August 2002

Collaboration is the Right Key for G&E Music

By Christine Bunish
NEW YORK - A full-service sound design and audio post production company providing original and licensed music to the film and TV industry, G & E Music (www.gemusic.com) has purposely stayed away from the spot music market, preferring instead to concentrate on TV show themes and scores, program branding, station branding, ID's , and promos.

The four-year old firm founded by Glenn Schloss and Erik Blicker prefers to work as part of collaborative teams formed by clients whose producer's select top creatives, graphics houses, editing boutiques and G&E music.

"In a lot of jobs an executive producer pulls in whoever they think would be really good for the project," Schloss explains. "It's better than an all-under-one-roof approach." Blicker adds. "The producer is not handing off to just one company but assembling a team of specialists they want for the job."

G & E Music has displayed its wide-ranging talents in a number of collaborative efforts. Producer's Eliza Booth and Mary Hicks from Discovery Digital Networks paired G & E Music with graphics houses 3 Ring Circus and on projects for its Home & Leisure, Science, Wings and Civilization channels. An MTVN project for the National Cable and Telecommunications Association‰s 50th annual convention and exposition teamed them with graphics studio The Scott Benson Company based in Atlanta. Producer/editor Steve Beal of New York City's Keyframe Post pulled in G&E music to score an HBO promo for Spike Lee's moving documentary "4 Little Girls." More recently G & E Music collaborated with Jesse Gordon of Discovery's broadcast design department, and their in house graphics producer and editor for Animal Planet's "Fangs!"

G & E Music's flagship composing and mastering studio is in Manhattan's Flatiron district at 23rd Street; the company also maintains a small and cozy project studio on 8th Street. "It's great having access to two studios," says Schloss who often writes in the quieter, 8th Street studio which features a ProTools 001 rig, Avalon 737 preamp/compressor and tons of midi gear. Schloss also has a recording studio with a big live room for real drums in Rockland County, New York; he built the facility with his friend John Bardsley, a producer and editor at Roundhead Creative Group in, NYC.

Blicker does most of his work in the 23rd Street studio which boasts two suites, a conference room and offices. The main room has a ProTools 24 MIX Plus running 5.1.1. Hardy M1 preamps, a pair of Empirical Labs Distressors and a vintage UREI LA175 for live tracking in the control room. The second room, which is also built around ProTools, acts as an edit space and sound creation station. A combination file, ftp, and web server is used for sound effects, session transfers, client reviews and approvals. Final mixed projects are pulled off of the in house server via the clients web browser from any where in the world.

Even if they choose to compose in studios some 15 city blocks apart, Schloss and Blicker partner on every project. "We do a creative meeting (with the client) then go to our corners and write," Blicker says. "Then we come back together and work on each others tracks." After the client decides on a direction G&E often provides a tempo track that an editor can cut to as he or she builds the project.

In addition to Protools, they use Propellor Heads Reason music station software and Peak for mastering. A common complaint of Protools for writing is that it is very limited in it's MIDI capabilites "I've used a lot of different MIDI programs but, as a musician, I found that they got very feature intensive," Blicker says. "I was editing high hat parts one day when I learned that is was faster and more fun to just play them over until the music felt good."

G & E Music's emphasis on musicianship has deep roots. Schloss grew up in a musical family in Rockland County, NY learned drums at an early age and while studying for a business degree at Boston University played in many bands and started his own sound reinforcement company, T.M Associates.

Following graduation Schloss took a job in Harvard‰s AV department and established a reputation as a session drummer. He had a tiny piano in his apartment and set out to write an album's worth of songs before considering a move back to New York. "I wanted there to be more to my bag than just being a drummer," he says.

Blicker, a Connecticut native, also developed an early interest in music. His father started him out with a home reel-to-reel tape recorder and a mic so he could play DJ. He played guitar in school and bands growing up. Instead of heading off to college he opened a music store, built up the business and found himself giving 70 guitar lessons a week and recording and writing jingles for his store.

Feeling "stuck" in his hometown at the age of 23, Blicker sold his successful store and set off for the University of Miami where he earned a music engineering and jazz guitar degree. He toured in the Sunshine State and in Asia, writing original music all the while. Then he moved to New York City where he received a Masters degree in theory and composition from the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College. There he studied with veteran jazz sax player Jimmy Heath. "Jimmy was super-inspirational," Blicker recalls. "He lived what others were trying to teach."

Working out of a closet-size studio in his Manhattan apartment, Blicker, now married and with a young son, wrote for multimedia, commercials and the FX Channel. "I did a total of 30 radio spots in one night for the Turok video game," he recalls. Blicker met Schloss in 1997 when both were playing in a "revolving-door wedding band," and they immediately hit it off.

On the recommendation of a producer friend, Schloss and Blicker -- as Glenn & Erik Music -- were invited to present their reel to the graphics department of VH-1. "We combined our respective skills and were able to knock out some good stuff," says Blicker. "Our reel got a great reception, and we got the gig,," Schloss adds.

The gig was a real plum: writing the main theme and all of the underscore for the five-hour VH-1 series, "The 100 Greatest Artists of Rock & Roll with Kevin Bacon," the first in the network‰s "100 Greatest" franchise. G & E Music later created music for Billboards 40 Top 40 Singles, RockAcross America, Save the Music, and RockStory for VH-1.

More recently the company composed the theme and show package for HBO Family Channel's 30 x 30 Kid Flicks produced by Marc Clark of 7c's Productions. Blicker morphed the signature HBO theme into his composition using Sound Hack's varispeed function then segued into a funky, hip groove with an all-kid chorus recorded at his son's elementary school. The melodic hook was sung by promising 15-year old R&B vocalist Tara Harrison. "Being here in New York City allows us to draw from a great pool of talented musicians." Adds Schloss.

G & E Music's sound design toolkit, Producer's Toolbox, was used for music, underscoring and sound effects on each of the 31 Kid Flicks programs. The library features original, high-quality sound effects such as swooshes, hits, drones, sprinkles and beats&treats on a data disc and an audio disc. It evolved out of a request from VH-1 for original stings and hits for graphic elements.

"We'd record wacky sounds and twist things with Sound Hack, Peak and DSP processes and put together mini toolkits" for the network, Blicker explains. The burgeoning Producer's Toolbox continued to grow with invaluable help from the internship program which is now headed by associate producer Matt Kelly once an intern himself.

High quality sound design elements created specifically for visuals have become highly sought-after commodities. G&E music continued to record, create, and compile original sound effects which they used on a series of Discovery Channel IDs and on a show open, credit bed and bumps for Discovery Wings channel's Aviation Week.

G&E Music launched the Producer's Toolbox commercially at Promax in June. "It's a total buy-out library, grab and go, with 450 sound effects and 120 music loops," Blicker says. "At Promax we wanted to do something different so we brought our instruments and jammed away while handing out egg shakers to the attendees so they could play along. Our booth at Promax represented what we're about as a company, being part of a creative team and interacting with the clients creatively."

The partners see their company growing as they themselves grow as musicians. Schloss keeps busy playing in several bands around NYC. Blicker continues to write, practice and study. "We see the company branching out creatively,"Blicker says, "and continuing to be inspired by the talented people we work with."