Original Article posted here: Variety

Transcript

“Music plays a major role in show, seeing as the character of Dean’s dad is a working musician, and co-composers Jacob Yoffee and Roahn Hylton were tasked with creating a sonic landscape to connect the era with the story.

Inspired by the 1988 comedy of the same name, “The Wonder Years” rewinds to 1968 for a coming-of-age series starring Elisha “EJ” Williams as Dean Williams and Saycon Sengbloh as Lillian Williams.

“Our hope is that people feel the humanness of the music,” says Yoffee. “It’s been important to us that every piece can be performed by a band without heavy use of ‘studio magic.’ Within the world of show, the father has his own band, and our vision is that the entire score could be performed by that band. So we’re using instruments that would have been common in jazz, funk, soul, and R&B at the time. It’s thrilling because this era is one of my favorites musically, so getting to paint with these sounds is a real gift.”

Adds Hylton: “When we heard that Bill Williams (Dean’s father, played by Dulé Hill) was a jazz musician and based on Saladin K. Patterson’s real-life musician father, we were very excited about the possibilities.”

While the original series resonated with the music-makers growing up, they are excited to introduce Dean Williams’ coming-of-age tale to today’s TikTok crowd and beyond. Says Hylton: “What’s really cool is that a new generation of kids will share that same experience and for many of those kids, it will be the first time that the family on screen looks just like theirs.”

The show’s rich music canvas allows the duo to explore different voices and sounds of the 1960s that range from the rhythm and groove of funk, the musicianship of jazz, to the heart of R&B and soul. From Aretha Franklin and Bill Withers to Otis Redding and Marvin Gaye, “the many voices who embodied the spirit of the ’60s” served as their inspiration, offers Hylton.

“The challenge is always finding a way to channel the sounds of those records, but making it work as score,” says Yoffee. “Not everything can be big and bold, so it has to work in a subtle way that doesn’t take over a scene.”

Read more

Jacob, Roahn and Scotty won an HMMA award for Best Main Title in a TV Show / Limited Series. The 12th annual Hollywood Music in Media Awards celebrates original music in all forms visual media including film, TV, video games, trailers, commercial advertisements, documentaries, music videos and special programs.

Award:

MAIN TITLE – TV SHOW/LIMITED SERIES
THE WONDER YEARS (ABC) – Roahn Hylton, Jacob Yoffee & Scotty Granger

View article here

Roahn Hylton & Jacob Yoffee (The Wonder Years, Vampire Academy, Sherwood, Free Meek) have taken over scoring duties on the Peacock original series Bel-Air. They are composing the original score for the second season of the show developed by Morgan Cooper, Malcolm Spellman, TJ Brady & Rasheed Newson based on the classic sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and starring Jabari Banks, Adrian Holmes, Olly Sholotan, Coco Jones, Cassandra Freeman, Jimmy Akingbola, Akira Akbar, Jordan L. Jones and Simone Joy Jones. The new season of the drama picks up with Will at a crossroads in his life as a new figure comes into his life who challenges what he’s learned and competes for control of his influence. Cooper, Spellman, Brady & Newson are also executive producing the Universal Television production with Anthony Sparks (Queen Sugar, Mike), Will Smith, Terence Carter & James Lassiter (The Pursuit of Happyness, I Am Legend), Miguel Melendez, Benny Medina (Hustler), composer/music producer Quincy Jones and original series creators Andy & Susan Borowitz. Terrace Martin & Robert Glasper have previously scored last year’s first season. Season 2 of Bel-Air will premiere on February 23, 2023 on Peacock.

View article here

Original article via The Source: https://thesource.com/2019/08/19/free-meek-music-composers/

Transcript:

Recently, Meek Mill was granted a new trial in his decade-old case that has been a thorn in his side and resulting in a return trip to prison. Many have followed Meek’s case, heading the details of a potentially corrupt judge continuing to prolong the Dreamchasers leader’s probationary period and how the arresting officer in the case is plagued with many questionable arrests.

Now the full story is available in Free Meek, a five-part docuseries that details the rise of the Philly rapper to become one of the prominent examples for necessary change that is powering the current criminal justice reform movement. The JAY-Z executive produced series brings re-enactments and comments from the rapper himself along with people that are close to him and investigators and legal professionals.

Throughout the series, you will hear the work of musicians Jacob Yoffee and Roahn Hylton, who were brought into the series by showrunner Michael John Warren to craft a score for the provocative series. In an exclusive conversation with The Source, Jacob and Roahn discuss the challenges to craft pieces for Free Meek and how they landed the heavy job to create the show’s score.

Video directed & edited by Zev Lerner.

What led both of you to the Free Meek project?

Roahn Hylton: Last year we had got the opportunity to work on docu-series produced by LeBron James and our director was Michael John Warren. Literally, after the project released, at the premiere party he called us over and he’s like, look, I’m working on another project. You guys would be perfect for it. It was Free Meek.

Jacob Yoffee: And so we, we kind of like got on the phone with him and he said, I got this thing cooking and I got some ideas. We didn’t have any footage to look at. We had Meek’s music and news stories sort of to go off of what he had. A lot of specific ideas you want to do, explore the concept of trauma, blending strings and brass and all these kinds of different approaches. He wanted to try some off the wall experimentation. So we came up with like 30 or 40 pieces of music, sent that to the production company. Once they heard that they were all in and we got the gig.

When you’re getting that aspect of matching trauma in sound, but also how did you feel about scoring a piece that is both so important to hip hop and heavy in content?

Roahn: To be honest with you, I felt as a musician, it’s one of your dreams to be able to work on art that matters. Oftentimes in a business, you do products cause obviously you want to pay the bills and you want to keep on working. But it definitely is an honor, a privilege to work on something, one that matters for Hip-Hop and that is such an important topic in our country.

Jacob: Yeah, it was definitely kind of a big responsibility and we kept trying to do music that we thought was high level and kind of deserving of meek and hip hop and just bringing to it everything we could. We didn’t want to cut any corners which I think is one reason why we just wrote so much music. We wanted to just give them everything they could possibly use and try to blend and experiment and just do everything we could to like help tell the story. Roahn has a good phrase that Meek’s music is utilized throughout the series and it was our job to fill in the gaps because there’s a lot of more intimate moments.

Roahn: If you know Meek’s music, you know, he’s going to come with lots of energy. And there was a lot of parts where early on in his career where he’s battle rapping and showing how he ascended to his place in Hip-Hop. The story of his family and how his family responded to literally this 10 years in the criminal justice system and dealing with probation. It’s a very interesting story and it was a challenge to incorporate multiple emotions.

How hard is it to maintain or to match the sounds of like Meek or someone else’s music when you have to contribute to your own?

Jacob: I would say that there are no musical gigs that I’ve ever had in my life that are easy. Even if the deal is like from the get-go, it’s going to be easy. If you really, if you really take it seriously every time we start a new job, every time I started a new one, I’m just like, you have this moment of panic. Like can I do this? Like am I, am I good enough? And you really have to dig deep and just have faith that you know, the universe is going to send you inspiration and help you figure it out. And quite frankly, they’ll let you know if you’re not hitting that mark. So this one just had that added layer of, man, this is some of our heroes. If they watched the series and they say, man, I really liked the music in this, you know, that would just be the dream response from Meek or JAY-Z. I wouldn’t say that it’s any different from any other gig. It just had that added level of man, our heroes are involved with this one.

Roahn: Yeah, I would definitely say there’s that sense of responsibility one honor the subject matter, like the depth of literally what we’re talking about. But then also just musically making sure it’s on the same level and it’s on par with the quality that my Jacob said our heroes are making. So, you know, I think it’s fun when you have a challenge, you always want to rise to it.

You mentioned the challenges beyond that actual creating in alliance with other creators. Did you have any additional challenges that went into this one?

Jacob: So this is an incredibly layered story. It’s not cut and dry. It’s not like, it’s not even one simple day that they’re talking about. It’s spread across years and years. And it keeps unfolding and you find, you know, there are dirty cops not only have a seemingly a corrupt judge. It turns out a Rolling Stone reporter had to be the one to kind of blow up in the case and it takes a long time to sort of reveal all that information to the audience. With any court case, it’s just, you can get bogged down with the details. So when we first started, everyone was approaching it with much more of like a heavy, slower-paced, giving each person more time on-screen kind of diving into really detailed timelines. And after maybe four months, they said, you know what, we’re going to have to like, just start over again. It just wasn’t, it wasn’t as awesome and exciting as it needed to be. So I think we worked from like, August through December, and then right before Christmas we got the call, “Hey we’re going to go dark for a couple of weeks and then we’re going to hit it hard in January and start over.”

Speaking of the heavy subject matter, when you’re working on something this heavy does it evoke feelings and change the direction of how you’re creating?

Jacob: Yes, absolutely. And one of the requests that we’ve gotten, and I’ve gotten from my time working in L.A., is a lot of times the visual footage that they have for a show is really heavy and they rely on music to not necessarily lighten it up but pace it up. Because at the end of the day, people are going to want to be entertained. And even if they’re being educated, it needs to flow and have movement and energy. And if you let it be too weighed down the people are just going to turn it off.

What would you want for the viewers to take away both from your musical compositions but also from the overall story or out?

Roahn: I think this is one of the most important stories in Hip-Hop because we know there’s an incredible amount of people who are incarcerated in this country. What I was most impressed with about Meek is his ability to take any negative energy that’s been associated with and use it to not only to affect positive energy in his career but positive energy in the world. He’s working with politicians and other sports owners to create change in policy. I want the audience to feel that and also see how inspiring you can be. No matter what happens in your life.

Jacob: And regarding the music we live in a really exciting time. You know, a lot of directors and producers that were kids during the eighties and nineties. They are now running these shows themselves. They’re telling stories from that time period. They’re telling stories that demand a new type of film, music that truly uses hip hop, pop, rock, jazz elements with, with film music. There are literally no rules and nothing is off-limits. And that’s one of the coolest things about Free Meek is that we were able to bring in all types of music that on other shows like even three, four years ago they would have been kicked back by the network. Like, are you guys crazy? You can’t do this kind of music. You’re, that’s wrong with you. So that is one thing that we’re most excited about is that it literally a new sound that’s kind of unfolding because the content is demanding it.

Original article via Variety: https://variety.com/2019/gaming/news/ingress-the-animation-new-music-1203193231/

Transcript:

“Ingress: The Animation” hit last fall in Japan, but the global release doesn’t hit Netflix until April 30, fortunately, it’s bringing a little something new to the show based on Niantic’s other popular video game.

The global version of the show will feature a new musical score created by Jacob Yoffee (“Free Meek,” “Andi Mack”).

In this short video, Yoffee talks about the direction he was asked to take when creating the new score for “Ingress: The Animation.”

“They said please don’t have action music,” Yoffee said. “Please don’t do what you would expect and try something very, very different.”

He said the show’s producers didn’t want anything that sounded like a familiar anime.

“It’s as if it’s live-action film,” he said. “Everything has this very visceral, primal sound to it that I think audiences are going to enjoy because it’s going to keep them questioning, and guessing at what’s going on.”

“Ingress: The Animation” was created by animation studio Crafter under the direction of noted computer-graphics artist Yuhei Sakuragi and with character design by “Neon Genesis Evangelion’s” art director Takeshi Honda.

The show takes place in the world of “Ingress” where exotic matter is leaking into the world through portals. That matter can influence people in different ways. Some gain a sort of super mental power. The show focuses on Makoto and Sarah, two people impacted by the matter. Makoto can touch things and see their history. Sarah can see certain aspects of time and space. The two are thrown together after something happens to Sarah and Makoto, who is a police officer, is brought in to figure it out. The duo ends up on the run together away from a third, mysterious character named Jack. The three get pulled into Ingress’ Enlightened versus Resistance battle, but are also trying to figure out the motives behind a corporation that seems to be abusing exotic matter to experiment on humans and do “bad things,” Niantic founder John Hanke told Variety in an interview last year. This new antagonist will also appear in the new “Ingress” game.

The show is based on the location-based game “Ingress,” in which players join one of two factions, and travel to real-world locations to capture and hold them. The game was released as a beta in 2012 and has had 20 million downloads since. Niantic launched a new version of the game — “Ingress Prime” — last year.

Original article via Billboard: https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/hip-hop/8525648/jacob-yoffee-roahn-hylton-behind-the-music-of-amazon-free-meek-series

Transcript:

With Meek Mill‘s Free Meek docuseries set to invade Amazon next week, composers Jacob Yoffee and Roahn Hylton give fans an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at their creative process when scoring the series that take viewers on a journey through Meek’s treacherous decade-long battle with the criminal justice system. 

“Our new way of collaborating together is just always doing something different than we’d create on our own. [The approach] is a hybridization of [Jacob’s] jazz and classical background with my hip-hop and pop background,” Hylton explains after initially teaming with Yoffee last year on LeBron James’ Best Shot web series.  

Yoffee recalls a scene where Meek is shown going from battle-rapping in the streets of Philly, to dating Nicki Minaj at the height of his career, but eventually has it all taken away. “We created 30 or 40 new pieces of music. We thought about things like civil rights, ’60s-era jazz, obviously hip-hop, and we studied Meek’s music,” he details. “Just tried to encapsulate all that, mix it up and create something we thought could work to tell the story.”READ MOREMeek Mill’s ‘Free Meek’ Docuseries, Executive Produced By Jay-Z, Is Coming to Amazon

Jay-Z also is onboard to serve as an executive producer of Free Meek. Stream the doc on Amazon on Aug. 9. For now, go Behind the Music with the Zev Lerner-directed clip below. 

Original article via The Grammy Awards: https://www.grammy.com/grammys/news/music-lebron-james-best-shot-aims-make-you-lean

Transcript:

“Ingress: The Animation” hit last fall in Japan, but the global release doesn’t hit Netflix until April 30, fortunately, it’s bringing a little something new to the show based on Niantic’s other popular video game.

When director Michael John Warren needed music to help tell the story of an inner-city basketball team mentored by former college ball player Jay Williams, he found a collaborating duo to deliver the soundtrack who, on the surface, could not be more different from each other.

The docuseries, executive produced by basketball superstar LeBron James, called for a mix of hip-hop and film music. Composing duo Roahn Hylton and Jacob Yoffee had only known each other since 2016, but together they fit the description perfectly.   

On their own, their style and musical background could seem like a world away from each other. Hylton started as an engineer in Atlanta and comes from a pop background. Yoffee got his start in the classical world and studied orchestral writing. Inspired by his favorite artists growing up, Hylton wanted to change the world through music. Yoffee knew he wanted to work in music after seeing GRAMMY winner Michael Jackson do the moon walk.

The pair first met at a music conference in Israel and since then have created Billboard chart hits with the likes of GRAMMY-nominated artists Ariana Grande, Nicki Minaj and Keyshia Cole. They have composed music for movies that include Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Pirates Of The Caribbean and Ready Player One.

“Our backgrounds are so different, right? But they are both musical,” Hylton told the Recording Academy. “His classical background really compliments my pop background and my pop background really compliments his classical background.”

Recently having worked with GRAMMY-nominated artist Janelle Monáe and a 50-piece choir, the duo was ready to use their differences to complement each other once again. Enter “Best Shot.”

With “Best Shot” the producers/composers had more freedom with the music creation process than some of the other projects they have worked on in the past.

“It was a very, very collaborative experience. That’s what we loved about working with Michael John Warren,” Hylton said. “He allowed the music to tell its own story and he used that story with the picture and created its own unique thing. It was this perfect marriage of music and exposition.”

In some instances, Warren had the episodes structured around the music. The second episode is named after one of the duo’s songs and it became the theme of the entire episode. With a background in film and television, this was a different experience for Yoffee, which made him feel more a part of the team than just a music supplier.

“I come from working on film and television where the episode is done and then you score to it and it’s locked in place,” he said. This was like water — everything was malleable and moving. This is a much more satisfying artistic experience.”

To create the soundtrack, the duo used the songwriting camp process familiar to the pop world. Rappers, singers and musicians come through the camp to talk about ideas and create music. Among the artists who helped make the music is singer/songwriter Mereba, who ended up contributing to a few songs on the project.

“I kept telling him, we’re getting away with so much that I wouldn’t normally get away with because a lot of times when you work on film you have to sit really low and be very subtle,” Yoffee said. “It’s like you try to say something without saying anything ’cause you don’t want to overtake the picture. But because everything was living and breathing in this pop music world, we could do things that were much higher level of energy without overtaking.”

Though Yoffee said a docuseries can have wall-to-wall music that changes wildly, Warren and many other modern docuseries directors are going toward a more cinematic direction when it comes to the music.

“In this particular story, we wanted to make sure that we didn’t use overused tropes, like things that you would automatically say, ‘Hey, this is basketball, hey this is this,'” Hylton said. 

The end product was so well received by Warner Brothers that they’ve decided to release the soundtrack as a standalone project, something that isn’t so common anymore.

Throughout the eight months it took to make the soundtrack, the composers/producers depended on each other for material outside of music too. Hylton, who also sings on the soundtrack, is a big basketball fan — even receiving a couple scholarships as a high schooler —and helped Yoffee, who was more into basketball at a younger age, catch up.

What does Hylton think of James’ recent move to Los Angeles? He’s excited.

“LeBron has transcended basketball, obviously. We’re working on a docuseries that his company’s produced,” he said. “I think that is a big theme, that basketball, again, it’s a central idea, but it’s also a peripheral idea that this story transcends basketball and is a story idea that everyone can relate to as far as the human condition.”

At the end of the day, the duo wants the music to get audiences more into the eight-part docuseries, which premieres on the NBA’s YouTube channel starting July 18.

“One thing we kept saying to each other throughout was, ‘Does it make you lean forward?'” Yoffee said. “When you’re watching, if you want to lean in, you’re paying more attention to what’s happening rather than the music taking you out.”