The Pro Files: Steven Vincent
Posted by Chen on / 0 Comments
Welcome to The Pro-Files! A new series of interviews with industry professionals from mix engineers to A&R directors, from demo singers to publishers, to help familiarize aspiring songwriters and producers with all the moving parts of a successful songwriting career. And we begin, with the role of the music supervisor.
Some of the biggest pop stars in the world (Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus), and some of the most successful music franchises ever (High School Musical, Hannah Montana, Descendants), all took their first musical steps with a healthy dose of guidance from Steven Vincent. As the Vice President of Music and Soundtracks for Disney Channels Worldwide, Steven has worked with songwriters, producers, directors, and choreographers, to craft the different musical elements that have become synonymous with the Disney Channel brand, and have proved so successful over the years.
Steven was gracious enough to sit down with HitSongCoach.Com, and discuss his process, the music supervisor’s role, and what it takes to get your songs in film and TV.
HSC: How did you get started in the industry?
SV: I have a degree in music composition. I did a masters program in film scoring, and I knew early on that I wanted to be involved in film music. I did that for a few years, and I found that the people who are most successful in it in television are either piano or guitar players, since you are given a package of money, which isn’t a lot, and you have to come up with whatever music you need, week in week out.
I was a Brass player first and a piano player second, so I wasn’t really happy with the music I was able to create with my hands. So I figured I try to find another way in. At the time I was working in a completely different part of Disney as a day job, and through that, I found this new position at the talent department at Disney Channel. They were doing all these live concerts, and they were familiar with my musical background. Around that time they were thinking about doing their own musical content, so I became kind of an in-house resource for that, which then led me to working on Lizzie McGuire, The Cheetah Girls, High School Musical, and Hannah Montana.
HSC: There is a misconception among beginning songwriters that the music supervisors job is just administrative, and that they are just another “gatekeeper” on the way to a placement. Hopefully, that is changing with this year’s inclusion of the music supervision category at the Emmys. Can you talk a little about what the job actually involves?
SV: I’m a combination of a musical research librarian and someone who knows music “speak” as well as TV and film makings “speak,” so I can be a translator for everybody between all the moving parts.
Some music supervisors are music lovers, but not necessarily music makers. Some have great relationships and know how to get a great quote on a song, some just know music and catalogs, in some cases better than I do. But I’m more of the music maker kind. When the director says “I want more energy,” I know how to talk about percussion, and dance loops and counter melodies, or whatever I think will provide what they are looking for dramatically. Having a musical background puts me in more of a unique position to provide all those pieces of the puzzle.
There is, of course, an administrative side. Creating the budget, create the music plan, understanding the parameters of the shoot and what is musically needed. It’s a combination of that and the creative side. And so my job is to provide inspiration as well as creative direction, and to maintain the continuity between what I know the network wants in terms of our branding, and what I know the director and producers want, in terms of the movie they want to make.
HSC: How do you typically approach a new project? How do you begin to conceive the musical direction a project will go in before any music is even written?
SV: I did a panel discussion once with Randy Newman, Carole Bayer Sager, and a few other people about songwriting.
Someone asked the question: what comes first, melody or lyrics? And my answer to that was neither. What comes first is really the thought of what kind of a song am I gonna write today? Am I writing a ballad? An up-tempo? Hip-hop song? Or is it a country song? Am I writing a song for a character that already exists? Am I writing for a specific artist? Or am I writing for myself? And so I think there is a lot of that kind of thought going into it before you even start writing anything.
Since I work in the world of TV songwriting, it’s almost always in our case, writing a song for a character. So let’s take a musical like Teen Beach for example. We knew that It was gonna be set in the sixties, which already narrowed the style of music down quite a bit. Now the sixties had a lot of different types of music, so we determined that it would be the early sixties, coming out of the fifties. Which meant Motown to me, and Jerry Lee Lewis, as opposed to Led Zeppelin. We weren’t making Woodstock. We were making Grease. That was our starting point.
From there, it’s what kind of characters do we have? In Teen Beach, it was mostly surfers and bikers, which further defines the pallet. For me, the surfers felt like The Beach Boys meet Frankie and Annette. And the bikers felt like Jerry Lee Lewis meets Rockabilly. So that’s how we defined the environment, and from there we get more specific. We had one of our female biker lead do kind of a Motown thing, and we needed our other leads to have their own sound. Its all about serving the specific character, serving the story, creating the right energy for choreography, and serving the directors vision. After that is becomes about looking at the scripts and trying to figure out WHERE the song moments could be, and WHAT they need to be.
For instance, when we first meet the bikers we wanted them coming in with energy. The director wanted them coming through the front doors on their bikes, which felt like a pretty clear direction to me. So I started thinking who were our icons when we think of those types of character from that era? Maybe Elvis? Fonzie? All of that sort of brought us to Cruisin’ For a Bruisin’ (Allan, Evigan, Leonti, Miller) as a thought. The songwriters came up with the actual phrase, but it’s my job to inspire them and do all the prep that can lead the writers to the right lyric.
HSC: All of that work is reflected in the brief, which is the first introduction to the song concept for the songwriters. How do you go about putting that together, and what are some of the biggest mistakes you’ve seen songwriters make when interpreting the brief?
SV: So the brief is created after discussions with the network and filmmakers about the type of movie/show they want to make, and about the specific song moment. It’s really important to have everybody on the same page, for the songwriters to have even a basic chance of success.
Once we’ve had all the discussions and we know what’s the story moment, character moment, style, energy and feel we’re going for in the song, it goes in the brief. And I wanna be as specific as possible because the worst direction I can give the songwriters is “ok guys, I just need a hit song!” What is that even?! The idea of what’s a hit song changes every five minutes these days. So you want to create a very specific plan, so that the people receiving the song know what’s coming, and the songwriters know what to write.
At the same time, Probably the biggest mistakes people make, and I think this differentiates between people who know what they are doing and are writing original music, and people who are copying other people’s original music, is they take the brief too literally. If the brief says, we need a Maroon 5 type song, those who don’t really know what they are doing will simply straight copy a Maroon 5 song. When really they should be thinking “If I was gonna write my own song for Maroon 5’s next record, what would it be?” They should be thinking what makes a Maroon 5 song? It’s in that Tenor vocal that also does falsetto, it’s got guitar, it’s not all programmed, you can dance to it, it’s fun for everyone, it’s accessible. You should be aiming for the feeling of the song rather than just another version of that song.
Sometimes when you get 20 different submissions for a theme song, where everybody is working from the same brief, things start to sound the same. So it tends to be the songwriters that find a unique way into the thought of the brief, that end up winning.
HSC: Be it specifically written for the moment, or an outside song, what makes a song sync-able?
SV: In film and TV, placements tend to be one of two things: either in the front, as a”needle drop,” where the song is driving the scene, or it’s in the background. If it’s in front, the lyric is specific to what’s going on, not fighting dialog, maybe adding another layer to the emotion or energy of the scene, or commenting on what the characters are going through. Basically the leading force of the scene. If it’s up front, its storytelling. You’re looking for a specific emotion. Some shows and films can get pretty sophisticated with that, and use songs to highlight the point of view of only one of the characters in the scene, to maybe clue in the audience to something other characters aren’t aware of, or maybe even using the song as a red herring. The point is it’s about storytelling. Whether its an original song, or a U2 song, it has to serve the story.
If it’s in the background, it’s probably more about the energy of the song. Maybe a hook to lead you into dialog or something.
So if you are pitching your songs to music supervisors, you don’t want to write something too specific because it ties the hands of the music supervisor. And yet if you write something that’s too generic, it’s not gonna feel real. What you want to do, is write about the human experience. Things that are relatable, that people go through, Because chances are characters in shows and movies are going to go through the same things.
Take Twilight for example. I’m sure the music supervisor (Alexandra Patsavas) was getting pitched songs about vampires and werewolves all day long. But that’s not what Twilight is really about. It’s about people going through stressful situations. It’s about star-crossed lovers. It’s about fighting the darkness, and about characters fighting against themselves and their inner nature. Again, the human experience. It would be too “on the nose” to put lyrics about Vampires in their vampire franchise.
So if you can think of a show with music that fits your style, figure out what that show is actually about (not the surface stuff, the emotion underneath), and write about that. If you do that, your song could work for many different scenes that need the emotion it conveys.
HSC: You obviously have great relationships with many great songwriters and producers, a giant pool of talent to pull from. How do you go about finding and meeting new writers?
SV: I meet new writers at least monthly. Probably more than that even. A lot of people get referred to me, like Toby Gad, or Adam Anders. Sometimes other songwriters will say, “hey, got this new person I wanna work on this pitch with,” and I meet writers that way. I listen to their stuff, and like with Toby and Adam it sounded great and was the kind of music we needed. Then it’s on me, when a project hits my desk, to remember that young writer I met six months ago, who’s style would fit the project. My job in large part is getting to know peoples creative voices so that I can match them up with the right song. We are in the business of needing resources. So I’m always open to listening. That is the only way I’ll ever find what I need.
HSC: Steven thank you again for sharing your knowledge with us. One last question before we sign off: What is your number one advice for aspiring songwriters trying to make a career of it?
SV: I meet with a lot of college kids, or people starting out looking for that kind of advice. To the people who halfway through the conversation start telling me about their “backup plan,” I say go do your backup plan. It’s too hard and too competitive to be just an option. It has to be who you are as a person. You do it because you have to. It can’t be a hobby. Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a day job while you are working towards it, you gotta eat, right? But you shouldn’t treat it like hobby. Part of it is winning by attrition. There are a lot of people who will try for a couple of years, and then just do something else. But if you stick it out, sometimes you’ll get an opportunity simply because you waited the longest in the room.
The other thing is, you have to constantly be working on your music and your skills. You have to always be creating. So even if you gotta day job and you come home, and you’re tired, and you need to take care of the kids, spend time with your partner, even after all that, when they go to bed, you go create. Do that no matter what, and you’ll get one tinny step closer to waking up every day and writing a song rather than going to a day job.
My old composition teacher used to say it’s like baseball. You play a little in high-school, maybe college. Then you go to the minor leagues, and you ride a bus from tiny town to tiny town, and if you get a bunch of hits, and strikeout enough people, maybe you’re called to the majors, to again sit on the bench. But soon you’re up to bat, and by that time you’ve done it before, and all that experience, is whats gonna help you get that hit when it really counts.
Award winning and multi platinum selling songwriter/producer Chen Neeman's songs have been recorded by artists such as Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, Joe Jonas, Zendaya, and The Muppets, among others. Chen is dedicated to helping aspiring songwriters learn how to write better songs through personalized one-on-one coaching sessions via Skype, FaceTime, or in person at his L.A Studio.
Find out more about Chen’s Pro Songwriting Coaching, at HitSongCoach.com