingles or songs (one episode, “Fish Out of Water” featured almost no dialogue whatsoever, instead relying on just the animation and the score to convey the story).
BoJack composer Jesse Novak usually works from an animatic, which occasionally gives him the opportunity to suggest a change in timing, or even animation, in order to accommodate his orchestration. Similarly, if a storyline on Adventure Time has Marceline rocking her bass, Kiefer and Basichis will come in at the pre-production stage to create a bassline the animators can work from.
Wherever the music team comes in, however, the nature of the job means that composers on an animated series are, by necessity, usually confined to a fairly narrow brief, although within that most are afforded relative freedom. Matt Mahaffey, who is currently working on a score for Nickelodeon’s upcoming Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, says everyone has been “very open to letting me put my own stink on it,” although he acknowledges that his role is to “support the story and support what’s going on on-screen.”
“You have to be at least somewhat of the personality type of enjoying serving, in a sense,” says Novak, light-heartedly comparing the role of a composer on a television series to working in a food service job, where his customers are the writers and directors. “The only challenge has been when you get so attached to the music you’re writing that you don’t want to take somebody’s note. And I think that happened to me when I was a little bit younger starting out, and I would forget whose project it was.”
Where the series is based on a legacy brand, such as Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or DuckTales, there is an additional pressure, since the music needs to sound fresh while at least acknowledging the original. On DuckTales, Dominic Lewis and the rest of the production team jointly decided to “create the best version of DuckTales that you think you remember” rather than simply replicate the work of Ron Jones, the composer on the original 1980s series.
On a younger skewing show like Muppet Babies, whose target demographic is in the three- to seven-year-old range, there is also the audience to consider. “You can make music very scary very easily,” explains composer Keith Horn, who favors an orchestral palette for Muppet Babies. “It’s very intense because the orchestra is such a powerful thing. So, I find myself dialing back the ‘scary’ dial quite a bit with the score.”
Which is not to say the music can’t still be complex. “We can use this sophisticated musical language and at the same time water down the intensity of it,” Horn explains. Lewis points out that, if anything, scoring animation can be even more intricate than live action. “You tend to be able to use a lot more notes in animation,” he says. “More sort of floral, throwing more instruments and more orchestral notes at stuff to make it have that sort of animation, orchestral feel that we all relate to. Live action these days tends to be going more minimal.”
Partly, that’s due to the frenetic pace of animation. As Mahaffey puts it, “Characters generally go from complete elation to utter sadness within about three seconds and it’s our job to musically equate those emotions as quickly and concisely as possible.”
Just as an art director will create a visual color palette for a series, a composer will design an aural one, and the starting point is always the world in which the story is taking place. In Mahaffey’s experience, there will usually be a discussion with the production team to determine, for example, whether the characters inhabit a world with electricity. “If there is no power, generally it’s strings and horns and pianos and drums,” he says. “Things that are acoustically palatable to the world.”
As well as taking inspiration from the animation itself, each composer brings his own unique range of musical influences to a series. Kiefer describes himself and Basichis as “voracious consumers of music” (Kiefer has a side gig as a DJ), which complements the kooky world of Adventure Time. For Novak, his inspiration comes from a range of media but especially, he says, old Warner Bros. cartoons, which he looks to for their “comedic timing and how to use music effectively or ironically or in certain kinds of context.”
Sometimes, achieving the desired sound requires reaching for an unusual instrument, or even objects that aren’t technically instruments at all. Although only a few episodes into Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mahaffey has already managed to incorporate a set of car keys, which he’s used as a shaker (“You can make a shaker out of anything but I think car keys have a really unique jangle to them,” he says nonchalantly) and has also sampled crinkled paper, which is, apparently, “very bright sounding.”
For Kiefer, one of his most memorable moments on Adventure Time was for the episode “Hug Wolf,” in which he achieved a “more muffled guitar sound” by playing a guitar with a thick fur coat over his fingers. Where possible, he reveals, he also enjoys incorporating his collection of “weird percussion instruments, so I have a few kazoos and also a vibra-slap.”
It’s not all fun and games, though. Much like the rest of the production team, one of the biggest challenges for a composer on any series, particularly one as long-running as Adventure Time, is keeping their work fresh while at the same time not straying too far from the series’ established sound. “We try everything to just not ever repeat ourselves, to not do anything redundant, and it’s really hard,” Kiefer says, admitting that after eight years he is ready to move on (although he reveals the season finale, which is set to air later this year, is a tear-jerker). Even for Andy Bean, who is just one season into Muppet Babies, his biggest challenge, he says, is keeping the songwriting “varied and fresh” and ensuring it doesn’t “fall into too many familiar patterns.”
Still, even with the chronic under-appreciation and occasional sense of fatigue, composing for an animated television series is undoubtedly one of the most enviable careers around. Mahaffey, who previously worked on Nickelodeon’s Sanjay and Craig and Disney’s Henry Hugglemonster, calls it a “dream gig” while Novak agrees it’s a “great job”. “If you just want to be playing music all day, which is what I want to be doing,” explains Novak, “it’s [the] jackpot.”
--Ends--
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a brand-new 2D-animated series which follows the band of brothers as they discover new powers and encounter a mystical world they never knew existed beneath the streets of New York City.
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reimagines the characters in a fresh new way, featuring jagged-shelled Raphael as a snapping turtle, wielding twin tonfas as his weapons; Leonardo as a red-eared slider, using an ōdachi sword; Donatello as a soft-shell turtle, sporting a tech-bo staff; and Michelangelo as a box turtle, arming himself with a kusari-fundo. Along for the adventure is the Turtles’ most trusted ally, April O’Neil, a street savvy native New Yorker and Splinter, father figure and sensei to the Turtles.
The series stars the voice talent of Omar Miller (Ballers) as Raphael, Ben Schwartz (Parks and Recreation) as Leonardo, Josh Brener (Silicon Valley) as Donatello, Brandon Mychal Smith (You’re The Worst) as Michelangelo, Kat Graham (The Vampire Diaries) as April O’Neil and Eric Bauza (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) as Splinter. WWE Superstar John Cena lends his voice as villain, Baron Draxum, an alchemist warrior mutant who seeks to turn all of humanity into mutants. In addition to Baron Draxum, the Turtle bros will also be doing battle with new villains such as Meat Sweats, Hypno-Potamus, Warren Stone and Albearto in the series.
The Turtles’ hold distinct personality traits and skills, including: Raphael, as the oldest and biggest brother, he is the leader full of enthusiasm and bravado; Leonardo, the self-professed ‘coolest’ brother possesses irreverent charm and a rebel heart; Donatello, a mechanical genius and tech wizard whose ninja skills are second only to his coding; and Michelangelo, the youngest brother, a skateboarder and artist who is wild and imaginative.
Viewers can visit the Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles page on Nick.com for more information and follow @TMNT for Turtle Power updates.
The new 26-episode series is co-executive produced by Andy Suriano (character designer, Samurai Jack) and Ant Ward (supervising producer, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) at Nickelodeon in Burbank. Veteran animation industry voice actor Rob Paulsen is voice directing the series. The series is being animated by Flying Bark in Australia. Long-time TMNT master toy licensee Playmates will release a Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toy line in the lead up to the Christmas holidays. Penguin Random House will also be releasing a range of Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles books in September 2018.
Considered one of the most popular kids’ television programs of the 1980s, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a classic, global property created in 1984 by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. It first debuted as a successful comic book series and then became a hit animated TV show, a live-action television series and later spawned numerous blockbuster theatrical releases. The property is a global consumer products powerhouse, winning in every category that has hit shelves to date—with toys, apparel, video games, DVDs and more—and generating billions of dollars at retail. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has been the number-one action figure for the past three years and the franchise is a previous recipient of the Toy Industry Association’s top honor for Property of the Year at the TOTY Awards.
More Nick: Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles | First Look | Teaser Trailer | Nickelodeon!
Additional sources: Wikipedia, IMDb.
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