Berklee today is the official alumni publication of Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. It is a forum for contemporary music and musicians.
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ExpErt tEstimony Given by movie trailer composer Robert Etoll '73 to Mark Small Rumbles, pulses, and orchestral sweeps Robert Etoll If you ever watch TV or go to the movies, you've heard music and sound design elements created by Robert Etoll as he ratchets up the impact of a movie trailer or a TV promo spot. Cues from his Q-Factory Music catalog have fueled the advertising campaigns for such boxoffce favorites as Man of Steel, Oblivion, The Lone Ranger, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, and countless others. As well, promos for TV shows such as Sons of Anarchy, Breaking Bad, Zero Hour, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. have also drawn cues from Etoll's catalog. For the past two decades, personnel at major movie and TV studios in Hollywood have regarded Etoll as the go-to guy for custom cues and for licensing music and sound design. If a trailer calls for an orchestral fourish for an adventure flm, metal guitar chords and heavy percussion for actionflled thrillers, or lighter fare for a romantic comedy, Etoll's Q-Factory has it. Originally from Troy, NY, Etoll burnished his guitar playing, composing and arranging skills at Berklee before heading to Los Angeles. While pure musical imagination is the focal point in many of his cues, it's his work with sound design elements that has many in the business crediting him with altering the sound of contemporary trailers. His copyrighted swishes, pulses, rises, rumbles, and percussive noise montages add power to the onscreen action. Currently Etoll's catalog has 33 volumes, and three more are in production (visit www.robertetoll.com). How did your path lead to writing music for movie trailers? After fnishing at Berklee, I was playing with a band all around the East Coast. When the band broke up, I wanted to take things to another level. I didn't want to go to New York City. So, in 1976, I moved to L.A. to look for work as a session or touring guitarist. I got lucky when I started working with [drummer] Alphonse Mouzon. He was looking for an educated rocker who could play over various rhythms and chord changes. His group was playing at European festivals. That was great for me because I got to meet a lot of my musical heroes from the jazz world. I was also getting some session work, and I started to notice that the songwriters and producers were making more money than the players. I started to write some songs. I'd been playing tennis with [artist manager] Irving Azoff and got to show him one of my songs. He said it would be a good song for [producer] Richard Perry. I got 34 Berklee today together with Richard and played it for him. He liked it and was producing the Pointer Sisters at the time. They also liked it, and it ended up on their album. In the late 1980s, I was signed as a staff writer to Warner/Chappell Music and, later, with MCA. The Pointer Sisters, Reba McEntire, and a lot of international artists were cutting my songs. At the same time, I was scoring lower-budget flms, and one of the directors was also an editor for movie trailers. He liked my work and asked me to write a 30-second TV spot for The Godfather Part III. Everyone at the studio liked it and I started getting calls for more music. So I got into scoring movie trailers in the early 1990s. Back then it was all work for hire. Later I retained the rights to what I'd written. When did you realize that your work for trailers could be licensed for other projects? I didn't start licensing my music until around 1998 or 1999. By then, I'd written special scores for more than 300 trailers and TV spots. When I was writing these scores, I realized that I should compile everything I owned. I began licensing the old material and writing new stuff for a catalog. That's when I realized that licensing was a whole different business. My smartest move was talking to the editors, music supervisors, and producers because they would tell me what they needed. They didn't have enough sound design elements: hits, swishes, and other sounds. They wanted something to create impact in their trailers. I was willing to spend months creating these sounds and putting them on discs to get them out there. At frst, people wanted to treat them like sound effects that they could just buy outright. I stood my ground and told them that they had to license them from me. After about a year and a half, the licensing for my sound design elements really kicked in. There were three components to them: sound design, percussion, and rises. Editors didn't have enough trailer rises, and I caught that at just the right time. Some have called you a trailblazer for sound design in contemporary trailer music. Well, I didn't invent trailer music like Henry Ford didn't invent the car. But he was able to fgure out a way get them out there. I made these sounds available in a package format. The whole key to this business is accommodating the editors, knowing what they need. I was able