Long before landing at the New York Times as a senior sound designer and composer, Marion Lozano, CAS/Audio Production Graduate Certificate ’15, was the quintessential mixtape kid. “I was like a DJ,” she says, curating a soundtrack for high school life.
Even as she served in the US Air Force and worked at the Missile Defense Agency, Lozano’s desire to break into the sound booth played on repeat in her mind. AU’s part-time, 15-credit program gave her the tools to press fast-forward on her career change.
Lozano has cranked up the volume on her seniority and skill at the Times, where she composes “music beds,” mood-setting instrumental tracks layered under podcast episodes. Hearing her name in The Daily credits “never gets old”—but her compositions do. By the time Lozano’s music clip lands in an episode, “I’ve heard it 50 times,” she says.
Still, high-school Lozano would almost certainly listen (and relisten) with glee.
Lozano’s guide to tucking music beds into your podcasts:
- Convene producers, editors, and composers to discuss the episode’s storyline and tone.
- Ask the production team for a script, music brief, and multimedia clips. When working on an Elon Musk episode, for example, Lozano was inspired by a wacky video of him dancing.
- Assign composers based on bandwidth.
- Settle on the music bed’s length. Should it hit the average 90 seconds, or are there special scenes to consider?
- Tinker with instrumentation—starting with a melody and working toward rhythm. (Lozano often plunks around on piano first.)
- Solicit producer’s edits.