The talented trio of Kristopher Carter, Lolita Ritmanis and Michael McCuistion are no strangers to the DC Universe. Known collectively as the Emmy-award-winning Dynamic Music Partners, this group has been involved in some of the most acclaimed DC animated projects of the last few decades including Batman Beyond, Young Justice, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and many more. In recent years, the group has been on a mission to release music from their various animated projects. With the recent release of Teen Titans Original Soundtrack—vol. 5, every note of music written for the fan-favorite 2003 series is now available to enjoy.
During WonderCon, we had the opportunity to sit down with Dynamic Music Partners to reflect on crafting the musical identity for the beloved anime inspired DC animated series.
Taimur Dar: When Teen Titans first aired, I was already familiar with anime but it definitely widened my awareness. Most fans are aware that FLCL was a big influence for the series. I’m curious if you watched FLCL for any music inspiration for Teen Titans?
Kristopher Carter: [Producer] Glen [Murakami] asked us to watch it as an inspiration for the style, but not for the music. The music was something we worked out together with his tastes and our taste preferences. It was a brainstorming for the style of the show that wasn’t really influenced by the [FLCL] music.
Taimur Dar: Hearing you mention personal music tastes for Teen Titans reminds me of how James Gunn approached the music for Peacemaker. The first season very much took its cues from the hair metal genre and the most recent second season branched into melodic rock. What were some of your music sensibilities that you brought into the Teen Titans soundtrack?
Michael McCuistion: Glen kind of gave us free reign entirely. I asked him point blank at our spotting session, “What kind of style are you hearing for this?” He said, “Well, I think it could kind of be anything.” “Does that mean we don’t need a specific sound for all the episodes?” He’s like, “The episodes are all going to be different stories. If you want to go someplace different with every episode, that’s fine. I think this can be a world of all sorts of different musical styles mushed together. But it doesn’t always have to be one thing or another.” I think we settled on a groovy, fun feeling for the Titans especially when pizza is involved. For the individual episode stories, we were free to take it wherever wanted and that could mean using theremin or electric violin or whatever to bring some character to that story. It was more story specific than the series had one sound.
Taimur Dar: “Final Exam” wasn’t technically the first episode, but it’s the first episode I saw. I still remember being struck by this beautiful classical score that began the episode that I believe is called the “HIVE infomercial source.” It’s not something I would have expected to hear in a kids superhero show. What were some of the other unexpected music genres that delighted you to bring to the show?
Michael McCuistion: With that, I wanted it to sound like graduation and people getting their diplomas. It was the HIVE and this elite academy so it should feel very proper. I wanted it very square and intellectual. I did something similar but different for The Brain because I wanted him to have this coldness. I made it intellectual and baroque and took some inspiration from good old J.S. Bach. How many animated shows are you going to be able to pull from Elgar or Bach and all these influences. It was incredible that Glen gave us this opportunity.
Kristopher Carter: I think that the shows in general weren’t afraid to do things you weren’t expecting in a kids show. Especially the anime influence with the super deformed characters and the affectations of how they would experience their emotions visually. That inspired a lot of the music to be unusual. When it came time to come up with a specific sound we did try certain things. I know Cyborg’s T-Car we scored with 1950s muscle car sounds. The character of Terra was very much EDM mixed with Celtic instruments like pennywhistle and dance drums and western guitar. Glen would almost say, “How weird can we make the sound of the episode.”
Lolita Ritmanis: Some of it is of course external and plus-ing the environment that Glen and the artists created. A lot of Teen Titans is these wonderful characters that the fans fall in love with. Our job as composers is to be the secret heartbeat of these characters so that if you’re on the verge of crying or laughing or horrified, music can help that internal voice. Ideally, people who watched the show, if they listen to the soundtrack they can close their eyes and remember what happened or how they felt when they watched it the first time. That’s the subliminal power of film music. You don’t have to know all the classical or jazz composers. You just feel in that moment what the characters are going through. Glen Murakami was very much about that and having his audience feel what he intended to feel.
Taimur Dar: As I mentioned, I’m a big James Gunn fan. For his DC Studios shows like Peacemaker and Creature Commandos, Clint Mansell and Kevin Kiner work together for the music. I’m not able to listen and distinguish which parts each musician did. What does the collaboration process entail for you as Dynamic Music Partners and can you discern who composed what?
Kristopher Carter: I think the three of us can tell what we each have done just because we know each other’s music so well. Outside of that, I don’t think you can. In fact, we have a fun game that we’ll play when we’re presenting the music to the filmmakers, “Who do you think wrote this?” [Laughs]. It’s not often they can guess it because we’ve worked together for so long. We have individual voices but we know how to shape them in such a way that the show has a cohesive sound.
Lolita Ritmanis: It takes a while to get to, “What is the sound of the show? What are going after?” Every show that we’ve done hopefully has some differences. Teen Titans is very different than Batman Beyond and Batman: The Animated Series. Once a tone is developed, it’s our job to make some sort of cohesive identity for the show. It doesn’t mean that every episode is going to sound the same. That’s definitely not the case with Teen Titans. Every episode had a different sound. It’s a little bit of a puzzle piece. For you as a James Gunn fan with Kevin Kiner and Clint Mansell, often on these big tentpole feature films there are teams also behind the scenes. They’re very busy composers who also have to figure out how are they going to fit into the tapestry of the vision for the show. It’s part talent, part craft, and a lot of frustrations.
[Laughter]
Taimur Dar: I always enjoy seeing the titles of track listings for soundtracks. There’s definitely an art to it. You obviously don’t want to have a name that’s a big spoiler and also keep it simple and easy to recognize. For instance, the recent Superman movie has a track listing called “Raising the Flag” because that is literally what happens in the scene. How do you approach titling your music track listings?
Michael McCuistion: I always start with what the characters are talking about. If they say a line when the music starts, I usually try to use something from that line so that it places it in that story. Nowadays I try not to give too much away. Many years ago when we were making this show I wasn’t as concerned about that. I was more literal maybe, but now I’m a bit more cagey with the way I title things.
Lolita Ritmanis: I regret some of my early titles because it’s a complete spoiler. There’s a job called a music editor who also often creates these titles for licensing purposes. The titles can be so blatantly spoilers that it isn’t going to work to release ahead of time. It’s fine to release for documentation purposes. It’s a little tricky.
Michael McCuistion: Once you title a cue, you can’t retitle it. So whatever the title is that goes on the cue sheet and is filed on that piece of music, that stays with forever. So if you’ve done something you don’t like, it’s really hard to change it.
Lolita Ritmanis: We’ve worked with music editors who inadvertently misspelled a character’s name. Even I’ve misspelled something.
Taimur Dar: One of my favorite music pieces you composed was for that amazing opening monologue sequence from the episode “Aftershock Part 2.” I think they may have cut it out in reruns but thankfully it’s restored on streaming. What pieces of music are you particularly proud of from the Teen Titans series?
Lolita Ritmanis: I like “How Long is Forever?,” that was a good episode for me. When you mentioned certain music cues, a lot of people think of them as songs but if there are no lyrics they are considered music cues. Sometimes when we write to a certain length, and it used to be broadcast television so if it’s half hour show, it would be 22-minute of content at the most. That’s probably why certain things were taken out. Maybe they needed more time for commercials.
Kristopher Carter: I have three. My favorite character theme setting was “Mad Mod.” I got to do a really cool ‘60s influence theme for him. And the guitar player we worked with has all of this actual guitar gear. He brought it all out so we had all this classic guitar sound to play with. My favorite moment of the score is actually not even that important a scene but there’s a montage where Beast Boy and Terra are at a carnival and I actually wrote a piece of music in a song form. It’s a lovely piece of music. The last was when Robin went to the prom with Kitty and we scored that all with ‘90s ballads. It was so fun to reach into the cliches of that style. [Laughs].
Lolita Ritmanis: Plus you played in a ‘90s rock band and had long hair. No question Kris was going to do that.
Michael McCuistion: It’s funny that you mentioned “Aftershock: Part 2” because that’s one of my favorite episodes that I wrote. I loved the ability to wrap up that story with Terra in that way. My favorite character and character themes was Red X. I loved writing music for Red X. Probably my favorite episode musically was “Every Dog Has His Day” because I got to use a theremin on that. I love theremin. I played the theremin for that score. So if you hear theremin, that’s me.
Lolita Ritmanis: Who did we gift a theremin to?
Michael McCuistion: We gave a theremin to Glen Murakami.
Lolita Ritmanis: It’s kind of a fun tradition for us. With Batman: The Brave and the Bold we gifted James Tucker some bongos.
Michael McCuistion: He was always asking for more bongos.
Taimur Dar: Before we wrap up, anything you want to plug or promote for our readers?
Kristopher Carter: As of today, the fifth volume of the Teen Titans original soundtrack is out on all streaming platforms. We’ve been on a process to release almost every note of music that we’ve written for these different series; Teen Titans, Batman Beyond, Justice League, Justice League Unlimited, Young Justice. The cycle of Teen Titans albums, one for each season of the series, is now out in the world to enjoy. We’d love for people to check it out. They can come to our website.
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