NYC’s G&E Music Scores "The McVeigh Tapes" for MSNBC
On April 19, MSNBC aired the two-hour special The McVeigh Tapes: Confessions of An American Terrorist, narrated by Rachel Maddow.
NYC’s G&E Music scored the special alongside its writer and producer, Toby Oppenheimer.
G&E composers Glenn Schloss and Erik Blicker faced the challenge of creating a score that would set a suitable mood for the chilling accounts of the Oklahoma City bombing, as told by McVeigh himself through never-before-heard audio interviews.
“We needed to set a tone that had an austerity to it without being creepy or sensational, or exploitative of the victims in any way,” informs Oppenheimer. Blicker describes, “It’s such an extremely dark story that, without music, would drag the viewer further down into that abyss. The music is there to help carry you through the story as it unfolds, set you in an almost equalized space — certainly not uplifting but not entirely ominous either.”
The team developed a musical palette for the project by creating “atmospheric tones that felt organic but also had momentum and groove,” and “finding interesting voices using reverbs and delays,” working with Ableton Live and Spectrasonics Omnisphere among other production tools. To supplement, G&E also pulled from their Producer’s Tool Box — an extensive collection of sound design elements and musical loops created for visual based productions — giving the producer and editors plenty to work with.
Schloss and Blicker had previously collaborated with Oppenheimer to score the HBO documentary The Nine Lives of Marion Barry last year.
G&E Music specializes in TV, radio, network re-branding, documentaries, feature films, websites, ringtones, and commercials through the use of collaborations with in-house composers, mixers and clients, including Discovery, MTV, Nickelodeon, ABC, CBS, VH1, Fox, Saatchi & Saatchi, Grey Advertising, Nokia and Pepsi. Check out G&E’s media division, Flavorlab.