Apr 1, 2004 12:00 PM, By David John Farinella

He's Gotta Be in Pictures

Composer Paul Hartwig has had a good run. He's amassed a fairly accomplished television spot credit list for companies such as Budweiser, Coca-Cola and Best Buy; he composed 15 primary themes for the Emmy Award — winning short film Grandfather's Birthday; and scored the Sundance Film Festival Award — winning Bearwalker.

Yet, Hartwig is not quite satisfied. Rather than resting on his laurels, or swimming along as the big fish in a small pond, the Minneapolis-based composer is looking forward to working in the feature film world and has opened a Santa Monica, Calif., studio to facilitate the jump. “That's where all the film work is, and really that's where all the TV series are,” he says. “Everything is produced out of L.A. and it's not going away. It's kind of like living in Iowa and wanting to be a downhill skier: There's about one hill and it's four feet high. You can't be far away, regardless of what anyone says. If your director calls and says, ‘I want to talk to you about this cue. I want a meeting on the studio lot tomorrow at one,’ you've got to be there. There's just no substitute to being there.”

To that end, Hartwig is outfitting his facility as a mirror image to the Minneapolis studio where his steady climb from spots to series work to documentaries to features began after Limited Warranty, the band he played with in the '80s, retired. His first gig as a composer was for an image piece for the University of Minnesota. Soon thereafter, he wrote spot music for Minnesota's sports teams — Timberwolves, Twins and Vikings — and for such Minneapolis-based companies as Best Buy, 3M and Target. “There are a lot of those big companies based here, so I got in on the side road doing spot work,” he explains.

Hartwig's share of television work includes a current MGM TV series, and shows for The Learning Channel (Home Savvy) and The Travel Channel (Passport to Design). The cues he writes for the MGM series, he explains, are very action-flavored. “It's analog synth sounds with grinding drums, like the Dust Brothers or the Chemical Brothers,” he says. “It's something that has a little more grit and grime to it, but it's got to fit the picture, so it's not going 80 miles per hour when the picture is going 20. There has to be a connection between the picture and the music. It's more edgy, I think, than your Hallmark special.”

He also composed the score for Poles Apart, a documentary about the 2000 women's expedition to Antarctica led by Minnesota explorer Ann Bancroft, and a handful of shorts including New Boy, Private Eyes and Plasticity: 1.7 Number.

Even as he's looking forward to moving into long-form, Hartwig has fond memories of this early spot and television work. “I remember cranking out spots for Best Buy back in the days when we'd do three in a weekend,” he recalls. “It was insane. You would just kick 'em out as fast as you could, [and] that kind of led into learning how to write really fast and grabbing grooves and bass lines. I use Logic and an EXS sampler and I have racks of gear, so I learned how to access sounds fast. That really helped me in doing TV music because the deadlines are so short.”

In addition to helping him learn how to use equipment, those sessions helped him slip easily between genres. “It enabled me to, when I would sit down to write a cue for a film or something else, switch between classical or jazz or hip hop. I could change styles pretty quickly and easily. That took a long time to learn without getting knocked down and getting bogged down with, ‘Okay, what kind of bass line do I need?’ I think the biggest thing I learned was to write and then produce it. A lot of people get stuck with a bass sound and spend half a day on a bass sound and then forget the idea that they were trying to write.”

During those dates, he also learned that it was easier to write the theme last. “I do that because I get to know the project more, and the theme is supposed to give the feeling to the whole piece,” he reports. “If you write a chase scene, I don't know that you're going to put in the thematic line.”

While he learned to write faster, that didn't mean things came easily, he admits with a laugh. “I was doing a TV campaign for United Way for Xcel Energy, and — my client will kill me for saying this — it was 10 minutes before the vocal session and I still hadn't written the lyrics. I was freaking out wondering how I was going to do it and then it just kind of came to me. I had a general understanding and a bunch of lines and words, but five minutes before, it just hit.”

Along the way, technology has assisted Hartwig. He's moved up from a Commodore 64, which he used for the first University of Minnesota image piece, to such stalwarts as Emagic Logic Audio and Digidesign Pro Tools MIXPlus. While he has a Yamaha C3 grand piano at home for classical music cues, he mainly relies on keyboards and samplers such as Roland V-Synth, Roland VX 5050, Roland Super JV, a Proteus 2000, Waldorf Micro Q, Morpheus Z-Plane, E-mu EIV and Korg M3R, among others.

Studio A in Minneapolis is run through a Yamaha 02R console and an Emagic Logic Control. The Pro Tools MIXPlus system — an upgrade to HD is on the horizon — is stocked with a hearty assortment of plug-ins running the gamut from Waves to Bomb Factory to IK Multimedia AmpliTube.

Inside of Logic, Hartwig relies on a bevy of instruments including Emagic's ES2 and EXS 24, Native Instruments' Vokator and the Virus Indigo plug-in. “I used to have Sample Cell, but the EXS is just fabulous for being able to grab anything I need and have it sound great in Logic,” he explains. A wide variety of sample libraries from the Vienna String Library to a Hans Zimmer nylon guitar are stored in six 120-gig FireWire hard drives. “If I have a Hans Zimmer — sampled nylon guitar and I can play it and then give it to a guitar player, that's so much easier than bringing in a guitar player and singing it and having them figure it out.

“I write on piano, score it out and then assign instruments,” he continues. “Then I bring in session players, depending on budget, to play it. A lot of times, I had to just bring in one or two players and just get it out as quick as I could because the deadlines are so short.”

Although feature deadlines aren't much better, Hartwig is looking forward to expanding his musical base. “I love working with orchestral arrangements and having the diversity of doing an orchestral piece and then turning around and doing a grinding piece or a chase scene that is very tonal, and then do another piece that is very simple with piano and yet have that same dramatic feel. I think spot work is fabulous, but it's fun to stretch and do longer work,” he reports. “I think that's my big motivator right now.”

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