CineConcerts was very fortunate to speak with both Julie and Steven Bernstein about their score to the revival of the cartoon Animaniacs. We discussed the rebirth of the show, how times have changed since the original, and some of the fun musical elements they incorporated into the first season!

CineConcerts (CC): The first season of Animaniacs aired on Hulu in 2020, but you guys both composed additional music for the original series in the 90’s. So, what's it like helping to revive the Animaniacs after that period of time?

Steven Bernstein (SB): You know, it was very familiar.

Julie Bernstein (JB): It’s great! We were on the team of writers—you said additional music, we were part of the team that wrote for it.

SB: I mean, I don't think a lot of people actually understood that I wrote probably close to half of the music. Richard Stone, who was our good friend and the supervising composer, he had his name on every episode, which was appropriate, but we worked as a team. We were sort of writing partners in that regard. But anyway, it was very familiar, the new show is so much like the first iteration, it felt like an old sweater, or getting back on the bike. Whatever cliché you want, because they did such a good job of just extending the through line from the old show to this one.

JB: It’s Animaniacs, but evolved, because obviously twenty years have gone by. It has to be of this time as opposed to that time, but it’s still Animaniacs. So, I think we've probably evolved in the way that we’re writing but it's almost unconscious for us, or subconscious. Because we’re looking at this new, we’re looking at it with fresh eyes, maybe 2020-2021 eyes, hopefully and writing what works now. So, it's similar, but different. When we saw the first episode it’s kind of “I know what to do there.”

JB: That’s what Steve said, I said, “I have no idea what to write.” Every time I sit down to write I say, “I have no idea what to write.”

SB: Yeah, I don’t want to say that I don’t go through that, it’s the terror of the blank page that I think creatives go through. But it was a comforting feeling that they kept basically the first show intact.

CC: There's a really funny joke in the first episode about how it's being written about two years before is it supposed to air, and the updates in the world--there’s a reference to “fast” entertainment, 48-hour memes, so as the show's been updated for today’s world, would you say that you approach the music in a more traditional way like you had before, or is there anything that you do to make it specific to this time period?

SB: I think mostly the traditional scoring but, that being said, things like memes, or talk shows and these things that weren't like this back then.

JB: The background music that you hear with them is obviously going to be different. That’s changed. I think that looking at it, at the picture, and writing what it’s asking I don’t know how consciously we’re thinking about, “This is the way we wrote then, this is the way we write now.”

SB: With the possible caveat that some of our writing has gotten a little bit more symphonic in nature, it’s gotten bigger just in scope. I think that people are used to bigger sounds now with video games and with larger movies, so we've gone a little bit more in that direction, but generally—we’ll give you a yes to both.

CC: Sort of a fusion of traditional and new?

JB: Yes. I guess for me there's not as much thought in words in my mind when I sit down to write. So, something’s probably clicking in from before that I know and as we’ve written now the entire season, we know these characters again. We know them, we know who we're writing for and basically--can you hear a difference in the music, just didn't listening from before and now by any chance?

CC: I think there’s definitely a difference. You guys are well-established composers with a ton of experience behind you and animation is such a very specific genre. What drew you to animation?

SB: It’s a lot of serendipity, I think, for both of us. Personally, I never gave it a thought, writing music for animation. It was only after I was finishing my Master's Degree that I even considered writing for film

JB: When I was an undergrad and I was getting closer to graduating, briefly, I thought cartoons would be a way to make some money, because there is actual music, orchestral music, underneath it. I remember having the thought, it was fleeting, but I did realize that was a possibility. And then I think it’s just, we knew the right people at the right time, you know you have to be at the right place at the right time.

SB: We both studied film scoring in a serious way, we both went through separate film scoring programs and they were fledgling programs at that time, there are a lot more of them now. Me personally, one of the composers that was teaching at the time in my program was Fred Steiner, who kind of took me under his wing for whatever reason. He was then working on the Tiny Toon Adventures, well first Star Trek: The Next Generation and then Tiny Toons. And I started to orchestrating and then I started writing a little bit and kind of got some training in that way and then when you start doing something it tends to lead to the next thing. It is a very specialized kind of craft.

JB: Only learned by doing. I think, and this goes for all composing, I think for all of our studying and school programs, the only way—and the best programs were, you saw a picture and you wrote and then you looked at it and everybody in the class wrote something different, which is really fascinating. Then you saw that and that is the only way to learn, really. It’s important to know all the building blocks of music and theory as we both studied in college, but the only way to really learn to compose is to compose. So that includes for a cartoon. Writing for these cartoons you become a cartoon composer.

SB: And it’s kind of fortunate that we’re both orchestrally trained, we both have written orchestral music so that when it came time to employ that we were ready with that. 

JB: I thought you were going to say that it’s a good thing that we’re silly! And what a fortunate thing that we landed on this amazing cartoon because throughout the late 80’s there were some pretty dismal cartoons and we happened on this, we were in the right place, met the right people, they needed somebody, we were prepared, and we went into this unbelievably good cartoon.

CC: There’s a cartoon revolution going on right now.

JB: It’s great, because they deserve to be brought back. Such high quality—every area of it, in the writing and the acting and the animation and the music. It’s serious business.

SB: I think it’s a little bit like comfort food, in a way. We’re all going through a fairly stressful time and having these familiar shows but brought into our world, I think it’s kind of comforting.

CC: There’s actually a really funny song about the Revival Scene in Hollywood in the first episode that is really very true. But it's also very ironic because you can tell right off the bat that this show has got the same essence of what it was before so it’s not just something that’s been recycled. It’s very true to what it should be.

SB: Yeah, it’s very self-aware, meta, and once we saw the first episode we thought, “Oh, this is going to be great!” 

JB: ‘Cause we had no idea how it would be brought back.

SB: It was really a pleasure to start on this show again. The writing is exceptional and of course the same voice actors that were there before. We just love listening to their performances before we put the music with it, that we just laugh.

CC: What about the process—where do you sit in the creative process? Do you see a script or sketches first?

JB: The scripts are written, the voices are recorded, the animation is done, the sound effects are put on.

SB: We’re usually the last people to be involved in this.

JB: As soon as they can send us a, basically, fixed episode, they send it to us and then we meet with them online if there’s anything that needs to be discussed and then we start writing. So, we're at the end.

SB: And we don’t really get any advanced notice, with the possible exception of some special moments, some special vocals or instrumentals that have to be pre-recorded to animate to but we didn't do a whole lot of that.

CC: When somebody says we want you for Animaniacs, you're probably already starting to have a visceral response to that, did you know what you wanted to do?

JB: When we heard that we would be allowed back, I mean it never really left because we worked on hundreds and hundreds of shows. Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Freakazoid all those shows. So, it was something that stuck with us even though it's been years and Steve and I worked on Baby Looney Tunes and so we continued throughout the 22 years, we had that sound already in our heads, but when we knew we were coming back to the Animaniacs we really started thinking in those specific terms.

SB: It’s very specific vocabulary, part Carl Stalling and then Richard Stone added his take on it and then we added our own layer. So, there are those kind of pre-existing elements and we write according to what the show is giving us, or asking from us. There’s not a lot of preconception as to what we’re going to write, we see what’s required and do our best to bring it out.

JB: Hence, sitting down and looking and saying, “I have no idea what I’m going to write.” One of the things that I have learned is that even though I have that feeling, if I just start writing it comes. As with everything just a stab at something, then I can see, “Oh, that's not right or that is right. I'll continue that,” but that the initial feeling is always “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

SB: For me, somehow the technology has helped in that regard. In the first generation of the show, we were pencil to paper and that's how we wrote and we didn't hear the score, nobody did, until the recording session. With what we do now, the computers help us to time out the music and as we’re setting up this minute or minute and a half event, the structure starts to become evident and then from the structure you kind of start to get the musical ideas of what this has to be, how this joke is going to be set up, and paid off and that kind of thing.

JB: Specifically, we go through and we watch and, with the help of the computer, we do the deciding of where we want hits to happen. Before we start writing at all we find a tempo and we mark where we think we're going to need to hit something because that's what cartoons are about, you really need to hit certain things. It's not just writing from the beginning of the cue to the end of the cue. That's really how cartoon writing differs from a lot of other composing is that you have to look and know where you're going to catch certain things in music and then, with the help of the computer, you figure out what's a tempo that will actually catch this, not in the middle of a beat. You want to catch it on a beat or on a half beat, something that is going to be playable because these are live musicians playing the music.

SB: And then the challenge is to make that not sound mechanical and to try to make it sound musical and that’s the real goal.

JB: I find these computer technical things the most difficult. Writing music is difficult but the most difficult for me, because I don’t come from a computer background, is this initial step, which is the structure then once I've done that, then I can forget all about that and start writing actual music and then it’s just composing.

SB: I think it’s similar to live action film in that way, but the way it’s different is that the synchronization demands are so much heavier.

JB: Just when you’re starting to get into that lovely, luscious melody the scene changes and you have to stop writing that one.

CC: Live action film music has changed so much over the past 10 years, but animation is sort of the last remaining pure form of score composing. How do you make decisions like choosing what instrument to play when an anvil squishes someone for example? 

JB: There’s no playbook and no rules, but there are conventions that we’ve come to use. So, let’s say that Brain is walking, so we might put some form of pizzicato in the low strings and the bassoon because that sort of the sound of Brain. Or let’s say that he’s stomping away, we’re going to use low trombones and brass because that’s—and it’s not, maybe it came from King Kong, it’s established a long time ago, orchestral writing for picture. And so, you're right, we get to use a lot of that in these cartoons because the music is over-the-top.

SB: We think more in terms of color than in specific instruments. So, you know, this is a brassy moment or this is a delicate moment. Pinkie is often a solo clarinet because that’s kind of what’s been established for him. 

JB: But every time we look at it, it’s something fresh, and we have to try to come up with something fresh.

SB: With that said, with something like an anvil falling, 99% of the time it’s a downward piano glissando accompanied with a rolled snare drum and a big brass crash at the end.

CC: Some of these sounds seem to stem from the silent film era.

SB: Yes. Carl Stalling started out, got his education basically in accompanying silent film and he's brought those skills to the Warner Brothers cartoons.

CC: To us, nowadays, watching a cartoon with the ‘trademark’ sound of a certain action seems normal, but somebody had to creatively come up with that.

JB: I was just saying that the other day about these old films from the 30’s with the huge, lush scores. The thing is, we’re so used to hearing that so we say “of course” but isn’t. Because there wasn't, for water flowing, there isn't in nature some kind of musical equivalent. It was created by somebody and now when we hear water flowing it works really well to have certain instruments playing it in a certain way.

SB: It’s sort of like musical onomato-poetic writing. They’re kind of like musical sound effects in a lot of places. 

CC: Like how a harp sound has become synonymous with remembering a memory. 

SB: Exactly. These are all pre-associations that we’re lucky enough to rely on because someone did it first. Especially because when they first started making sound movies—was it Selznick who brought Max Steiner in? I mean, all of a sudden there are these lush, huge orchestral scores done by European symphonic composers. There's a story but the initial reticence because a director said, “they don't want music here because the audience is going to say, ‘where is the music coming from?’” There were a lot of directors that didn’t have any experience with opera, because that’s what opera is.

JB: And once they tried it, they saw, “oh, the audience accepts it.”

CC: How are you directed to score? What kind of direction do you get, would you get as an a composer for animation?

SB: Most of the time it’s, “Do what you did last time.”

JB: It’s not like a person saying use certain instruments, it's more like, “We want to make sure that this scene brings out the scary part.” Normally I feel like we can see what it needs. But when we’re talking with the producers they may say, “In this scene just make sure that it’s…” and they'll give us some words because most likely they're not going to be able to tell us more.

SB: Sometimes we are given a temp track.

JB: Not for a normal cartoon but let’s say that the cartoon is imitating or having fun with a type of action movie or something specific that they were referring to because these cartoons often refer to other things. They may say, “We were thinking” and they'll name a movie or they actually put in a temp score, so that we know exactly what they have in mind and go ahead and we write something similar.

SB: It’s usually clear cut. There's not a lot of subtlety in emotion or ambiguity. If somebody's afraid, they need to sound really afraid in the music. They're not like afraid, but courageous and doubtful.

JB: Since we are doing mock-ups, we mock up the entire score and we send it to the producers. They will say, “That's fine,” or they may say, “In this specific part we wanted something else”.

SB: Or “Don’t give away this particular aspect until this happens.” So, there is a little bit of revision involved, it’s sort of retroactive.

CC: For this score in particular, is there something that people should look out for?

JB: I would say the Halloween episode. After talking to the producers, what they wanted was probably not exactly what we would have ordinarily given it. They wanted it a little bit like really seriously scary Halloween music scary. Scary but…fun.

SB: But more scary than fun because the thing is it really works but it's not our first instinct because of what we've done in the past with the show.

JB: You will hear a lot of almost 20th Century modern sounding classical music. More tonal sort of a different manner of writing. The Halloween episode was what I was thinking of, but what were you thinking of?

SB: There’s this scene, I don’t remember which episode, where the Warners come into a movie theater where the movie’s in progress and we had to write source music basically, but that would also catch some of the action.

JB: So, the music is coming from what’s on the screen, which wouldn’t have been written by the composers of the Animaniacs. It's written by whoever wrote the music to the to the movie on the screen. So, we were writing that music which was not what we would have written for the Animaniacs, but at the same time we're seeing them creeping along and so it was interesting.

SB: I do want to share some compositional things that we did together that I’m particularly proud of in Pinkie and the Brain. The episode with Brain’s son—he makes this gadget and it becomes Brain’s son. What we did musically was, we inverted the Brain theme, we turned it exactly upside down. So, when you hear the theme for this little mechanical guy, it’s the Pinkie and the Brain theme, upside down.

 JB: We work separately, we go into our own corners after having discussed where we want the breaks in the episode to be, we assign each other cues. But whenever there's a new character like Brain’s son or like any other character, we usually discuss and write a theme together.

SB: The other example I wanted to talk about was the character of Julia, we wrote her theme so that it’s in counterpoint to Pinkie and the Brain.

JB: If the new character has something to do with the characters that are already there, then we utilize some compositional techniques of turning the melody over or having it so that the two melodies will play together.

SB: Whether they are at equal odds or at equal status on the screen, there were moments where we would play them in counterpoint. Nobody will necessarily notice this but it’s very satisfying for us.

JB: The fact that every time you hear Brain’s theme you associate with Brain and can hear that that’s him and I think that’s, consciously people hear these themes. It’s what happens in orchestral music, in concert music and it happens equally in music to film.

SB: We went to a concert that a friend of mine had a piece on the concert and the only thing that really stuck with me was that he used the Bach theme. Which is just a composer kind of thing—it’s writing B, A, C, H in notes. And the H, in German music of that time, this is really esoteric, the B represented a B-flat and the H was the B-natural, which is a high B. So, it would be B-flat, A, C, B-natural. That’s “Bach.” So, this is the thing that we do to each other.

JB: Composers have ways of writing and I don’t think it matters what you’re writing for, whether it’s to picture, not to picture, there’s a structure that you find and developing themes. It just happens. In our case with the cartoons, it happens and it starts to happen—And then it changes! So, you think you're getting ready to do something and then it changes

CC: You’re two composing minds, but you write something collectively. I'm just really interested in the creative process of how you discuss it first, then compose separate, then come back together. Is that right?

JB: We look at the picture and we divide every episode up into cues, sort of a minute, minute and a half cues. We discuss where would be a good place to end it because what’s going to happen is that we’re going to be alternating writing and the need to all flow as if they were written by one person. Let's say that Steve starts to write the first cue and I'm working on the second one. As he nears the end of his first one, he will ask me what key did I start mine in and how did I start it because he needs to now make his go into mine. And same thing with me, as I get to the end of mine, I say, “By the way, how did you start the third one?” So, we have to collaborate in that way.

SB: And she mentioned before, for character themes we will often write those together.

JB: We write themes together because most likely we’ll both end up using those themes. If one of us doesn’t approved of it, that would be a problem. We’ve been together a long time so we can arm wrestling and fight very well and we can tell each other, “I don’t like that at all.”  We did actually collaborate on writing Baby Looney Tunes and a couple other shows.

SB: We were at the same keyboard for Baby Looney Tunes, not our separate writing. We were literally arm wrestling for the keyboard.

JB: It went faster, we wrote so much in a short period of time. So, we know what each other's strengths are and we're able to discuss something like that, but for the most part we are writing in our separate corners.

We both respect each other and we have different fortes. We have different strengths. We both are able to write a complete cue by ourselves, but we have different strengths and we trust each other with our strengths and so we can ask each other, “What do you think of this?”

SB: She just finished an amazing piece of music and it's not something I would have written it all ‘cause I have a different take on things but it's brilliant and it works perfectly and that's what the film scoring program—there were 12 of us, writing music to the same exact scene and 10 of them pretty much work.

JB: But it did feel really good. Steve listened to it and said, “Oh, that’s really good. I wouldn’t have written that at all.” Which is true because we don't have the same brain, but we are working on a type of thing and certain things work better than others.

SB: And there are orchestral conventions and the gestural conventions that we kind of rely on to get us through this.

JB: It’s subconscious for me if anything. I feel like I don't know, seriously. I never know what I'm doing but once I start it flows. The thing about the cartoons is that it flows and then it has to stop like 9 seconds later.

SB: I really look forward to chase scenes these days because the lines are longer. I can go 20-25 seconds without interruption.

CC: What’s next for you?

JB: We just started the second season of Animaniacs. We’re in the beginning and I’ll just put out into the air that it would be nice to have season three, but we are just at the beginning of writing music, we’ve just begun.

SB: We’ve joined a thing called the Kaboom Collective with the former conductor of the Cleveland Youth Orchestra. It’s an online, totally strictly online endeavor for young musicians, teens to twenties, to audition for the performance aspect, that are going to be composers that are auditioning to mentor with us.

JB: Cartoon music and film making and all aspects of the art.