From Avenue Q to Sesame Street: Michael Croiter + Yellow Sound Lab

April 14th, 2010 by Trenton

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East Village, Manhattan: It’s a “sunny day,” and I’m on my way to a Sesame Street session at Yellow Sound Lab in the East Village. The amazing basement studio belonging to drummer/producer Michael Croiter (Spencer Day, Avenue Q, Chita Rivera), Yellow Sound Lab is now the musical home of Sesame Street and The Electric Company. All of the original music — songs and underscore — is recorded and mixed here. And today, I get to catch the “Sesame Street band” in action.

In Yellow Sound Lab (l-r) Bill Sherman and Joe Fiedler

Led by Sesame Street composer and music director (and Tony-award winning orchestrator for In The Heights), Bill Sherman, and arranger/orchestrator and trombonist Joe Fiedler, the band consists of Croiter on drums/percussion, John Deley (Dido, Lizz Wright) and Randy Cohen on keys, Rob Jost on bass and Doug Derryberry (Bruce Hornsby, Vertical Horizon) on guitar.

They’re moving through cues for a classical music-themed episode, and while Elmo is on-screen in the control room, this is sophisticated stuff — complex progressions of marimba, upright bass, acoustic guitar and Rhodes, accented by vibraslap and glockenspiel.

After a series of cues, the band breaks for lunch and I steal a few minutes with Croiter. “This is ridiculous fun,” he says. “Because we get to work in so many different musical styles and everybody in the band is so talented that they can pull off all these styles. It’s actually quite challenging, musically. We’ve just finished this classical episode and we’re going to do an Iron Maiden inspired episode next!”

Michael Croiter during Sesame Street sessions

The group moves quickly through the underscore recording, one of the last steps in completing each of the season’s 26 episodes. “We recorded the actual songs for each episode months ago — the cast sings along to those when they’re shooting,” Croiter discerns. “Now, the picture is final and we record and mix the underscore, and deliver to Creative Bubble, where the SFX, ADR, Foley and post mixing is done.”

“It’s a lot of music and mixing,” says Croiter, confirming that the music is almost all live instrumentation, with the occasional patch used here and there. “For Sesame Street, we’ll have 30-40 songs and then all of the underscore to mix. And The Electric Company is even more music. Last season we did 36 episodes of The Electric Company, and we’ll do 12 more in May. And those are totally front to back music.”

Doug Derryberry on guitar

Sesame Workshop, the non profit educational organization behind Sesame Street, also produces The Electric Company, Pinky Dinky Doo and several other acclaimed children’s television programs.

And Yellow Sound Lab, though it hosts all kinds of sessions, was actually designed — by WSDG’s John Storyk — and built to facilitate music for a children’s television production. Croiter broke the place in recording and mixing all the music for Disney’s Johnny and the Sprites a few years back.

So by the time Sesame came knocking, Yellow Sound Lab had not only the facilities, but also the experience and workflow the show’s producers were looking for going into Sesame Street’s 41st season.

The studio is a Pro Tools HD3 operation and mix-to-picture environment, with just the right amount of space to host the versatile band and all their instruments, as Sherman and Fiedler direct from behind the Audient ACS8024 console.

YELLOW SOUND LAB ENABLES LABEL

After several years in the Avenue Q pit, Croiter is currently on a break from musical theater as he delves deeper into production and mixing for television and records. In addition to taking on the music recording and mixing for Sesame Street and The Electric Company, he also co-founded Yellow Sound Label with Sesame Street music director Bill Sherman last year, putting more record projects on the schedule as well.

“I’d been producing records and shopping them to labels and was unhappy with what was being offered,” says Croiter. “Bill was in a similar position — he had a bunch of records he was going to be producing. So, we decided to partner up and find a distributor. We started Yellow Sound Label and settled on ADA for distribution, and it’s been working out really well.

“So far, we’ve put out records by Alan Cumming, Chita Rivera, Marcy & Zina. Next up, we’ll be putting out a records by Karen Olivo, who’s just won a Tony for West Side Story, and Jeremiah James, who’s in the vocal group, Teatro.”

John Deley during Sesame Street sessions

With the studio at the center of Yellow Sound Label, there are fewer costs involved in producing records with the artists they sign. “Basically, the only thing we spend money on are the musicians, the artwork, the mixers and mastering,” Croiter shares. “The duplication and manufacturing is all done by ADA and it’s pretty inexpensive because they do it, and they take those costs out of the profit.”

Now, between Sesame Street, The Electric Company and Yellow Sound Label, the studio is booked every day, even when Croiter is off on tour — he’s music director/percussionist for Chita Rivera and plays in Concord Jazz artist Spencer Day’s band. “Fortunately, the bench is deep here,” he notes. “Jorge is mixing for Sesame Street and The Electric Company, and can fill in for me, and I have two other engineers ready to step in when I’m on the road.”

And the regular television bookings help facilitate still other projects at Yellow Sound Lab.  “I do tons of demos here for songwriters and musical theater composers,” Croiter shares. “And I’m able to work with these talented artists, many of which don’t have a lot of money to record, because of all the television and documentary work we do here. That goes along way towards supporting some great new artists.”

For more on Yellow Sound Lab, visit http://yellowsoundlab.com, and check out Yellow Sound Label at http://yellowsoundlabel.com.