Angel

37 Questions With Robert J. Kral - Part III

28. Easymix: Is there any one composer or musical group who has inspired you or whose work you admire above all others?

In addition to the above I should mention I’m a big fan of "Queen." This might be because they don’t follow too many rules in their songs — they go off the beaten path, e.g., the "A Night at the Opera" album. Many of their songs go down their own road — Bohemian Rhapsody, The Prophet, Who Wants To Live Forever, and others might follow the formula but are incredibly rousing, like The Show Must Go On. I guess I appreciate bands and musicians [that] do things differently, but there is an art to doing that and making it work.

29. AlvaFan: If you could have composed any piece of music other than one of your own, which would it have been and why?

Well, the last track on the Star Wars album original release — it’s a montage of the themes — first comes to mind. It’s so rousing, perfectly composed and orchestrated. I don’t know how [John Williams] does it; it’s mind blowing. That’s just off the top of my head, but so often I’ll go to a movie and simply be blown away by most of the music. I was relieved to hear at a seminar that James Newton Howard feels intimidated by music scores he hears on many films these days....there’s hope for me yet!

30. AlvaFan: Do you have a favorite song or piece of music that you associate with a particular time and/or place in your life?

My first original piece of music is cemented [in] 1982, [when it] came to me during the evening I prayed that I might have the ability to create moods and emotions for others. Talk about answered prayer! I think song-wise a lot of us enjoy hearing again the songs of our youth, our teenage years, and for me that was the 80s. As such, I have huge collections of 80s music (American and Australian collections). I’m not embarrassed about this! The 80s had strong melodies, developed electronics/synthesizers, etc., and tons and tons of "feel good" moments in the music. The 90s reacts against this with a more raw, dirtier feel, and I love this too, but the 80s music just takes me back to my teen years. My personal spiritual life is a powerful one for me, and these years are when I guess a spotlight turned on to really begin my path, spiritually and professionally. As such, it is this immensely crucial point in my life, on top of just having all the teenage fun.

31. Taran: Have you ever considered working in other areas of film and television other than music — writing, directing or acting?

This question reminds me of the film Sliding Doors where Gwyneth Paltrow’s [character] experiences a fork in the road and we see where both futures go side by side. I don’t know if my opportunities have really provided that fork, but I am immensely interested in filmmaking. I was also a good creative writer but dropped that when the composing workload piled up.

Now and again the thought crosses my mind [and] I wonder about what else I might do. I love art and painting and lots of creative areas, for example. But I really am fascinated with all of the processes of film and TV creation. (I’d say producing but that has more of a business/marketing meaning in Los Angeles). As a kid, I made many Super 8 movies that were quite ambitious now [that] I think of it. I didn’t have actors, so I tried other things: an episode of Flash Gordon, for example, that starred a real live dragon lizard! Poor thing had to fly about on a speeder thing dodging laser beams that I hand scratched into hundreds of frames of Super 8 film!

Another movie I made was a prequel to Silent Running (my favorite film as a kid). I used friends to act in it, and they all got tired of it, but I got through it. I had to build a drone robot (see Silent Running) and have it walk around, etc., and that was incredibly difficult. In the end this robot was very convincing and my neighbors were amazed! The thing is only I could operate it properly to get it to walk like in Silent Running, so others had to do the Super 8 filming of those scenes. I got such a huge kick out of all this and thought maybe I’d be a filmmaker some day. It’s one of those creative things — stuff comes up from within and you just can’t stop throwing everything you have into it.

32. Easymix: What do you most like and dislike about composing for television?

It’s not that well respected compared to film music. Most people hear the word "TV" and cringe — for good reason. Yet, there is a lot of great material on television, Smallville for example. It can be disheartening because so much work and effort goes into composing for shows like this, but when I meet new people and say I write music for television, you can tell they are not thinking dramatic underscore! And they usually then ask "What about film? Have you done any movies?!"

There [are] these worlds of creativity going on that are superb, but the overall reality-game show-commercial-advertising world of TV kind of brings it down in a lot of people’s minds.

As for what I like most, this is answered in Q34 below.

33. MiraclesTV: Are you seeing any trends in music for television right now? Positive or negative?

I think the X Files helped pave the way for a more film-like look [for] TV series. Along with that comes the film-like music which is now used a lot in many series. This is far different from Mike Post’s new trends of using rock music in scores, which in the 70s and 80s was actually a new thing. One thing I really don’t like is when TV scores pep up the content beyond what it really is. It’s like watching Steve Irwin [Crocodile Hunter] who tends to drive me nuts with the hype. ("Are all Australians really like that?" people ask!)

I just feel manipulated by some of the overly energetic music in some shows, and my reaction is to switch off or resist. This can also happen in the midst of a good episode or show, however, where I feel the composer might have been asked to keep the energy going where it isn’t necessary. Producers sometimes don’t trust that their work is working, and want the music to keep things going when it doesn’t need to. This cheapens the product in my opinion, and is one thing I despise about some TV work compared to film, which trusts the audience more. Of course, that audience can’t change the channel, but still I sometimes feel TV productions that I watch [are] dumbed-down when [they don’t] need to be.

34. MiraclesTV: You’ve made a name for yourself by writing music for shows with darker/supernatural themes. Is this a coincidence or conscious choice? What do you feel sets you apart stylistically when you write music for these kinds of shows — and do you tend to naturally prefer those shows as a TV viewer yourself?

It’s interesting that as a kid I loved these kinds of shows on TV, and I used to [refer to] the music that underscored [them] as "ghost music". This type of music is very different from what I was learning from piano teachers, and eventually I tried to create it myself. But I never would have guessed as a ten year old asking a piano-teaching nun at the local convent if she could teach me "ghost music," that 20 odd years later I would actually be creating this music on a daily basis for television!

Even more interesting is that I didn’t go out looking for this particular type of work in this style of music. I came to Los Angeles from Australia pursuing a film/TV music career, and it has just worked out this way. I do actually prefer to write more pleasant sounding music, and have had opportunities for some of that — Pylea, Fred’s theme, Cordy’s princess theme, and some of the Miracles music like The Ghosts of the Civil War and God Is Now Here.

I feel extremely fortunate that I have been placed in a position to write this music — the mysterious dark music — and also the other emotions that come up in these shows. It’s like writing for a movie every week. This would be my choice, but I didn’t make this choice — these assignments have been given to me as if they were a gift.

I am not sure what might set me apart, but as mentioned I have enjoyed this style and wanted to play and write this style ever since I learned piano as a kid. In the back of my mind, I guess these styles and emotions have traveled with me even when I wasn’t writing music for a living, and now they are being expressed where appropriate in these productions. A composer feels something for the scene and expresses it; it doesn’t always match what the director has in mind, but fortunately for me, in most cases it does.

35. MiraclesTV: You’ve mentioned the concept of “hearing music in your head." Paul McCartney once described how he coped with this experience when he was away from the piano or any musical instrument by writing on napkins so that he would not “lose" the music. Can you describe this phenomenon as you experience it, and what you do to capture these moments: Do you need to play them immediately? And do you go through a similar ritual at times when you do not have access to a musical instrument or other easy way of recording them?

This experience is such a big part of everyday life to me that it is completely foreign to think that others don’t hear it. The best way to describe [it], I think, is that it’s like when you remember a song in your head. If you remember your favorite song, in your mind you hear it all — all the instruments, singers, etc. — as you heard it in a recording (well, something close at least). For us composers, it’s like that, but it is all original and your mind has complete control over the sound and the direction of the music. It’s like sculpting clay in your mind but with sounds.

The biggest challenge is that what you hear is great but can be extremely difficult to transcribe in the real world — the music in my head is playing in real time and it’s very difficult a lot of the time to slow it down, pick it apart, to figure out what it is (especially full orchestra, fast music) and then transcribe it. Mountains of music pass through my mind that I’ll never hear again and can’t transcribe. I’ve learned to simply enjoy it and let it be (no intentional Beatles pun in regard to the question!); otherwise, I’d go nuts trying to capture it all.

I used to go around with a small cassette recorder in case anything came to me. That was really helpful. Other times I’ve done the napkin thing, but I’m pretty bad at accurate transcription of music notes to paper without actually sitting at a piano, so I’ve sometimes drawn just the shape of the music — a notation of sorts that only I would understand!

I’ve been fortunate enough to have recorded so much music (over 190 episodes plus films, etc.) that I am more able to let a lot of stuff in my head just go without being frantic about recording it. But yes, there are many times when there’s some wonderful stuff going on but I just have to grin and bear it as it goes by — lost for good in many cases.

36. MiraclesTV: What’s the most important advice you would give to aspiring composers?

When I studied at USC, Jerry Goldsmith came and gave a seminar on film music and his experiences. During the Q & A time, a similar question was asked and his answer was "Well...you just keep doing what you do, and fate has a way of working things out." At the time I didn’t necessarily think this was particularly helpful, but I did enjoy the answer in the sense that I believed if God wanted me to be doing this, there would be a way that it would work out somehow. Jerry’s answer also acknowledges that everyone’s story is different and there’s no way to predict how it will work out. So, I would have to say, similarly, that you just keep writing — keep pursuing your dream. I always felt I would rather look back on my life seeing that I had given my dream its best shot rather than shy away from it.

Composing music --- being so specialized and isolating — can be a very "narrowing" experience also, in the sense that you concentrate on that only and give up everything to try to "make it" in the business. So, along with the above advice I would also suggest to balance your life out and keep things open to other possible directions. Fill your life with some kind of balance of other interests — the ones that mean things to you; [this] will allow certain things to come to you instead of having to chase them. This is how I also interpreted Jerry’s answer: Don’t just write music all day. Go skiing, go to the beach, attend to your walk with God — whatever makes you YOU — and these things will happen. We tend to want to control our lives in a certain way, when sometimes the opportunities will come from left field, from the places you would least expect.

If I were to write about my life, it would be filled with stories of opportunities in my professional and personal life that came from unexpected places, and big things eventually coming from very, very little things in the beginning.

37. MiraclesTV: What’s next for you? What other shows or projects are you composing for?

Right now I am writing for Angel, Season Five, and Duck Dodgers, Season Two, is coming up soon. We just recorded Tia Carrere (the "Martian Queen" of the series) singing a blues song about her unrequited love for Dodgers and that was loads of fun!