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California-based multi-hyphenate Sean Motley is a man on a mission – to make music and have fun doing so. Over the years he’s been doing just that by composing scores for film and TV projects on NBC, ABC, CBS, The CW, HBO, Showtime, Telemundo, Netflix, and Hulu; playing drums with a band; and releasing experimental music as a solo artist.
His hybrid analog-digital Anterograde Studio is geared towards having a streamlined workflow so that he can quickly and efficiently bring his ideas to life and meet the urgent deadlines that are par for the course in the post-production world.
We recently sat down with Sean to talk about what it’s like to be a working composer, how his new Neve Genesys console and ATC SCM45A monitors impact his workflow, and what it was like working with Vintage King Audio Consultant Patrick Carpenter during his studio upgrade. Read on to learn more.
Tell us a bit about the work you do and some of your favorite projects.
I compose music for film and television mostly. I've written thousands and thousands of cues for dozens of shows at this point, as well as scoring a handful of documentaries and films. I composed music for a 2019 film called ‘Lifechanger’ and I really liked the way that one turned out; the film was great, and it did pretty well for an independent film.
I do a fair amount of client work, whether it's random composing jobs for YouTube creators, tracking songs or albums for local bands and artists, or doing mixing and mastering.
I also play drums and write in a band called Tub Ring. They've been around since ‘92 or ‘93, but I joined the band back in 2010. Most recently we released an album called ‘Last and First Men’. Our previous album ‘A Choice of Catastrophes’ was fairly successful, accumulating over 8 million streams on Spotify.
It's kind of weird actually, because I feel like I have multiple musical identities: I’m a TV composer, I play in a rock band, and I write experimental, sort of weird music as a solo artist.
You made music for the YouTube sensation Honest Trailers as well, which is very cool!
[Laughs] Yeah, I used to do tons of stuff for Break.com, Defy Media, and The Screen Junkies Channel, who created Honest Trailers. That was a little bit hectic. Oftentimes, they'd want things the next day, or it was very quick turnarounds where they'd hit me up and say, “We need music, can you do this today? We need it by the morning”. That’s how it was a lot of the time.
Wow, that’s a lot! It really highlights why all the gear you have in your studio needs to really assist your workflow, so you can deliver quickly.
Absolutely!
What drew you to the Neve Genesys G32 console?
I’d had my eye on the Genesys console for a few years, actually. Because I'm a drummer, I need lots of mics and preamps and I had been using a bunch of the CAPI VP28 500 series mic preamps for tracking live drums. They were good, but about five or six years ago, I tracked an album in a studio in LA that had a nice big vintage Neve board, and I really loved the way the drums sounded through that.
So I started looking into what they had available as far as consoles went, and dreaming about maybe picking one up someday. Then I discovered the Genesys and they have the Total Recall, which is kind of what made me pull the trigger. It's fully recallable, and in my experience, it's been great.
I'm constantly going back and forth between using it for recording live drums, bass, guitar, and vocals, and also using it for mixing. And yes, it really speeds up the workflow significantly – just having everything right at your fingertips and having it be recalled instantly. It's amazing!
What do you think of the sonics of the console?
It’s perfect! It has this timeless, classic kind of sound to it that sounds so familiar because so many great albums have been recorded through Neve consoles. It just sounds great and brings everything together perfectly.
There's a clarity and punch you get with the mix that I've never been able to get before. I have to say, it’s a dream come true!
What are some of your favorite features of the Genesys?
Having the motorized faders is great – you can pull up a session and have everything snap into place. It's like working in the box in a lot of ways, but you have analog gear at your fingertips, and then, of course, the sound is just unparalleled.
Also, the dual input inline channel strips are really nice because they double the size of the board.
How has the console changed your workflow?
It's made everything streamlined and faster; it just feels like everything comes together quicker in the mix and sounds better. Like I said, it has that classic familiar sound and it speeds up the entire process of working on analog gear. I do think it's important for the kind of work that I do, typically, where you have to be able to knock things out.
That’s an important point you make – especially because analog gear can be moody sometimes, so having consistency is important.
Definitely – it’s very similar to working in the box in many ways. Much like many people these days, I came from working completely in the box and using plug-ins for everything. I started buying a bunch of analog gear over the years and I have a few different outboard gear pieces that are digitally controlled, like the Bettermaker stuff and the Raumzeitmaschine from Tegeler Audio; I thought those particular pieces of gear were next level, not having to get in there and mess around with manually dialing things in the best you can every time you try to recall a session. When I realized that the Genesys console has the same capabilities, I was just like, “Yeah, that's what the future is going to be, and it's going to speed up the process of working immensely”.
Coming from an in-the-box workflow, did you enjoy that the console allows you to have a tactile experience while mixing and tracking?
I really like the feel of being able to turn the knobs with your hands and get it just right or move the fader exactly where you want it – it's a completely different animal than working in the box. But the Genesys makes it feel very similar in many ways because it makes it so easy and quick.
What drew you to the ATC SCM45A Pro studio monitors?
I had a friend that had a set of those and when I heard them in the studio I thought they sounded really good; I ended up buying them and I have nothing but praise for the ATC speakers. They're truly one of a kind, as far as I can tell. I’ve listened to a lot of monitors, and have owned a handful as well, and these ones are by far the best.
How easy was it to tailor the ATCs to your space?
It was really easy – I just kind of set them up, plugged them in, and they sounded incredible. I pulled up a session, and started mixing! I find that they translate really, really well to other systems. If I do a mix in here, I can feel confident that it's going to translate to other speakers as well, so I don't have to go trying the mixes on different systems. I still do it, but I find myself going in, testing the mix, and being like, ‘That's great!’, rather than having to go back and go: ‘I’ve got to change this and change that’. So yeah, they're remarkable speakers.
Tell us a little more about how you test your mixes, because you create work for varied mediums, like film, TV, and web-based media. Creating a mix that sounds good for all of those formats must be challenging.
Yeah, I try to listen to the mixes at home, and in the car; I have this little Bluetooth boombox thing, and I listen to it on that. I have some Focal monitors as well that I test on.
I have a Bluetooth soundbar that hooks up to my TV, so I'll pull it up from my phone onto that speaker and play it from that – as many different sources as I can. But since having the ATCs, most of that's not even necessary anymore.
It must be important to have monitors that give you an accurate, almost flat reading of the sound, right?
Yeah, that’s right. There are probably monitors out there that sound better because they hype the sound, but these ones are just totally flat and I think that's why they translate so well across everything. I also have Sonarworks installed on my computer, so that helps the process too.
What is the imaging like on the ATCs?
It’s interesting, the sounds are really separated, but they also blend together in a nice, pleasing way. I don't know how else to say it… You get a sense of where everything is in the mix and it's separated, but then when it hits you, it all comes together and it sounds just like it's supposed to, I guess.
How do the ATCs work for client presentations where you have to really crank up the music a lot, I’m guessing?
Yeah, they want me to turn the music up all the way. [Laughs] And everybody's been happy with them; all my clients have been blown away by the ATCs.
I'm also working on setting up a Dolby Atmos mixing room in here, so that should be up and running over the next few months. I haven't got it all set up totally, I’m currently mixing in 5.1 but I'm going to buy the Dolby Atmos upgrade for the Genesys console. I saw that last year at NAMM and it looks pretty cool; I haven't pulled the trigger on that yet but I can't wait to get my hands on it.
You can mix at a pretty low volume with the ATCs and get a good sense of the sound, right?
Yeah, I tend to mix at really low levels and I find that helps a lot with ear fatigue.
Especially if you’re mixing a lot of cues back-to-back, mixing low is good for your ears.
Yeah, it's pretty quiet in here until I get a client who wants me to crank it up. [Laughs]
What do you think of the low-end response of the ATCs?
It’s great! I have a sub that I don't use because the ATCs are just that good. I use it when I'm doing 5.1 mixes, but if I'm just doing a stereo mix, I don't need the sub at all. It just sort of gets in the way, kind of muddies things up a little bit having the sub in there, so the low-end response from just the monitors themselves really works perfectly in my room.
What was it like working with Vintage King and Patrick Carpenter during the studio upgrade?
Patrick is great! He's incredibly helpful, and his knowledge, expertise, and professionalism made the studio upgrade really easy. I couldn't hope for a better VK rep. He’s awesome, he should get a raise!
Take us through the setup you use to compose for picture.
For composing to picture, I use Pro Tools. I import the footage, figure out some kind of tempo map, load Kontakt or whatever virtual instrument I plan to start with, and just kind of get to work composing. I have two Lynx Aurora(n) interfaces and I’ve got one of those Mac Studio computers, so that’s basically my setup. I have a Novation Launchkey MIDI controller keyboard, nothing special, but it gets the job done, and I have one of those ROLI Seaboards as well.
What's it like, integrating all of this gear with the console?
It's easy and as far as using the other outboard gear with the console, I’m just going through the patchbays – I run the wires through and then I select the insert on the console and I've got whatever compressor or EQ I want to use on there, if I don't want to use the one on the console.
However, the ones on the console are amazing so I find myself not really reaching for external EQs and compressors. When I'm mixing on the console, I just tend to use the ones in there and they sound great.
You’re wearing two hats at the same time – composing, and tracking while composing.
[Laughs] Yeah, I'm in here doing it all myself. It’s just a part of what I do, I don't really think about it much.
What is the key difference between creating music for picture, and creating a standalone piece of music, from a gear/workflow perspective?
For me, the difference between the workflow on a standalone piece of music as compared to writing something for a piece of film is, with a standalone piece of music, there's not a director that has a specific idea of what they want and they haven't given me pages of notes; I don't really have to take anyone else's opinions into account. I can kind of just do what I do and get it done. But with composing for film, there's a lot of other stuff that comes into play in terms of what they're looking for, what kind of instrumentation they want, and that can change things pretty drastically.
Technically, when writing for film, you’ve got to really map it out and know where you're going, how you're going to end things, and how to change the tone to reflect what's happening in the scene so that it flows naturally… I'm very intuitive with it, I just get to work and start doing it. I don't tend to think about it a lot, I just kind of make it happen.
When I've done films in the past, usually it's very similar to how the Honest Trailers work was, where they take so much time making the movie, and then at the end, they're like, “Okay, now it's time for music!” [Laughs] You have two weeks to write 90 minutes of music, so I get them a draft of it in a week so they can go through it and give me notes on what to change. It gets real hectic real quick, so you’ve got to just try to get it done before the deadline.
And you have to export hundreds of cues!
Yeah, and there's a lot of mixes for each cue as well. I’m working on a library now, where I've done somewhere in the neighborhood of 3000-3500 cues at this point. It's a library for a bunch of TV shows, where they can just choose whatever they want to use. I just try to write as much as I can; the library is kind of a numbers game, so I get a lot of music in there and they have a lot to choose from and hopefully they pick some of mine. It’s been working out pretty well for me.
That's a lot of mixes!
Yeah, and for each one of those there are 5 to 10 different variations of mixes featuring different elements of the track.
One without percussion, one without vocals… things like that?
Yeah, exactly.
The post-production workflow is completely different from when you’re making an album, for example, isn’t it?
Yeah! I just start working every day, doing as much as I can.
How do you feel about plug-ins?
I love plug-ins! I just bought some UAD plug-ins around Christmas time; they were having a sale so I bought 15 different ones. I got the 1176 collection and they have a vintage instrument called the Waterfall B3 Organ – I really like that one. I've been testing them out and I'm really enjoying them.
Being a drummer, what are some of your favorite mics on drums?
I have a bunch of different mics on the drums and I like all of them! [Laughs] I really like the AKG D 12 kick mic; I have some beyerdynamic M 160 ribbon mics as overheads; I got some Neumann KM 184s for the ride cymbal and hi-hat; an AKG 414 under the snare; an RE20 on the floor tom, Sennheiser MD 421 on rack tom; and an SM57 on the snare. I like all those microphones; they sound pretty good.
What's a typical day in the studio like for you?
I wake up in the morning, roll into the studio, start firing up the gear, and just start composing. I try to get going pretty quickly and knock out a handful of cues – just keep it going.
Are you working on any exciting projects right now that you're able to talk about?
There are a couple of things I can't really talk about yet, but I have an original song that I'm also doing a video for. I've been accumulating songs for an album of my own stuff that I'm going to release.
I like to film and edit music videos sometimes as well; I do that just for fun and I recorded a song with a friend recently so we’re making a video for that.
I get bored when I do one thing too much, so TV music, for example, is perfect for me because there's a bunch of things I work on, like travel shows, where they want foreign-sounding music, so I can really try different sounds and do different types of things, and that's fun! It keeps me from getting bored, doing the same old thing all the time.
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