Composer and synthesist Paul Haslinger has been an avid Spectrasonics user for over a decade. You can hear his excellent work with Stylus RMX, Trilogy and Atmosphere on Showtime’s critically acclaimed Sleeper Cell which has wrapped its second season.
Paul told us, “Doing all the music for the first two seasons of Sleeper Cell has been really interesting, since it’s one of the few projects that has taken on terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism. The TV show is in a mini-series format, a continuing story. From the musical perspective this opens up all kinds of opportunities. Should it be a black and white world? or a connected world?”
Haslinger has stood on the forefront of electronic music for many years starting as one of a progression of keyboard and synthesists in Tangerine Dream where he led a five year collaboration over four albums. As a classically trained musician and composer Haslinger easily transitioned to writing film scores. He has worked closely with director John Stockwell on several films including Into The Blue, Crazy Beautiful, Blue Crush and the upcoming Turistas. He also composed musical segments for Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report and scored Len Wiseman’s box-office hit Underworld. Haslinger composes for games and television, and has released solo and collaborative albums as well.
Regarding the software he uses Haslinger tells us, “My main work tool is Nuendo and my main virtual instruments are Stylus RMX, Trilogy and Atmosphere — in that order. For my rhythmic parts, I only use Stylus RMX now, nothing else. All my REX files are imported and then I use the filters, effects, chaos and all the other control to create the complete rhythm track.”
“Sleeper Cell is a character driven show, so I am very specific with themes and atmosphere. With good story telling and good acting the composer’s job is to help set the stage for the emotion, never show it or mimic it. I feel that I’ve been able to create a complete atmosphere and a framework to support the drama,” states Haslinger.
On the sound of the score he says, “Being a fan of Peter Gabriel’s world music sound, with Sleeper Cell I felt I had a chance to create my own atmosphere. I have used several key performers on the score including vocalists Sussan Deyhim and Nona Hendryx, trumpeter Jon Hassell, Hugh Marsh on Violin and Viola, and AJ Racy one of the foremost experts on Middle Eastern music, and the Musicology chair at USC. When AJ comes to a session he often brings a hundred different Ney flutes. He plays every Middle Eastern instrument, I’ve featured him on Oud, Kavala, and Buzuq.”
“I am often asked to write music to match the temp music that the show has been cut to when I get it for scoring. When there’s rock music I have to accurately capture the feel of it with my original music. One of my keys is Trilogy for the bass sounds. In classical music there are very set and strict colors, but in rock music there are 25,000 variations just on the bass. I have to hear what the bass is doing, how it sounds and try to match that. Trilogy lets me do electric and acoustic very easily. Sometimes I will replace the parts with live players and other times it sounds so close we just use it and time is so critical I don’t have a day to record live players.”
“Trilogy was done by a musician so it makes it easy to get to the right sound. It lets you play like a bass player. Trilogy has bailed me out so many times.”
“My highest priority for music software is stability. A composer’s time is the most precious thing he has. Eric [Persing, Spectrasonics chief sound designer and founder] understands and enforces this in all his projects. And along with sound quality and his sound philosophy Spectrasonics stands apart from other companies.”
Season 1 and 2 of Sleeper Cell is available on DVD.
For more info on Paul Hasslinger visit his website here
More about the TV series Sleeper Cell here
