For composers Ange Rozmann and Kara Tarve and musician Russell Emanuel, custom-made instruments are key to creating musical scores.
Emanuel is a co-founder of the composer collective Bleeding Fingers Music with Hans Zimmer and Stephen Kofsky. Among the shows they’ve been working on that could capture the attention of voters is Apple TV’s “Prehistory Planet.”
In previous seasons of the show, they created custom instruments from fossils, bones, and dinosaur skull replicas and combined them with a standard orchestra to create an otherworldly soundscape.
For Season 3’s “Ice Age,” Tarbe and Rozman wanted to take viewers into more familiar territory, especially since that’s when humans evolved and existed. “The score is slightly off, but it’s much more emotional,” Rozman says.
The first episode, “The Big Freeze,” features a woolly mammoth giving birth during a snowstorm. One discussion, Talbe explained, was about how to represent the scale of the animals and emphasize them through music.
To achieve the score’s heavier, darker sound, the team removed high-register flutes, violins, and brass instruments. Composers are also trying to bring something unique to the scoring process. “There was a semicircular wall of cellos and a double bass. We recorded an octobass, which is a huge double bass,” Rozman says.
The instrument was so large that the performer had to stand on a chair to play. “That gave us some rumbling, low feelings about mammoths,” he says. The vocalizations of fearbirds (Phorsulaceae) are based on a prototype modeled on the larynx of an extinct fearbird species. But they took it to the next level, and the Triceratone was born, a wind instrument that produces the guttural sounds that birds need.
The highlight of the score was the Divje Babe flute, discovered in 1995 at the Divje Babe ruins in Slovenia. This is a bear femur with a hole in it and is thought to be a Paleolithic tool. “A friend of ours has a replica. We went into the cave of Postojna Cave (in Slovenia) and recorded it,” Rozman says. “It’s a very eerie sound that instantly transports the listener to the past.”
Tarbe worked closely with Emanuel on another Emmy-contending song, “The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror.” The episode is divided into three segments, the first of which is titled “The Last Days of Crisco,” which tells the story of a fatberg monster that squeezes the fat out of its victims. It’s also a parody of Jaws.
The idea that Crisco is underground lends itself to the low, rumbling sound of the score. “You know he’s coming,” says Fatberg’s Talbe, so the go-to sound was “a huge orchestra with big, fancy brass instruments.”
The third segment of the show, “Plastic World,” brought in flautist Pedro Eustache and a wealth of woodwind instruments, but he also custom-made his instruments.
“He built this huge thing out of PVC pipe, and he was an important part of the sound of ‘Plastic World,'” Emmanuel says.
The Simpsons, now in its 37th season, has a distinct sound, and that’s what Talve had in mind when composing Treehouse of Horrors. “It always brings those worlds together. ‘What would ‘A Night with the Devil’ look like in Springfield?” he asks.
Emmanuel added that the passion of the show’s creative team is what drives them forward. “That’s a big part of why this score still sounds fresh,” he says. “We’ve had some great spotting sessions with them, and I feel like there’s a lot of DNA there that still lives on.”
He added that the producers, writers and artists “really lived it and I think that comes through to us. They’re a big part of why this score was so successful.”
Bleeding Fingers’ next project could be their biggest yet: HBO’s Harry Potter series. “It’s a privilege,” Emanuel says. “It feels like we’re watching television history being made.”
