Behind the Muzyxx

This is Sea Red IT5, Credits and Attributions Joyed, with a special announcement.

Mission2Z is returning to the Bellhouse in Brooklyn for a series finale spectacular, April 10th at 2 p.m.

Join us for an all-new live episode.

Special guests and glorious prizes as we prepare to bid this crazy show farewell.

Get tickets at thebellhouseny.com or missiontozix.space.

Hey everybody, Alden Ford here.

Hey, it's Seth.

Hey, Shane.

Yes, the triumvirate of cool.

We are hard at work on sewing up our last

moments of season five and Mission to Zix itself.

And so we thought this would be a good opportunity for us to sort of give everyone a little bit of fun BTS content.

And one of the unsung heroes of the show is a person who has been with us since the beginning.

I wouldn't say like Justin Balweet, but he's one of those guys who

is an OG member of the crew, and he doesn't get enough time

on the actual podcast.

Yeah, and he's not just screaming that stuff is gross from his room.

Yes, he's also not an angsty teenager.

But he and I go way back.

We've worked together for many years.

He was the first person I thought of when we needed to come up with some music for our show.

And that, of course, is our intrepid composer, Brendan Ryan, is here.

And we're going to talk a little bit about how the show came together from a musical standpoint and how it continues to evolve and grow and become more and more crazy and ambitious.

Hi, Brendan.

Hi, guys.

How are you?

Hey.

Just terrific.

Happy to have you here.

One of the things we had talked about as sort of an inspiration for this this particular episode is a terrific podcast that we all really love called Song Exploder.

Such a good show.

And if you don't know it, Song Exploder is a podcast hosted by Trishi Case-Hearway.

And in it, musicians deconstruct one of their songs and take it apart piece by piece where you'll hear original demos, individual instruments, pulled out the story of the songs.

And I often come out of it caring about a musician or song that I didn't at all.

Yeah.

So we thought thought it would be fun to sort of do a Song Exploder style kind of breakdown of some of Brendan's music on the show throughout the years, kind of how it's evolved from the original themes and the original approach that we took and kind of break apart some of the songs and talk about individual instrumentations and stuff.

And I think it's going to be really fun.

And unlike Song Exploder, it's not going to be short.

or incredibly elegantly produced like they do, where they cut out all of the interview questions and it just sounds like this musician is in a dark room speaking from their heart.

We're just going to leave all of Alden and Shane and me in there.

Yeah, just goofing off.

Yep.

But by way of kind of getting into this, I just want to introduce Brendan and sort of talk about his background a little bit.

Actually, you know what?

If we're going to do sort of the Song Explorer thing, maybe we should have

Rishi Kesh Hirway introduce Brendan as only Rishikesh Hiraway can do.

Wouldn't that be awesome?

Yeah.

Brendan Ryan is a composer and musician from Katona, New York.

He's a self-taught guitar player, and his high school rock band 10 Feet Deep played the New York City Club Circuit through the early 2000s, opening for major pop acts.

Brendan went on to study composition and orchestration at Manhattanville College, where he got a BFA in music performance.

Later, he studied film scoring with veteran composer John Lissauer.

In this episode, Brendan breaks down how he made the Mission to Zix theme, from its origins through its various iterations, as well as the show's orchestral transitions.

Wow.

Rishigesh.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Rishikesh.

Hope that was accurate, Brendan.

Yeah.

By the time I was 17, I had, I actually was opening for Justin Timberlake and Avril Levine at Hammerstein Ballroom with my band, with my band 10 Feet Deep.

I played lead guitar.

Yeah,

we entered into this nationwide contest with Teen People magazine where like I guess high school bands submitted songs and we were selected as a finalist.

Long story, but that was an amazing experience and we basically played the New York City Club Circuit pretty frequently and in my time with that I had opened for a bunch of bands like Rusted Root and Gin Blossom.

So we're doing the song and splitter on that song, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So how did the bass line come together on that?

Yeah, right, right.

But that ended up coming and going.

And out of college, I was asked to score a movie.

I said, yeah, sure, I'll do it.

I don't know anything about doing this, but I'll give it a shot.

And

Alden happened to be one of the main characters in the movie, and he played like such an asshole in this movie.

It was like,

I mean, I spent probably four or five months scoring this film and watching Alden do the most dickish and asidine things imaginable.

So when Alden approached me after the movie, it was such a shock because here was this guy who was expecting to be like this character in this film and instead he's like the character's name was Alden.

They changed the name of the character from like Jeff to Alden because they thought it was a funny name.

So the character is Alden and I'm like doing all this insane shit.

Well, that's much more of an asshole name.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

So anyway.

From there, I hit it off with Alden.

Yeah.

Well, you know, it's funny because when we started doing Mission of Zix, the reason I immediately thought of you, Brendan, was not only that you're you're very talented, but I was like, you're the kind of person who like you go that extra mile that is what I wanted to do on the show.

For me, the thing I'm proudest of about Mission to Zix

is that all of us really feel the same sort of drive to make the show not only as good as it can be, but like ludicrously ambitious with how we make the show and like have all these insanely lofty goals.

And so not only was, you know, when I asked you to do the show, I I knew that you were going to go all out on the music and make something that was really a great theme for a great sci-fi property, not just like a funny sci-fi podcast.

But also, I knew that, like, if this ever gets to be something else, that if we ever have the money to do more, that there's no ceiling for what you're able to do.

Brendan was working with the crew before I joined up with you all.

And in the process of me, like, at the time, mixing the first episode for fun, or at least what I thought was was just going to be for fun.

Oh, you fool!

There will be no fun.

We got the first versions of Brendan's music, and that sort of changed the whole way I personally thought about the show.

Like, hearing Hissophos, like, oh, so they're actually going for it, trying to make something great.

And it made me think about it.

Yeah, none of our telefactors, none of our performances

gave you that.

None of our performances gave you that impression.

No comment.

But yeah, it caused me to change the way I approached it.

Trying to match

his level.

Oh.

Well, I would love to hear about the origin of the original theme.

Like, just what were the first demos like?

I think this was just an exchange between Brandon and Alden.

You know, I didn't know anything about any characters, I don't think.

But he just essentially said it's going to be along the lines of Star Wars, Star Trek.

So the next generation was my main original starting point for me.

So the first thing that I came up with was not too far from that.

It's very jaunty.

It's a shocking departure from what we ended up going with or where it morphed into.

Still still slaps after all these years.

Yeah.

Well, you know, it's so funny because

if you're listening to this episode and you're caught up with the show, you may recognize that version of the theme because we actually used it in 510, the episode that started from the perspective of the sort of next generation y crew.

Right.

So, we actually had Brendan kind of retool that original theme and have it be part of the 510 crawl.

Bring them anywhere they'd like to go.

Yeah, so there, there I actually had the theme sort of basically right, the main bam, bum, bam, da-da-da-da.

You know, but when I finally got jeremy's voiceover for the crawl um jeremy crutchley that's right hearing his voiceover for me has always been such a like

oh man it really sort of transports me i've had many instances where i've had music that i just basically canned because I wanted to hear Jeremy more.

And

there was this notion of the Federated Alliance, and we wanted to try and give them a musical representation in some way.

So we were discussing a march of some kind.

And I came up with the main percussion.

It's just very monotonous.

You know, that typical thing that you hear.

The undercredit music now.

The undercredit music, yeah, exactly.

And

I was writing it to the narration as I got towards the end of the voiceover, where we were going to have, you know, a little musical cue to sort of kick off the show.

What happened actually is I was playing around with a French horn cue,

a French horn sound.

It was a very sort of boisterous sound, and it was something like:

here, let me get something sort of akin to that here.

And um, and just with me doing that,

that was when I realized that I could do the theme in a bombastic, you know, explosive manner that was not at all like the dexterous, flighty version that I had done before.

And so, that was basically it.

Just that one lucky, you know, afternoon landing on a French horn sound that just kind of kicked off that direction.

I love that first theme, and it's so fun and like so next generation-y, but like, there is something about the newer one, like it just clicks and it just starts working, and you're like, okay, now it's it feels like the show, right?

Yeah, you said that last one, it's like that's it, and like that's the thing.

It basically didn't change for two seasons, Yeah.

And we still use that original intro crawl for our credits to this very day.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I, I'm sure Shane can relate.

There's, there are moments when you're writing music where something just clicks and it just, it just works and you don't even have to think about it when you're writing it.

It just sort of flows out.

And that's what happened.

And, you know, Because of that, I didn't want to mess with it too much.

I liked the idea of doing new versions of the theme for each season, but I also didn't want to go too far away from that original concept.

Well, it's so emotional.

I mean, it's like the first time we did live shows where we played it in a room full of people when it just like swells and it just people, I don't think they're planning to like cheer in the dark, but like there's sort of like spontaneous applause because it's because I think people, it's like emotional to hear that huge swell of orchestral music, even before there was a real orchestra.

So, yeah.

Well, Brendan, can you talk a little bit about the kind of tweaks you do try to make from season to season without messing with it too much?

One of the things, for example, I think on season two, you kind of took the marchiness out of the theme because you were like, well, they're not in the Federated Alliance anymore, so there's no reason for there to be that like done, dun, dun, dun, dun, because you're like, it's not an imperial march anymore.

They're with the good guys now, so it could be the same theme, but we're taking that snare drum out, which I thought was so cool.

Are those differences things that you just think musically are more interesting, or do they always have like a plot or emotional component to them when you make those changes?

There's almost always a plot-related motivation, and it usually, again, comes through the crawl narration that Jeremy Crutchley gives us, you know, what you've written.

Honestly, a lot of the time, I'm improvising over Jeremy's lines, and that's where a lot of it just comes from.

I will find a very

simple sample that I can use.

Usually it's either a piano or I'll use like cellos, for instance, frequently because they have a lot of range.

You know,

you know,

I can just improvise something, you know, if it's if it's supposed to be dark,

you know, or

something heroic might be more major sounding.

And do you try to fold that into the main theme portion as well, or is that just

tweaking that you sort of do to kind of add something new to it each time?

There is a ton of going back and

tweaking.

So you're George Lucas singing the theme every season.

Yeah, basically.

Special edition every year.

I feel like I've stopped at this point.

But no, I mean, that's the fun thing, the music that I love, I love music that's very complex and has a lot of range.

And, you know, one of the pillars of Western music is essentially the idea of taking a musical motif and then using that motif to build off of itself.

So like Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, the dun-dun-dun-dun, you know, just those are two notes and that rhythm,

he builds the entire movement just off of that.

You know, just moving it around and placing it here and there.

And so,

you know, my much more humble theme is,

you know,

I've had

an an immeasurable amount of fun

reharmonizing it, putting it through all sorts of, you know, different wacky iterations.

Many of them don't even see the light of day.

I have a version.

Oh, I got to try and find it now.

It's like in a sexy 80s Sacks version.

What are these feelings I'm having?

I don't know.

I feel weird now.

I think I was playing.

I was probably like replaying Final Fantasy VII or something.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

We could have had a whole storyline where Bino plays saxophone.

Look, it goes into minor.

I'm doing a minor version now.

Very good.

All right, so anyway, it just keeps going, I guess.

I don't know.

And Shane has gotten to do that too with ringtones.

The Zix theme.

The Zix theme has appeared so many times.

I try to incorporate it into any episode music I do.

Chan's ringtone.

Yeah, I know.

I love it.

My surf theme at

T Chi's TQ Bar.

Yeah,

I'm doing the Dick Dale guitar style of the theme.

Very fun.

And Torto Troopers.

Torto Troopers.

Torto Troopers Assemble!

Torto Troopers Assemble!

And the um

the worm music too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Have you heard the mu have you heard 518, Brendan?

What the the do oh my god.

Yeah, that was amazing.

Yeah.

I got very lucky that the female singer like sample pack that I downloaded, it just happened to have a phrase that was like a version of the theme melody in G harmonic minor.

I was like, oh, this is great.

This is so easy.

I just had to edit it a little bit.

Oh, my gosh, that's amazing.

Yeah.

I was really convinced that was just you pitched way up.

I wish.

I really thought it was too.

That's funny.

I tried.

Yeah.

It had a little bit of a shame to it.

Yeah, there was a little shame to it.

That's funny.

So, Brendan, could you give us an example of how you compose to the content of the crawl?

Well, I have my mock-up for 501

right here.

Let me just.

Oh, that's cool.

The situation has been grim since Hot Beano's self-sacrificial destruction of the All Wheat flung the crew of the Bargerian Jade through.

Yeah, I'm doing it just because it's so good.

It's almost like it doesn't need anything.

But so, you know, so I came up with this

situation,

and that,

you know, essentially plays throughout the entire crawl.

So, this part, this part is very intentional with all the passing around of the melody between all the different

woodwinds,

just

entirely based on what Jeremy is talking about right there.

After months of floating adrift, desperately transmitting distress signals to no avail, it seemed all hope was lost.

And now our storied starship has depleted her fuel reserves and run aground on an uninhabited, rod-forsaken island on an alien world, stranding our heroes as castaways.

I'd love to say something about their resilience in the face of adversity, but you and I both know the wheels are really going to come off down.

I love that loony tune talk.

Like at the end of that phrase.

That's exactly the notes that play when Elmer Fudd gets shot in the face.

But the point being is that

I definitely have a very

romantic ideal of a composer, so I do try to kind of stick to the historic precedents.

And so I'll use like light motifs and things like that

in the music to try and distinguish, you know, certain characters.

One of the transitions for season three,

which is very romantic sounding,

became an unofficial Dars theme.

I think just basically between me and Alden.

Probably no one else

thought of that.

Can you play that from memory?

Um, da da da da.

oh yeah,

and then it's something like that.

I love those Copeland castinets that come in.

Oh, that N's so big.

That's great.

Well, Dar's very big.

That kind of reminds me.

I wanted to ask if you had any specific influences going into writing this stuff.

Do you think about other composers when you write?

I mean, it's.

I've heard so much stuff that I don't have control, I feel, over my influences.

But I certainly, there are a few composers that I, that during the Zix music, I am listening to and studying.

And of course, it's John Williams and the Star Wars, which I go back.

And it's really a shame, honestly.

Like,

because

if you watch the movie Star Wars,

having listened to the soundtrack all by itself,

you then realize how much of the soundtrack gets lost behind like, bew, bew, bew, bew, bew, pew, pew.

And like,

and

it's just, it's really like, for me, it's, it just, oh, so it's tragic.

But, um, yeah, not for me.

That's Ben Burt.

My gosh.

Oh, yeah.

I'm sure.

Yeah, Jenny.

Yeah, yeah.

Changing the game forever.

Yeah.

Dr.

Pew, as he's also known.

Yeah, Dr.

Pew Pew.

And

so obviously him.

And then I am a huge Igor Stravinskyite.

And

especially during the orchestration periods where we've had a recording session with fames

I always have usually the firebirds like

probably my favorite all-time piece of music

the firebird and Petrushka

Just the interplay between the all the

it's called planing chords.

I just love that sort of swirling atmospheric effect that it creates.

Yeah

this is a huge

obviously a huge influence on John Williams as well.

So

I often have his scores open and I'm looking at how he's arranging the instruments and what combinations of instruments he's using and all the whole nine.

That's really cool.

Well, speaking of orchestration and instrumentation, do you want to hit some highlights of kind of what the

transition to the orchestra was like?

And if you have any stories there?

Yeah, I was at a friend's wedding out in

LA.

There I had met up with a high school friend who at the time he was working for NBC or something like that.

And

when I told him about Mission to Zix and I said, I was like, yeah, it's got this, you know, it's, it's sci-fi and we're really going very old school, full orchestra with the music.

He said, oh, are you using one of those orchestras from, you know, Eastern Europe?

And I was like.

No, no.

I was like,

could you elaborate?

So that was where we heard about fames.

And then I, and I just emailed it to Alden, not expecting, you know,

anything to come out of it, but just sort of out of fun.

I remember Alden texting me saying, like, Brendan said, like, if you ever just happen to be interested in recording with an orchestra, like, there is a place.

And I, and I remember texting back.

I was like, Alden, I think now that you've, we know that.

It's possible, we have to do it, right?

Like,

there's only one option.

Like, I don't, we don't even have to find out if we can afford it.

We just have to do it.

And it turned out that it's within reach.

You know, Mission Desix isn't a hugely popular show.

So that should let you know that every,

you know, every big show you listen to could have an orchestra playing its theme, and they choose not to.

That's right.

Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you probably the main reason why they don't is because it is super hard.

It's like, hearing, it's like, I mean, it takes an enormous amount of extra work.

I mean, I think for a lot of people, people, me included, at first, I sort of thought, oh, well, just give the MIDI file to the orchestra and let them play the associated instruments and it'll sound great.

No, I can't just export it from logic and, you know, send it over to them.

So this is like a super, for me, it's extremely fascinating.

You know,

music is a universal language.

So like, if you know how to read music, there are articulations, there's

dynamics, you know, ways to notate how a piece of music is supposed to sound.

And if you're not good at notating that, then you can't expect a professional musician to play it back for you.

And that's before you then have to have an understanding of the ranges of the instruments and their physical capabilities.

It's easy for me on a keyboard to play a high E on a trumpet, but a trumpet player is not going to

be able to do that.

So there is an enormous amount of

work that goes into that.

I had the luck of studying with a man named John Lissauer, who is a

veteran film composer.

He's famous because he was the producer of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah.

And he was a ghostwriter for Howard Shore.

So he was the one who sort of got me started on this whole thing.

And he is a you know a brilliant orchestrator.

And so I learned a lot from him.

But even without that, I have two different textbooks that I refer to, like a Bible when I'm orchestrating.

Yeah, and then just the nitty-gritty sitting in front of a computer and going through each and every line for each and every part, making sure that all the articulations are there, the slurs, the dynamics, the crescendos, the decrescendos, the tempo markings, everything.

It just, it's, it's probably, if it takes me 10 hours to write a theme on the computer in logic, it could easily take an extra 20 hours, you know, to make sure it's prepared and orchestrated in a way that will sound good from a real live orchestra.

I didn't realize how important that was, especially when you're dealing with 55 people who all have to play the same with the same emotion.

And also, they're not rehearsing it.

These guys are pros.

Some stuff we would get, and it would be exactly how you wrote it the first time they would rehearse it.

But what's funny is that when we first recorded the first take of the main theme with

the orchestra that first day

in season three, I remember thinking,

What don't they get about this?

Like,

it was very like the tempo was right,

the notes were all right, but it just sounded very lackadaisical.

But then I realized, you know, these chords and these notes, they could just as easily be played for a totally different situation, and it would be right.

Like, the way they were playing, it wasn't wrong.

It was just not how we had all been hearing it this whole time.

There's a little scene in that audio recording from the Zoom session where the conductor we're talking to him about, and he's like, oh, so Les Mariachi on the horns?

Yeah, right.

Yeah,

yeah, exactly.

Well, and season three, especially, their first chair trumpet was a real goof.

I was like, this trumpet player is every trumpet player I was ever in a concert or a jazz band with.

Just a guy, even in a totally different country at a totally different level, in a totally different genre.

The brass section players are the guys who still keep noodling after the guy says stop.

Like they're still fucking around.

That is universal.

I remember, especially in that first session, there was a lot of repetition of the word Maestoso, which means majestic.

But that's the kind of thing that even that is a little bit subjective, right?

Like depending on what movies you watch, depending on what orchestras you have played with, and what kinds of things you're used to hearing, majestic can mean different things to different people, right?

And so there's even

an extra layer of subjectivity to that that we needed to convey by talking to the conductor and talking to him about what you were envisioning.

And also, too, it's like

you learn as you do.

And part of the nerve-wracking part of this whole process is like

we have a couple hours with them

max and a lot of music to record so there's not a lot of time to sort of go through and everything and basically what it was the first version of the theme was just not nearly as huge and bombastic the it wasn't the same sort of conception it was a lot more lyrical that was the way they took it and the reason the main reason for that is

Because I didn't score the brass properly.

As I had mentioned, that whole theme was born out of this French horn thing where they're playing chords basically down an octave and up an octave.

And it's all well and good to do that with samples.

But

with an orchestra, a French horn is facing the other direction.

It's not nearly as loud

as it comes through

a sample where you can...

mix it differently.

And so I had scored the four horns in four-part harmony, thinking that that would project over,

you know, 18 violinists and, you know, however many other cellists and everyone else in the orchestra.

And

you need two French horns to equal one trumpet or one trombone, you know, basically one instrument facing the other direction.

And you'll see a lot of orchestras, you know, if you want four-part harmony and French horns, you need eight French horns.

And we only had four of them.

So we technically had like two voices that would have really projected.

So I reorchestrated all that when we did it the second and then even the third time.

The second and the third time are great.

You know, the first time out was my first time with an orchestra.

But they did also do a great job giving us a more just sort of in-your-face version instead of the lyrical one that they had sort of been going towards.

Yeah, you know, it all, it's all a learning experience.

Yeah.

So in the middle of season two,

we had a listener by the name of Brian Galleon, who's a tuba player from Louisiana, who asked if there is a brass arrangement of the theme.

This was before we went to the orchestra, and I'm a trumpet player.

It was like my vehicle instrument in college.

So

I've written for brass before, and I was like, I don't have an arrangement yet, but I would love to do an arrangement for you.

Like,

this sounds amazing.

And so, I

went way overboard with this brass arrangement.

I, you know, he just basically wanted the main theme, and I wrote like

a five-movement brass piece for him.

Like, just like

all these different sections.

And

it took me, I don't know, I probably spent like a good three months or so on it.

the chime street brass quintet from baton rouge that was the birth of all the season three music was that brass quintet so this guy brian galleon writing in asking for uh

like brass arrangement led to them you writing the music that ended up being recorded by the orchestra Yeah, I,

yeah.

I, I, um,

I don't know why.

I honestly don't remember what possessed me other than perhaps just the excitement about having at that time a live ensemble playing my music.

And I felt like just the one theme wasn't quite enough in my...

I wanted to, you know, capitalize on

the scenario.

Yeah, I think that's the opposite of capitalizing in the technical term.

We work more.

Yeah.

So that was season three.

And then,

but season four

was also very interesting because this is my opportunity to go back to the theme and, you know, get that take that I wanted.

And

at the time, I had started a new job that took a lot of my time up, and I was commuting to New York every day on the train, and I had very little free time.

But I had my laptop, and I had Sebalius on my laptop.

So I

basically, over the course of like a month or so, I

reorchestrated the theme.

Actually, like basically wrote the season four generic on the train going to and from New York, and and even the chase scene in 401 I did on the train.

Oh, wow.

And so it was, it was.

And when you say that, you mean like you would write out the music into Sibelius, but as music, not as

playing it on a keyboard.

Yeah, exactly, yeah.

I had, I would, I remember walking to the platform and like

mulling over the

like just that ostinato figure

that ended up becoming part of the theme

so that

that experience was I got very up close and personal with the theme with that.

It's like I I mean, I was like daily just working directly in the score sheet that the orchestra was going to be using.

So for season four, I was able to do that.

I did the 401 crawl and then I did the

that chase music, which Shane did an extraordinary job.

I mean, Shane does an amazing job, everything he does, but this, like, we had so, we had like maybe 45 minutes to record the chase music, and the chase music was like,

it was difficult.

it's a high difficulty level for any player yeah so a lot of syncopation the orchestra basically recorded it in like two measure bits

Fames is like, great, we got that measure moving on.

Like, they're such pros that they're like, you guys figure it out.

We're going to give you the notes.

You guys do it.

Like, it's not our problem.

Poor Shane had to piece the whole thing together.

I mean,

I mean, it gets crazy at the end.

That's math rock, baby.

It sounds amazing.

Oh, man.

I didn't quite realize the amount that went into that.

Yeah.

Not to mention the insane sound design on top of it and that poor little squirrel before the music even kicks in.

Yeah, I mean, like, looking back, I was like, I'm disappointed that I wasn't able to get more of the music in that scene, which is one of the reasons why I brought that chase music back for 419.

Yeah.

I was particularly proud of the drum remix that comes in that hunts in there.

One of my favorite things we've ever done is 419.

I think it's maybe one of my favorite things

that we've ever done on the show.

Fellowship of the Lagoon.

Brendan, you had to rewrite some stuff in the main theme because it wasn't playable on medieval instruments.

Yeah, I mean, we were using recorders from listeners.

Yeah, Pennelli Miller, who is a listener, had mentioned randomly on the Discord that she played medieval flute and recorder and that's right we just happened to be in the middle of working on 419 and so we reached out and we said like would you be interested in recording for us she's like oh yeah my friend plays bass recorder uh cynthia and sutton so we enlisted both of them to help us yeah you know so i had to do sort of a good amount of research into like what a bass recorder's range was.

Yeah, there was there was a good amount of re-cajiggering the actual music so that it just works with those instruments.

But it just, it was so much fun.

It was like taking the zyx theme and turning it into 16th-century lutenist music was

a real pleasure.

One of my favorite pieces that you wrote is totally separate from that.

Then we used it for the credits.

And I just, I, I just

have always loved that song so much.

But that was another song that you were just like, well, I just also cranked out this rad lute song.

It's so great.

We did have to go for s samples on this on the flutes because it was just so intense.

Yeah.

But the loot is real

Ophira Zakai Yeah, she was fantastic.

She totally nailed everything.

She sent me like just two takes and they were both perfect.

They were both perfect.

I mean, truly, I think it's like maybe a perfect episode.

It folds into the larger story so well.

Everybody plays such great characters.

I don't know.

I'm so proud of that episode.

I mean, the sound design is like completely off the chain.

The opening scene where there's like the arrows zinging across the

it's so good.

Is the squirrel in it, too?

Yeah, it is.

It's his great, great, great, great, grand squirrel.

It was 30,000 years before.

Wow, squirrels have a long time.

It's only six

years.

Wow.

So then we're into season five.

Yeah.

And for season five, I

having had two versions with the orchestra, I feel like I had matured enough to not go quite as overboard with my orchestrations as I did in season four.

Season four, like, if I showed you the score sheets, you know, like every string section is playing in D V C with one another.

They're like, instead of being divided into, you know, four lines, it's divided into like,

eight, sometimes like 12,

crazy number of voices that

does not really translate to the listener at all.

It's like, and that was something I actually learned from Stravinsky's scores.

Like, there are things in his scores that no one hears because there's so much else going on.

Fifth and final season, I finally really go and study John Williams' score, like the score sheets.

And

obviously he's a virtuoso and everything like that.

But what I really appreciate about him is just the economy of his work.

Like he

can translate something into music in such an economic way without having to, you know, resort to putting the string section into 12 different voices and all these different doublings and things like that.

And so for the fifth and final season, I feel like I finally felt fully with the main blackout theme.

I felt like so pleased and just like, this is it.

This is it.

I got the heavy big brass going on and then, you know, my

fast string run at the end, the digger, digged,

like comes through.

It's like, it was very cathartic.

Yes, every season I have provided a new theme, and that's obviously to the benefit of the show, but it's also so that I could fix my work.

And

it's been a really wonderful experience.

I hopefully it's interesting for listeners to also kind of

experience how the show has grown, how the composer has grown.

Yeah, Brendan, this was super, super illuminating.

So glad that you were able to come tell us about how some of this stuff came together.

I mean, honestly, I think music is such a backbone of this show, and it's

so good.

So, thanks for coming on the show.

Thank you so much for the music.

Yeah, thank you.

Is there one piece that you think we should like if you had to choose which piece to play in its entirety at the end of this episode?

Oh, boy, which one would it be?

Um, well, oh, gosh, that's hard to.

I have the 502 crawl has always been my favorite.

Oh, I love that one.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Yeah.

That one's that is a really good one.

And now here's Mission to Zix Episode 502 Crawl by Brendan Ryan in its entirety.

To learn more, visit BrendanButler Ryan.com.

Most game shows quiz contestants about topics they don't even care about.

But for 100 episodes, the Go Fact Yourself podcast has asked celebrity guests trivia about topics they choose for themselves.

And introduced them to some of their personal heroes along the way.

Oh my gosh, shut up.

I feel like I'm gonna cry.

Oh my stocks.

It's so exciting to meet you.

Join me, Jake Fan Stratton.

And me, Helen Hong, along with special guests, DJ Jazzy Jeff and Faith Saley, plus some amazing surprise experts on the 100th episode of Go Fact Yourself.

And join us twice a month, every month, for new episodes of Go Fact Yourself here on Maximum Fun.

Hi, Maximum Fun.

It's me, James Arthur M from Minority Corner.

Okay, we got some good news and I got some bad news.

Bad news, Minority Corner, after seven years and 340 episodes, we are wrapping up our show.

I know, I know, but hey, good news, good news is that means we must have solved racism and homophobia and sexism and equality and equity for all.

Yay!

No, no, we didn't.

Well, I'd like to think at least that we are better off than when we started seven years ago.

So don't worry, we might be saying goodbye, but our episodes will live on in the podcast airwaves forever.

Or until the internet crashes and burn.

Whatever whatever comes first minority corner the final episodes right here on maximum fun or wherever you get your podcast minority corner because together we're the majority

maximum fun.org comedy and culture artist owned audience supported

i played trumpet for 13 years in high school and college and like you know i know how to read music and know how to read notation and stuff but uh you went to high school and college for

13 years

what you went to to high school and college for 13 years?

Well, I went to college for four years, and I went to high school for

seven years.

I mean, I went to a middle school and high school.

It was a combined.

Never mind.

Fuck you guys.

I grew up in Alaska.

Oh, that's all you have to do.

That's all you have to say.