Baby Talk: Making Music-and Mayhem-For Rugrats

It was the Whip It video, in 1981, that introduced the band Devo tomainstream America. Moving with quasi-robotic gestures, donning thosestrange red flower-pot-styled hats, and using a bullwhip to systematicallyundress a young woman, it's doubtless the band had some parents of the MTVgeneration scratching their heads. So it's more than a bit ironic that Devoveterans Mark and Bob Mothersbaugh now count America's children as theirprimary audience. It is for the Nickelodeon series Rugrats the brothers domuch of their composing now.

But Devo wasn't why Gabor Csupo, founder of Hollywood's famed Klasky Csupoanimation shop, brought Mark Mothersbaugh aboard. It was while listening toa more experimental Mothersbaugh solo album, Music For Insomniacs: VolumeII, that something clicked for Csupo. "I actually chose a melody from thealbum to be the Rugrats theme song," he remembers. "Mark modified it a bit,but I knew that music was exactly like Rugrats."

While Csupo may be better known for his work in the visual world, the45-year-old Hungarian immigrant has a pretty hip pair of ears. He's a fanof fringe acts like Tricky, Sneaker Pimps, and Portishead. He converted thesecond story of his home into a recording studio. And he even launched tworecord labels, Tone Casualties and Casual Tonalities, aimed at listenerswith more avant-garde leanings.

With West Hollywood's Mutato Musika as home base, Mothersbaugh and composerDennis Hannigan became the Rugrats music team from the inaugural 1990season. These days, with Hannigan having left Mutato and big brother Markfirmly entrenched in the Rugrats feature film, due out Thanksgiving 1998,Bob Mothersbaugh has taken up the weekly duty of adding music to the mayhem.

The younger Mothersbaugh recalls: "All those years I spent in front of theTV, watching cartoons, watching The Three Stooges, all that music soakedinto a portion of my brain. I'd get sugared up watching TV as a little kid;it all stored up there and I'm able to tap it."

Still, cartoon music is not pop music-and he'd be the first to acknowledgethat. "There's no guitar in Rugrats, which is weird for a guitar player,"he says. Luckily, he and his siblings took piano lessons as kids, so he'sable to use keyboards as his launch pad. "It's nice doing it into acomputer; you don't have to be that proficient. You can do the right handpart, then overdub the left hand part." Mothersbaugh relies on Opcode'sStudio Vision Pro. He also has Digidesign's Pro Tools, but points out: "Formost of Rugrats, I just watch and write to the picture, so I don't do a lotof Pro Tools."

Each Monday, Mothersbaugh goes to Klasky Csupo for a spotting session: hewatches the episode and make "copious notes" to himself. "I don't reallyread or write musical notation," he acknowledges. "But I have my own littlemethod. Sometimes the director will hum something, and I'll draw somelittle pictures to remember what he hummed. Computers are so helpful now, Ican play a trumpet part on a keyboard into the computer, twiddle the notesaround until they sound right, then hit a button and it will print it outin musical notation."

Mothersbaugh then returns to Mutato Musika, 3/4-inch dub in hand, where hehas Tuesday and Wednesday to write, commonly turning in 12-hour days (he'llscore the A act of an episode on Tuesday, the B act on Wednesday). OnThursday, Mothersbaugh lays his work to a Tascam DA-88. At 3 p.m. is thebig listening session with Kurt Vanzo, who supervises post sound, theepisode's director, and producer Paul Demeyer. Mothersbaugh then doesrewrites and tightens up cues on Friday, and ships it off to Klasky Csupo.

Although the music in Rugrats often has a busy, multilayered feel, it isnot the product of an ensemble. Instead, it is Mothersbaugh-like a madscientist toiling in his laboratory-who concocts the music from a lot ofimagination and some very convenient technology. He puts two Roland S-760samplers through their paces, and has a nice array of Roland keyboards,both new and vintage.

He recalls: "There was a show where Tommy was a detective, a Sam Spade kindof thing, so of course I brought in a saxophone player. You can't really dothings like saxophone on a sampler. And Mark has come in and sang somevocals, but that's about the only live tracking I can think of."

Mothersbaugh says the samples he's tailored around the kids are all verysimilar-except for Angelica's. "She's older than the other kids, so she hasher own set of sounds. She's very sneaky and manipulative, but she seems tobe kids' favorite. I've been to Klasky Csupo, and I've seen drawings kidshave made of Angelica saying 'You stupid babies!'"

Mothersbaugh laughs at the idea of emulating Carl Stalling, the legendarycomposer of classic Warner Bros. cartoons. He quips: "That's like peopletrying to play guitar like Jimi Hendrix."

Of course, music is just part of the sound behind Rugrats. There is stillthe matter of the pitter-patter of little feet. And that's the burden ofFoley editor Derek Pippert.

On Wednesdays, Pippert begins his weekly journey behind the scenes. Hehires a handful of Foley artists to come to Klasky Csupo. At this point,Pippert's assistant, Maretta Stiles-Cole, has watched a tape of the episodeto note the in and out marks for every footstep, deployment of eachprop-basically anything Derek and company have to bring to life. Pippertthen spends the day recording at Klasky Csupo's studio. "It's actually thesame room we use for dialogue recording," he says. "When you pull up thecarpet, there's some Foley pits in there." Pippert then spends the nextfour days editing and synching up everything he's recorded.

While anything motorized--cars, airplanes-is handled by hard effects editorDerek Vanderhorst, Pippert takes care of footsteps, small props, and smallbody movements. And Rugrats has plenty of small body movements. "Thecharacters are very busy in Rugrats. It's an especially heavy show forFoley."

Csupo submits the philosophy behind the show's naturalistic Foley approach:"Sound design was very important to us from the beginning. We didn't wantit to sound too cartoony, because then it can get too cutesy, too over thetop."

Still, this is animation, and a few liberties can go a long way. Pippertpoints to some specific character traits: "When we first started, we recorded a specific squeak for Chucky's shoes. And that squeak is used for all ofChucky's footsteps, combined with a regular footstep." The characterGrandpa also has a squeak-but a heavier step. "One person walks, and theother person does a leather squeak along with it," Pippert explains. "Theperson walking is watching the videotape, and the person doing thesqueaking is watching the walker."

Whenever the characters Tommy or Lil walk, Pippert has to simulate diapermovement; he employs a real diaper combined with plastic bubble wrap."Tommy is hard because he's barefoot, and it's hard to get the footstepslarge enough when you're barefoot. It kind of hurts if you walk hard.Sometimes when Tommy is on tables and stuff, we'll just use our hands."Pippert will also resort to a "hands-on" technique for Spike, the show'sdog: He'll use bicycle gloves, adorned with press-on fingernails to mock upa dog's paws.

Pippert relies on an AKG 416 and the mic preamp on his console-a SoundcraftSapphire. He records straight into Pro Tools, "which makes it very nice,because I only need about four seconds of preroll on every cue. You have togo back and forth lots of times to get synch right, and if you're waitingeight to 15 seconds for the DA-88 to catch up, it adds up over eight hoursof recording." Pippert also raves about his HD1 reference monitors.

"Rugrats is difficult because the characters don't have the weight a normalperson would have. When they jump down off a chair, sometimes theyjust...float down. And it's really tough to know exactly where to put it.Sometimes I have to go as far as sub-frames, so it won't look like it's outof synch."

Handling dialogue recording is Klasky Csupo's Peter Carlstedt, whosupervised post sound on Duckman, which just wrapped up its fourth season.Carlstedt will actually move on to supervising Rugrats in a few months,succeeding Kurt Vanzo. Carlstedt uses a four-mic setup, depending solely onthe Neumann 87 for its consistency under a wide dynamic range. Carlstedtgoes through the Sapphire board preamps, but says he's shopping around forsomething better, adding, "they clip a little sooner than I'd like themto." He masters to an Otari DTR90 DAT recorder and uses Sony PCM-800 forbackup.

Bringing it all together is Kurt Vanzo, who actually designed and builtKlasky Csupo's downstairs sound studio for Duckman. He gets dialogue,music, hard effects, and Foley all as Pro Tools files. He mixes through aYamaha O2R digital console, which lets him store EQ, compression, and othersettings unique to each character without having to tweak with each newmixdown session. "Probably my hardest character this season is Stu," Vanzoconfides. "The actor, Jack Riley, has a lot of transients in his voice. Ithas a lot of energy and percussion to it. So I have to really compress itor get some decent EQ on it."

"All animation shows realize how important dialogue recording is," he sumsup. "That's the meat and potatoes of the sound, and everything else it justicing."