THE WARPED MUSIC OF ‘MAD MEN’
‘Mad Men’, an AMC series wrapping up its first season this week, is one you may have heard good things about. All true and understated, but that’s not what this post is about. It’s about the music.
What you’ll notice about ‘Mad Men’ is its authenticity. The production design, wardrobe and styling of the actors is so true to the show’s era (1960, Madison Avenue), every thing and everyone in the show seems to be actual vintage, as if locked away to later amuse theatrical audiences of the future. True to the era, every thing and everyone has a hue of smoke, a soft haze that makes it all go down a bit easier. If the story doesn’t engage you, the visuals are hard not to notice.
But to completely round out the sense of time travel, the music of ‘Mad Men’ has what its composer, David Carbonara calls on his site ‘period elements’. Typically, this could be understood as strictly musical elements: instrumentation and arrangment specific to the era. But in this case, to maintain period aesthetic, it crosses the line into the subtle and obscure territory of post-production, which is the part that fascinates me.
I was curious about the music of ‘Mad Men’, having noticed, a few episodes in, that it seemed to be playing back a bit warped, distorted or out of tune, as if on a turntable going in and out of sync. This would, in fact be the sound of a recording of the era, played back on the optical analog track of a film or from analog magnetic tape. In 2007, nearly everything in audio is digital, but until a short time ago, only the analog soundtrack of a film was physically printed onto the film itself, right next to the picture. The slightest variation in the speed of the projector would be magnified in the music, especially in the higher registers where the ear can detect more subtle changes in pitch. This nuance, like the grain of the film itself, became part of the aesthetic and language of film, if an unintended byproduct.
So it makes sense that to recreate the emotional response of an audience of the day, the filmmakers would employ a technique to recreate the imperfection of the mastering of the music.
There is no reason to believe that the show’s actual music would be recorded or mastered on vintage analog equipment to reproduce the archival degradation. It’s not cost-effective and I don’t think anyone but the most dedicated aficionado would attempt that. But David Carbonara is, in fact a longtime music editor in addition to being a composer. So he would be of the mindset to use the digital technology available to him to, at the end of his production pipeline, apply digital effects to warp his music before its being mixed with the rest of the audio (which can’t, from a composer’s standpoint, be very easy to do, emotionally). This is speculation, but I think this what the makers of the show have done. And with varying degrees of success, it actually works to set the viewer back in 1960.
Articificially aging media is not a new psychological tactic to authors of media. Even iPhoto has a sepia effect to make your photos old-timey. Visual effects in post-production are often finished by applying artificial film grain to unnaturally sharp imagery. For the most part, these tricks go unnoticed by the viewer. ‘Mad Men’ has taken this concept and expanded it in a way that’s not often seen or heard. And in that way, ‘Mad Men’ is innovative, and innovation is awesome.
