Ed Kalehoff - Prime Time COMPOSITION

by Gary Eskow

Article re-printed with permission of Erlene Ramsey
of Wright's Reprints, LLC representing Mix Magazine ©1997

 

“There’s a real irony to the position I find myself in these days,” says Ed Kaheloff, composer and producer of much of the music heard on prime time network TV. “When I came to Manhattan 25 years ago, I was the fair-haired boy who had a Moog synthesizer, which was all the rage. There were only a few Moogs in town at the time, and I might have been the only person who was on the session scene who could actually play the thing!”

Kaheloff’s chops earned him primo gigs with the likes of Quincy Jones, Henry Mancini and John Barry, but his ability to compose memorable melodies, coupled with substantial arranging skills and a tuned business esthetic, led to the creation of his own music house. Although a New England Digital Synclavier, his original Moog and a variety of other synths maintain permanent residence in Kaheloff’s Manhattan studio, the composer’s sound is built on live ensembles.

“That’s what’s so ironic,” he says. “Ever since the MIDI revolution, there seems to be a new kid on the block every week who has synth chops and a digital studio. I admire tremendously much of what these people turn out, but our sound has gone the other way to a certain extent. Not only do we orchestrate for live players on nearly every project we record (including biggies like the “Monday Night Football” theme, the Ray Charles Olympic version of “America the Beautiful” and this year’s NBC election night theme), we have made a point of implementing a combination of analog and digital equipment here in a way that maximizes the contribution of both technologies. We have a ‘house band’ that we rely on, which includes Sammy Merendino on drums and as a drum programmer, Jeff Mironox and Steve Love on guitars, and Francisco Santana on bass. Every player has a personality, and that individuality makes its way onto tape, to the benefit of my music.

“Being a professional composer means having to satisfy clients, but you must satisfy yourself first,” Kaheloff adds. “Otherwise, you have little to give over time. The most grueling area of the business, in terms of being asked to spit back to clients that which they ask for, is the jingle business. Standards change very quickly, and jingle writers have to stay on top of things. Luckily, I was able to expand away from spots and go into television scoring and theme writing. At a certain point, I began to get recognized as having an individual style, or voice, and when a producer calls me, it’s generally because they want me to contribute something that is personally mine to a project.”

Kaheloff and his chief engineer, Brian McGee, find themselves traveling around the country to record artists quite a bit these days, and they make a point of bringing along equipment, particularly mics, that artists like Ray Charles and Hank Williams Jr. are comfortable with. “Mics are critical. Hank Williams Jr., who we’ve worked with on a number of ‘Monday Night Football’ pieces, likes to use a Telefunken C-12 tube mic, so we rent one when we go to Nashville to record him. The C-12 we have here is very special – I bought it from Capitol Records, and it’s the one that Nat King Cole used to record with.” Although the majority of his work is for television projects, which means that for many listeners, the sound will get squashed down through 3-inch speakers, Kaheloff is a stickler for pristine recording. “We apply record standards to the low quality of television sound, and you can absolutely tell the difference.”

Standard operating procedure for Kaheloff and McGee is to record the rhythm section to an Otari MTR-90 analog machine, then mix through an SSL G Series console. “Laying down the rhythm section to analog tape definitely results in a warm and fuller low end,” he says. “In order to get a crystal-clear high end, we move over to our Mitsubishi 32(-track) with Apogee filters. We have two generations of the modules that made SSL famous, and we use the inherent color of these modules to help shape our music. The first 24 strips are from 1981 to ’82. The EQ bandwidth on these strips is wonderful – it was the first time SSL started to encroach on Neve territory as far as warmth. We then ordered some 1985 EQ strips, which have smoother top end. We feel that the earlier EQ fits rock ‘n’ roll quite well, which the later EQ handles classical or legit sounds perfectly.”

On the day Mix stopped by Kaheloff’s 24th Street Manhattan studio, final touches were being applied to tracks for an upcoming PBS television special starring Kaheloff’s wife, Andrea McArdle. The singer, who closes “Andrea McArdle on Broadway” with a version of “Tomorrow,” will be remembered as the precocious pre-teen whose voice tore at you like a pit bull when she starred in Annie. Well, she’s all grown up now, and in the special displays an emotional range and maturity that fully complement her still prodigious vocal chops.

“Andrea McArdle on Broadway” was produced by Kaheloff, and the soundtrack will be released on his label, Magic Venture Records. Shot live in front of a Miami audience, tracks were brought back for sweetening at Kaheloff’s studio. “We worked off a rough stereo mix of tracks we had laid down up here, as well as a sync track, then rescored the band and Andrea live down in Miami,” he explains. “We knew that in addition to sweetening, we’d probably be replacing a lot of the tracks up here. However, as things turned out, we replaced a lot more than we’d originally planned on.”

Kaheloff and McGee were adamant about using the audience sounds that had been captured in Miami. “Although we were re-recording a lot of Andrea’s performances and adding tracks, we thought that the interaction she had with the audience was special, and so we used a lot of the crowd sounds we had on tape. We took these elements and laid them onto multi-track, where we imaged them with EQ and effects. In essence, we performed sound design on every ambient sound you hear, and the work was worth it to us; the emotional interaction between Andrea and the audience really pops out on the television special.”

Kaheloff is currently considering adding a Pro Tools system to his arsenal of equipment. “Handling all aspects of post-production sound for our clients is something that we’re taking a hard look at, and Digidesign has certainly established themselves as key in the business. We’re always involved with the final assembly of the shows we work on, so we’ll probably purchase a system by the end of the year.

“To date we’ve used a custom system for the IBM called AQ Design, which was designed by Peter Roos,” he explains. “It’s really a terrific workstation. There’s probably not a single project that we complete here in a year that won’t be worked on in our DAW. Peter’s problem was that Digidesign has been able to partner with third parties in a very clever way, and that allows them to offer features at a very reasonable cost. No one individual could ever compete price-wise with that philosophy, and so Peter has gone back to his career as a full-time sound designer.

“You know, it’s funny the way people think of the ‘digital revolution.’ We were sitting around the console having a few laughs the other day after completing work on a major project for Carnival Cruises. We had been importing cues into our DAW and experimenting with different possibilities, and we were noting that the only time savings that digital editing offers is the time you save not having to rewind tape. The greater palette that these tools give you generally means that you spend more time trying to come up with that perfect mix, not less. But hey, regardless of whether you’re working on the client’s time or your own, you always want to put your name on the best-sounding product possible. This is an adventure, not a career!”