Frontlinie music

About my soundtrack work

As you might know, I released the album Fifty Favorite Frontlinie Fragments recently - a collection of soundtrack cues created for the documentary series Frontlinie (yes, that’s ‘front line’ in English). A friend just asked me what the work process for Frontlinie looks like, and I decided to write a Substack post about it. And that’s what you’re reading now.

Short note: most of the links in the article direct to pages that are originally in Dutch, but ran through Google Translate for your convenience.

Let me first explain (especially for non-Dutch readers) what Frontlinie is: spearheaed by journalist Bram Vermeulen, each 30 minute episode focuses on one – (geo)political, environmental, and/or social – issue. There’s between 4 and 10 episodes made each year. Previous themes included the recruitement of African soldiers for Russia’s army, bitcoin mining in Ethiopia, anti-immigration measures in Greece, ‘white genocide’ in South Africa, and nature destruction in Greenland. Bram travels to these places to investigate and to interview people on ‘both sides of the problem’. It’s insightful, disconcerting, and rarely uplifting, to say the least…

For me, it all started with Sahara, a VPRO series by David Kleijwegt and Bram Vermeulen. David got me on board for creating the score. I’d say this was a successful collaboration, and loads of fun. So I was very happy when Bram asked be for his successive series, Frontlinie.

While Sahara was ‘completed’ after five episodes, Frontlinie is a still ongoing project, now in season five, with its 31st episode airing at the end of this month.

When we started in 2021, I was a bit frustrated about the working process. I’d get involved a week before an episode was being edited, with the request to make a bunch of tracks for the editors to work with. So it was super short notice every time. It still is nowadays, but I’ve learned to cope with it. Actually: I’ve learned to enjoy it. I’ll get a few hints - a few words, screen shots, video fragments - about the upcoming episode’s subject, and I take that as inspiration to create as much music as I can in a few days time. It’s feels kind of liberating, not thinking too much and just create track after track, and having fun doing it, unfiltered. It also helps that by now I have a clear sense of what kind of musical ideas will work. We’ve established a highly effective modus operandi, I’d say.

So the music for Frontlinie isn’t created to fit specific scenes. Instead, I create about 20 to 30 tracks, as a library for the editors to work with. Most of the times the images are edited on the music, not the other way around. I like it this way, it gives me the freedom the compose without concessions.

There’s been a few instances where I used samples (mostly ripped from YouTube videos in some way related to the episode’s theme) as building blocks for a track, but 99% of the music is created with software program Logic Pro, using MIDI instruments - synthesized sounds that I can play with my keyboard, which can be based on real instruments (I particularly like faux clarinet, flutes, and kalimba), synthesizers, or (electronic or acoustic) drums. Everything, basically. Having these sounds at my fingertips means I can try out things and experiment super quick. I start with one instrument that I think might be a nice starting point, and begin noodling until I find a melody or rhythm that ‘sticks’. Then I build the music from there, with each successive track taking a sound or melody from the previous one, to create a sense of cohesion for each episode.

Once I sent Bram a first batch of music, he pretty much always follows up a request for some upbeat music, or for some variations on one or two of the tracks. In some cases he’ll send me a scene that still needs music, but that’s rare.

And that’s it, then my work is done. It’ll take two or three weeks before the episode gets aired. After this, each episode can still be streamed via the Dutch NPOstart service. So if you have a subscription, and you haven’t seen Frontlinie yet, go for it!

And if you haven’t heard the soundtrack album yet, it’s on most streaming platforms, and available as download (pay what you want) and CDr on my Bandcamp page.

Thanks for reading!
Best, Rutger