Interviewed live during TAXI’s Road Rally, 2021
By Michael Laskow
Editor’s Note: We’re repeating Dean’s bio from Part One to give context to the rest of the interview!
Dean Krippaehne is a veteran songwriter, musician, author, artist, music producer and highly successful TAXI member. His music has been heard on hundreds of TV shows, films, and new media around the world—probably thousands by now. He has also earned gold and platinum records when his song “Do Your Thing” appeared on Stephanie Heinzmann’s album, Master Plan on Universal. Dean is also the author of the Amazon best-selling books Demystifying the Cue and Demystifying the Genre, both of which are must-have books. If you’re watching this and you haven’t read these books. It’s not a matter of, “Should I?” It’s a matter of if you don’t, you are only hurting yourself—I cannot stress that enough. He also wrote Write, Submit, Forget, Repeat, which was inspired by the often-heard TAXI member mantra Write, Submit, Forget, Repeat. If there’s anybody who can explain what production music libraries do, and why they can be valuable partners for indie songwriters and composers, Dean Krippaehne is that guy.
Somebody in the chat room just asked, “How do you get in those [39] music libraries?” in so many words.
For me—and I have told this to everybody—I say, “Join TAXI.” Well, back in 2003, the thing that got my music on One Life to Live, was through a TAXI listing. They wanted Neo-Soul music, and I had recorded some without thinking about film or TV, and it worked, and it got through. Then, when I started coming to the Road Rallies and met more people... Yeah, from TAXI listings and from the people I met and connections I made at these Road Rallies—which is going on this week—I would say that 90% of those 39 libraries came from TAXI listings or the connections I have made through TAXI, and because of TAXI. So, I just tell everybody, “Hey, that’s how you do it. And listen to the feedback and learn and get better and listen to TV shows.”
There are two libraries that I have been contacted by recently that want me to do stuff for specific shows. So, I’m watching the shows, I’m listening to what they’re doing. “Oh, that’s how they do their tension music on that. They are using more drones and less percussion,” or vice-versa. And so, you listen; you do your work. I always go to—even though I’m in a few of the huge libraries, the biggest libraries—I still go to them and listen to what other people have done in other genres to make sure that my bar is reaching at least that level.
I’m glad you brought up the tension cue, because that’s one of the genres where there’s tension when the bachelorette is waiting for the rose and that they are eliminating people. There’s tension when somebody is entering a dark room. There are all kinds of different tension styles, so you can’t just look at something and go, “Tension—I can make that”; you’ve got to make the kind of tension they use on that show. And I think it’s brilliant—common sense but brilliant nonetheless—you watch the shows and probably jot down notes on a legal pad or something, so that when you go create the music, you’ve already got a roadmap handed to you.
And you are so right. Just with tension alone, there are probably 100 or 200 different kinds of tension.
I’ve told this story before. There was a broadcast network Saturday-morning show called Lucky Dog that I had music in like 40 episodes or so. But it’s about dogs rescuing dogs and getting them to new owners and training them. Mostly kids watched the show, and in the brief, it said, “We want tension, but we can’t make kids cry or their parents will turn off the TV.” So that’s a whole different challenge. How do you create tension that doesn’t scare somebody and get a little suspense in there? But, yeah, there is just the whole gamut. There are tons of kinds, and probably in most genres. I mean, Hip-Hop that was done 15 years ago doesn’t work now, unless somebody has a show that’s set in a time period from 15-years-ago.
“I drive my wife nuts when we’re watching TV together, because I’m always picking out the sounds. I really have developed a habit of listening to the underscore behind the action.”
Absolutely. I’ve been saying this for 20 years easily, maybe 25, that the roadmap to making TV music is staring you in the face every day. It’s your TV set. And if you find yourself watching any form of TV and not actually noticing the type of music, it will at least help you understand how music supervisors use it, and how they chop it up to use it. “Oh, look at that, it’s got a stinger ending, and that sting lands right on the scene edit where it goes from the car door slamming to getting out of the car.” You can learn so much by watching TV. Who the hell knew that your mother was wrong all those years ago when she said, “Turn off the damn TV”? Now it’s, “You’re wrong, Mom. Turn on the TV; just take notes.”
I drive my wife crazy. Just last night we were watching a show and there was a little bit of a tense scene on there, and we’re all into the show, and I said, “Oh, that’s an Omnisphere pad they’re using there.” And she said, “You know, you just ruined the whole thing for me.” Yeah, I drive my wife nuts when we’re watching TV together, because I’m always picking out the sounds. I really have developed a habit of listening to the underscore behind the action.
I drive my wife crazy as well. For the first 20-some years of owning TAXI, my wife really had nothing to do with the industry. Now she’s very heavily involved, and we work together. When we’re watching TV, no matter what we’re watching, if we’re binging a series on Netflix or whatever, I’m constantly asking her, “What kind of cue is that?” And teaching her about background source music, which would be coming out of a jukebox in a bar, or maybe a car radio, and I’ll say to her, “What genre is that?” “I don’t know—tension?” “Yes, you got it!”
"But whatever they want—and they will tell you what they want—and about the specs of how they want it, and then you just do that. Do whatever they want.”
People always ask me what format, what audio format, digital-audio format libraries want. Do they want AIFF, WAV, high-quality MP3s? What do you think is kind of the norm?
They’ll tell you what they want. And as a good friend of mine says, “Whatever they want, give it to them.” I have libraries that want AIFF, that want WAV, that want... Sometimes just to screen something, they’ll want an MP3, or they will want an MP3 in addition to one of those. But I don’t think they ever just want an MP3-only at the end when you’re turning in some. But they might want a WAV file at 44-116, 44-24, 48-24, and almost all of our stems you can now export in any format that they want. But whatever they want—and they will tell you what they want—and about the specs of how they want it, and then you just do that. Do whatever they want.
Some of our members that are new to TAXI will say, “I can’t believe that you guys are sending MP3s—and yes, they’re high-quality MP3s—but that doesn’t represent my music well.” Well, when you are using a high-quality MP3, you can pretty much hear everything you need. And as Dean just pointed out, when the library is ready to put your stuff in their catalog, they’ll tell you what format they want, and they usually do want an upgrade. But I’ve known plenty of people… I hate to publicly admit this, but I know music supervisors that are very happy to take a high-quality MP3 and put that in a show, because they assume that nobody at home is going to hear it like we all hear it.
Yeah. I guess that has happened to me a couple of times, and I’m like, “No, you won’t want that. Okay, whatever you want. If you’re okay with the MP3...” Whatever they want, give it to them.
Can you please tell everybody what a PRO—performing-rights organization—is, and why they should be affiliated with one if they want to do music for any form of media?
Yeah, PROs, performing-rights organizations, they are basically the ones that collect your performance royalties when your music is in a TV show, on the radio, etc. Every TV show, film, ad is going to submit production cue sheets of all the music that is played, and the PRO—whether it’s ASCAP, BMI, SOCAN in Canada and a whole bunch of them in different other countries, they’re going to collect that money, and based on their rates that you get paid, they’re going to send you a check. And they also will collect the money from foreign countries. Every international statement I get probably has somewhere between 50-plus countries that I’m getting performance income from, and my PRO is getting all their affiliated performing-rights agencies in other countries, and they’ll collect the money and give it to me in international royalties. So that’s what they do; eventually you’ll have to join one. Should you do it ahead of time or not, I just say, “Why not join one?” Do some research and figure out what you want to be in and join one. And there are a couple libraries that want… One that I’m thinking of in particular, and I think it’s because they have been sued so much, they want to make sure that you have already registered your stuff with ASCAP or BMI or SOCAN or whatever. For most of the libraries that I work with, I don’t register my songs or my cues ahead of time. They’ll register [the music] once I’ve signed it with them. Unless I’m going to release it on a CD myself and I’ve worked out that deal with them, they will register the stuff with ASCAP, BMI...
“If I have a great connection with the music supervisor for Grey’s Anatomy, every time I hear a great track, am I gonna send it to them? No, I’m gonna wait for them to ask me what they want for a particular show…”
Once all the paperwork is done and they’ve got your tracks, what does the library do next? Do they pick up the phone and send out emails to every music supervisor in the industry saying, “Hey, we just got a great new track from Deano.”
No. You know, I think it’s really helpful for any songwriter or any artist or any composer to try to imagine that you are the music library, the music-production company, and what am I gonna do? If I have a great connection with the music supervisor for Grey’s Anatomy, every time I hear a great track, am I gonna send it to them? No, I’m gonna wait for them to ask me what they want for a particular show, and if I have that relationship, then I’ll send them X amount of tracks that might work for that particular scene or that particular thing. And there are some shows, especially cable shows, that say they need these four or five types of tension music, “so give us stuff like that.” So, they might send 100 or more tracks to the show or give them access to their hard drive where the music supervisor can go hear it, and see what might work for them. But no, they are not going to pick up the phone and…
“A great song may not be right for that particular scene.”
And you’ve talked about this before. I just want to mention it now, because it’s such a common thing that people who are getting into this aspect of business and they truly do have a great song. Their song is great. I had lunch with a guy recently who truly had some great songs, but there’s a big difference in film, TV and ads between a great song… We always want to have a great song, but in this business, it has got to be the right song for the scene. A great song may not be right for that particular scene. You know, it’s gotta be the right song. So, just because your stuff is great, more power to you that you can do a great song, but it’s gotta be the right song for the scene they need to put it in. And that’s why we create a lot of this stuff, because we don’t always know what the right song is going to be. There are parameters we can follow, especially lyrically and melodically, to give ourselves a better shot at that stuff… and style, mood-wise, writing for certain moods. Yeah, it’s gotta be the right song, and don’t be disappointed when your great song doesn’t get in there; just wait for the right show to come along.
They’re not looking for hit songs to make hit records. Here’s an example. They need a song about heartbreak, and you’ve got a song that touches on heartbreak a little bit and it’s kind of a sad song, but it doesn’t explain the gut-wrenching heartbreak that the person in the scene is going through. It doesn’t go that deep or that intense. So, your song is great, it’s an amazing song and yes, it does talk about heartbreak, but it’s just not perfect for the scene or the show they need it for, and they might take a B-plus or an A-minus song that really has the right lyric that moves the emotion in the scene more effectively.
Yeah. And to add to that—and you’re probably going to ask about this later—but lyrically in songs… I had a really good song that I had done many years ago. It was a Neo-Soul song and had been cut by a couple of indie artists. It was one of those where you just go, “Yeah, that’s a really good song,” but I couldn’t get it placed in film and TV. It was a great lesson for me. The first four lines of the song went, [sings] “Sunset on a beach/A small café/An old romantic move/On a rainy day.” And it started to dawn on me why it wasn’t working… Well, because I had painted four scenes, it worked as a song for radio. But it was “Sunset on the beach,” that’s one scene; “A small café,” that’s another scene; “An old romantic movie,” that’s another scene; “A rainy day” is not working with the “Sunset on the beach.” So, if I had said, “A sunset on the beach/Walking hand in hand/Feels so good/My toes in the sand,” or something, at least that’s keeping it all in one scene. So lyrically, we want to keep things… Actually, that track probably is still too specific. As you say, talk about heartbreak or talk about love or talk about anger or something in a little more general terms; it can be helpful.
Robin Frederick always says that. Don’t talk about the things that cause the emotion to happen, talk about the emotion itself, because that’s what the scene has. So, if I say, “I met Debbie in Paris on a snowy New Year’s Eve under the Eiffel Tower and we had our first kiss,” You can’t put that in a TV show or movie because there are too many specifics. If you talk about, “The minute I met her, my heart melted.” That could be used in a lot of places.
Exactly. And it’s really contrary to what many of us have learned about songwriting for radio and records. I think this might be one reason why some really good country songwriters had such a tough time figuring out how to write for film and TV. It’s because it’s to the contrary of what they’ve learned to write for. All my years of writing, when I was in Nashville you wrote detail, you learned to paint the picture, the furniture, paint everything in there, and that’s really specific to a scene. Now that’s changing somewhat in country music—it’s getting less specific. But, boy, if you learned how to write that way, then you have to develop this new craft for writing for film and TV.
Don’t miss Part 3 of this interview in next month’s TAXI Transmitter!