Colbert & Fallon: Mixing Music for Late Night TV

**Dallas Taylor** (0:00)
Hey, listeners. So the vast majority of the way that we pay our staff and our team, and to make this podcast a reality is through advertising. We quite literally can't make Twenty Thousand Hertz without strong advertising partners. So if we want nice things and we want Twenty Thousand Hertz to exist, I need your help with that. I know many, many people in our audience who work for companies that make or does something relevant to the interests of this audience. It could be an audio manufacturer, an entertainment company, a clothing brand, a home goods store, meal delivery service or some useful software. Our audience loves sound, music and audio things, but really just anything in the design and wellness space is very relevant. And if any of this applies to you, then you or the company that you work for should really think about advertising on Twenty Thousand Hertz. And I would even encourage you to zoom out a little bit. Not only is it advertising, but it's also being associated with good things in the world. The show has over 100,000 passionate listeners that you could be connecting with. And right now, I could be telling them all about the latest and greatest thing that you have to offer. For rates and availability, get in touch by emailing web at 20k.org. You can also use the contact form on our website, 20k.org.
You're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:20)
The stories behind the world's most recognizable and interesting sounds.

**Dallas Taylor** (1:25)
I'm Dallas Taylor. Ever since we launched our video series about a year ago, I've had some pretty amazing experiences, like going backstage at several late night shows to learn how they craft the audio in these super high pressure environments. Two of the shows that I went to were The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon at 30 Rock in Manhattan and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert over at the Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway. I filmed Colbert's just a few weeks before that show ended. Between both shows, I interviewed a lot of people, including the Music Mixers who mixed the in-house band as well as the visiting musical guests. Over on Colbert's show, the Music Mixer was Harvey Goldberg. Starting in the late 90s, Harvey worked on The Late Show with David Letterman and then stayed on when Colbert took over in 2015
Over on Jimmy Fallon, the Music Mixer is Lawrence Manchester, who's been with the show since the very beginning.
After meeting both Harvey and Lawrence, I thought it'd be really cool to bring them together here on Twenty Thousand Hertz to swap stories. Well, this is so exciting. I'm so glad that the stars aligned to where I could get the two of you together, because I wanted to interview both of you individually and I had an epiphany. I was like, what about together? So why don't we start with Harvey? So what is the band experience at one of these shows? What are they coming into? How many rehearsals, how many recordings, and what happens live versus not live?

**Harvey Goldberg** (2:58)
Yeah. One of the things that I learned pretty quickly is that even the most seasoned band that's made a lot of records and has done a lot of concerts, if you stop and think about it, the thing they've done the least is television. Even the most successful band in the world, maybe at the most will do three television shows in the course of a year, and then they may not do another one for another three years.
So they're always a little bit more nervous playing on television than they are in concert or making records. They've done that on a regular basis. And it's also probably, I would assume, pretty hard to come out for one song and just hit it.
We traditionally, on both Letterman and The Late Show, we would do a line check in the morning and just make sure all of their equipment works and all of our equipment works. And we'd get whatever rough sounds we could with their tech crew. Sometimes members of the band would show up themselves, which would help. But then at the camera block, meaning the on-camera rehearsal, I structured it that the director knew that I would get two audio passes before cameras would join in. And in those two passes, I would hear the final players and get together a mix that was close to what it should be. And then cameras always wanted to look at it another two or three times. So I would say, I get to hear the song performed live without an audience four to five times.

**Dallas Taylor** (4:39)