By Randi Altman
Veteran composer Tree Adams has a long list of credits that include television, film, documentaries and more. Just some of his work can be heard in The 100, Californication, The Bronx is Burning, NCIS: New Orleans and, most recently, NCIS Hawai’i.
Composer Tree Adams
The producers of this newest NCIS spinoff brought Adams in early, several months before the show premiered. “They asked me to create some ‘conceptual stage’ cues and themes,” explains Adams. “Working with executive producers Chris Silber, Jan Nash and Matt Bosack, we homed in on a direction together over time. They wanted the music to feel somehow of the region, but there are obviously the requirements of a procedural ,which may bring other elements at times.”
Let’s find out more from Adams…
It must be fun, starting with a clean slate on a new series?
Yes, it’s a great opportunity to get creative and it’s fun to be part of the discovery process with the producers as they are all making it up as we go along. They had me write the main title and end title as well, which was a great opportunity to establish the palette for the score.
Were you asked to give a nod to any of the other NCIS shows?
No. I think, in fact, we are trying to create something original with the music. That said, the format of a procedural like NCIS is going to lend itself to many of the same types of scenes, and thus many of the same types of musical moments: a shootout, a car chase, banter in the squad room, a resolution after they’ve apprehended the perpetrators, etc.
Can you describe the sound of your score? How does it differ from the action to the quiet moments?
The show’s score needs to cover a wide range within the procedural format. For the action moments, we lean heavily on Polynesian percussion instruments like pahu and ipu heke, along with traditional orchestral elements — horns and strings.
For intimate or poignant moments, we’ll use guitar, piano and some local flavors like ukulele, lap steel along with the strings if called for. There’s a lighter, at times quirky, component to the show as well and we’ll often lean on Hawai’ian hand percussion stuff with guitar and these tonal bamboo hits.
You mention some Polynesian instruments. How much does Hawaii and its culture fit into the sound?
From the outset, we wanted to incorporate some of the sound of the region in the score. So, as mentioned, we are infusing a lot of this instrumentation in the palette. To this end, we are working with local musicians there in O’ahu in trying to honor the culture and to incorporate that sound in the procedural format.
It’s always an honor and a pleasure to get to know musicians from different regions and to get to learn about the culture in the process. I had that experience on NCIS: New Orleans as well, and I learned an enormous amount musically and got to make some great friends along the way. So far it has been the same with our adventures in Hawai’i.
Can you talk about your process? How do you begin?
I begin with the script or the cut. I am not tied to a particular instrument from the get-go. I try to get input from the brain trust, whether that’s a director or a showrunner or a group of producers who are kind of leading the creative charge. Then I start looking for something to give me some good footing. Is it a melody? If so, is it on a particular instrument, a rhythmic cadence, a mangled soundscape texture or a synth flavor? Any of these things can be the mechanism for flight.
What about your per-episode process.
As far as the process for scoring each episode goes, I look and I listen to what’s there in the cut in the timeline of my Avid Pro Tools session. I make markers within each cue for where the shifts are happening, where the tension starts, subsides, where things lighten, where new clues are revealed, red herrings appear, etc. Then, if there’s temp music, I listen to see what the intentions are there. What works about it and what doesn’t. I want to do my own thing, but I want to preserve the intentions of whatever process they are going through in editorial, unless they give me a dry cut and let me go off or tell me that the temp is not working. I will try to find places to continue and or develop themes that I’ve been cooking up.
Once I write a cue, I post it for the members of my team to mix prep, which entails bouncing any MIDI, editing anything necessary, conforming to any new pictures and dropping the tracks into our mix template with our standard bussing and routing. Then I may request that certain specific elements are added. We’ll then do score prep, which might entail MIDI takedowns of elements that we are going to record — strings, percussion, horns etc.
Next, we record musicians or send material to musicians to record remotely, get those files into the mix matrix and then it’s time to mix. Either my engineer will mix the show and tag team with me on the console to fine-tune things or I will mix things myself. Finally, we print stems of the individual elements for each cue and deliver it all to the music editor to bring to the dub stage for the final mix.
What instruments and tools do you use throughout?
I use guitars, bass, lap steel, ukulele, ipu heke, pahu, ulili and nose flutes for the Hawai’ian elements. Then I use traditional elements like piano, strings and horns (a mixture of live and samples) as well as various synths and drums I have lying around the studio.
Contemporary scores often have a variety of soundscapes and pulses derived from virtual instruments and, of course, I’ve got tons of that stuff as well. For sample playback, we use Vienna Ensemble Pro on all the workstations in my studio, which are all mirror set-ups of each other. Pro Tools is our main DAW.
How does your process differ, if at all, from a film? Do you have a preference on what you work on?
I like working in all the different formats that I’ve tried: film, TV, documentaries, video games, trailers, commercials, etc. They each have a slightly different flow to them, and it’s fun to change it up now and then. In my experience with film, there’s usually one main creative to please, and that’s the director. I like how streamlined that can be. There’s usually a lot more time to work on it (I’m talking months, not weeks or a week), so that can be nice for experimenting, but it can also mean a lot of rewrites and fishing expeditions.
Composer Tree Adams and his band
In my experience with television, the person in charge is usually the showrunner, who is usually a writer, and the directors usually have less creative input on the score. There are showrunners who like to oversee the music and then there are those who entrust that creative direction to a team that could include any combination of writers, producers and editors. It’s an interesting ocean to navigate. One benefit of the TV format is that there is an airdate. Airdates mean decisions need to be made, and fishing expeditions are day trips because cues need to get approved.
What haven’t I asked that’s important?
I’ve got a funky jam band called Dagnasterpus. We just released our self-titled debut album. You can stream it here.
