By Patrick Birk

For decades, Larry David has been delivering cynical takes on the most seemingly inconsequential minutia life has to offer, first with NBC’s Seinfeld and then with HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm.

David stars as a fictionalized version of himself, alongside Cheryl Hines, Jeff Garlin, Susie Essman, JB Smoove and Ted Danson. Season 11’s major plot points included Larry’s attempts to avoid a lawsuit after his assistant accused him of sexual harassment — of course, a Larry-like misunderstanding — and his plan to open a coffee shop, Latte Larry’s, directly next door to his nemesis, Mocha Joe’s. He calls it his “spite store.”

This improvisational comedy has only a bare outline to go on, so I had to wonder: How does the post team manage to make even one scene cohesive? As a sound designer, I know that even on a tightly scripted piece, achieving a natural, well-balanced dialogue edit is a challenge.

Not long ago I had the opportunity to speak with re-recording mixer Earl Martin (Dave, Who is America, Teen Wolf), supervising sound editor Matt Taylor (Star Trek: Picard, Barry) and supervising sound editor Sean Heissinger (Star Trek: Picard, Silicon Valley) — who worked out of Formosa West in Santa Monica for the past two seasons — via a Zoom video call. The trio was kind enough to explain how to sound design a show when the script goes out the window, in addition to fielding my many questions about Larry David, the man and the character.

What is the dialogue editing process on such a heavily improvised show? How have you managed to get the flow so seamless?
Earl Martin: Years of practice. I’ve been on the show since the first episode, so there was a bit of a learning curve in the beginning with so many people talking at once. Also, with no script, when you want to find alternate takes, there’s rarely an option, so you have to just make it work. A lot of trial, error and getting creative.

Obviously, we have to do some looping at times to help things out. Fortunately, Larry’s a master looper — one of the best. He knows exactly how he delivered things in the past, and he can just hear something and repeat it. If he wants to replace it identically, or if he wants to add in something else, he’s great at that too. That’s made the process much easier.

Matt Taylor: He actually does the ADR on the mix stage, after he’s watched Earl’s mix and decides what lines he thinks he needs to do.

Martin: We always have a booth and a mic ready for anything that he wants to either fix or replace, or just improve.

Has the advent of things like EQ matching and noise reduction made your lives considerably easier, given how few alternates there are?Martin: Absolutely. That’s a big deal. Especially since they’re not working off a script, so they’re not even necessarily in the same placement or blocking through a scene. They shoot so much on location, so you have all kinds of different background noises and things like that.

They might not get what they want, so they’ll shoot another day, and the environmental ambience changes. So, again, it’s all those matching things and noise reduction. iZotope dialogue cleanup tools have been a complete lifesaver. Also using the Cedar noise reduction to smooth things out and Fab Filter ProQ3’s EQ matching in there. All that stuff has been so invaluable.

Sean Heissinger: Early, sitting on the stage with you last season opened my eyes to iZotope De-bleed. You’ll have one take where the other character’s dialogue is starting to overlap at the end of it but then they switch to another take that doesn’t have the overlap, so you’ve got to get rid of that somehow.

The Curb audio post team during a mix: Matt Taylor, Earl Martin and Sean Heissinger are pictured L-R.

Martin: Yeah, it’s amazing when it works. It’s one of those things where it just makes you so happy because it just makes all the difference. We’ve also started using Soundradix Auto-Align Post. It was a huge savior this last season. When that came out, that was pretty amazing. It lets you take 8 or 10 mics and, basically, have them all be phase accurate with each other. To be able to take a whole block of tracks and line them up instantly is amazing. It’s not always perfect, but it’s pretty close. That gave me the option to mix in the boom with the lavs to give it a more natural sound and a little more of a room tone.

What do you use to place ADR?
Martin: I’d usually use Altiverb, but I found the dialogue match was really great for auditioning. When we would shoot some ADR, you could test it by matching the production sound.

How do you handle the screaming on the show? Between Larry, Susie and Jeff, it seems like a lot of level management.
Martin: In any of those situations, we’re always going to try and use as much dynamic range as we’re allowed. Obviously, it’s a big challenge for the production mixer in the scenes where they are really screaming — making sure the mics aren’t getting blown out.

Sometimes they do get blown out, but that’s also the advantage of having several people right there at the same time. If Susie’s screaming at Jeff, her mic might get blown out, but she’s standing right in front of Jeff, and thanks to their height differences, she sounds good in his mic. So often, you’re relying on that, you’re switching between booms and lavs a lot.

With this show in general, there’s just a lot of mic switching because of how they have to shoot — boom placement isn’t always ideal. Probably one of the most creative editing spots in Curb is what mics we choose from shot to shot, take to take.

What is the sound department’s relationship with the picture editors like? What are interdepartmental relationships like in general?
Martin: Typically, the editor will come to the mix and offer insights. We usually go through and do a pre-mix before Larry comes. We’ll do a day of mixing with producer Megan Murphy and sometimes Steve Rasch will come to that. They’ll give us a list of desirable things that they want in the mix, if possible, or give us some notes about what their intentions were with a particular edit or scene. Everyone is trying to get the best product we can.

Taylor: When I came onto the show, I realized how tight everybody was after eight seasons. Everyone trusts each other. That was passed on to Sean and I, which made us feel welcome.

Heissinger: It’s really cool to see how much fun they still have. Sitting next to Larry watching an episode, and he’s just belly laughing at the jokes. It’s a really fun atmosphere to be in.

Taylor: One person I also wanted to also mention is Megan Murphy. She’s the co-producer on the show, and she and Earl made the decision to bring Sean and I on. She’s a great person to work with. She encourages a productive yet healthy and fun environment.

Martin: She’s always making sure the show is right. Our mantra is, “check it, check it, check it.” We’re going to make sure everything’s good, everything’s right. But she’s also very cognizant of the work environment and how people are being treated. It’s really just a beautiful balance.

How has the post sound processed changed on this show from the first season to now, if at all? To what extent, if any, was Larry David involved?
Martin: I think they had a little more of a raw sound in the beginning. The style of the show was groundbreaking back then; Larry wanted it to have an almost documentary feel.

Over the years, just from listening to how it aired, they had decided to bring some of the more “raw” elements down and smooth things out a little bit. Over time, as the show has gotten more popular, we’ve gotten a better budget.

In the first season we didn’t even have Foley, so it was literally me and Megan Murphy setting up a mic and saying, “Okay, well, we need something here.” There’s a scene where Larry is trying to outrun a young woman to an office door, and he had to fall down and wrestle with her, so we had to make all kinds of sounds for that. Or their running sound, so we would just add in little things like.

So, for the next season, we were like, “All right, we have to have some Foley,” so we got a budget for that. We added a loop group in Season 9, and Matt’s been brilliant at directing that and getting it cut for us. It’s made a huge difference.

Taylor: Sean and I came on for Season 9, so we have a whole eight seasons to actually lean upon. But for this season, it seemed like they were having more specific moments where they needed group in specific spots.

It’s pretty much just like any other show: we have a spotting session and Larry and [showrunner] Jeff Schaffer will talk about what they need. Sean or I will cue the show, and then we’ll just go and loop. We usually have about four, depending, maybe six people in the loop. I think the largest session we did was for the Revolutionary War reenactment episode. Group is one of those things that you’ll subconsciously notice when it’s not in the mix. It’s always a nice layer to have.

What are some of the most fun design challenges you’ve had on the show?
Martin: One of the earliest ones that really stuck out to me was in Season 5 when Larry had squeaky orthotics. We spent a lot of time trying to get the squeaks right, and then also with Foley. Our Foley artist Ed Steidele was really good at getting Larry’s walk down in a certain way. You don’t notice it really, other than it comes off as funny, but we really went around and around getting the sound of that shoe squeak right so it was funny and not annoying.

Larry doesn’t like things to be cartoony. He wants to play things real, because if it actually sounds real it’s funnier.

Taylor: For the musical at the end of Season 9, we recorded all of that Foley, all of them stomping around on the stage during the show, all of the props and stuff. We got all the original dancers back at that stage and recorded them doing the routine. As Earl was saying, that sounds natural. This isn’t really a comedy moment, but it just elevates the show.

Martin: As far as the comedy stuff goes, Sean cut all the stomach gurgle sounds when Larry and Leon are eating the diarrhea-inducing licorice in Season 10. I remember the first time I heard it just being in tears. It absolutely enhanced the dialogue I’d cut.

In Season 9, when Larry and Funkhauser’s nephew are trying to open the pickle jar in Season 9. You wouldn’t even notice it, but it’s those little sounds that really emphasize stuff. In Season 10, it’s things like the wobbly table and the blow-up doll.

It seems like a delicate balance to strike, getting something comedic without going too cartoonish.
Heissinger: Right, and also not getting in the way of the comedy that’s already there.

Taylor: Comedy is so subjective. It’s also about dialing in what clients find funny and learning what they like. Because some people might love huge, cartoonish and super-loud Foley, but others just want subtle things.

Before I let you guys go, I need to know. Does Larry say “pre-tty, pre-tty, pre-tty” in real life?
Martin: He does. He would joke, too, that the guy on screen, that’s the real Larry David, it’s the fake one you meet in real life.

Patrick Birk is a musician, sound engineer and post pro at Silver Sound, a boutique sound house based in New York City.