DAVE HUIZENGA: I think, one of the -- when I finally got away from modules and started to appreciate when companies would actually send DVDs where I put 3, 4, and 5 GB worth of sounds on my hard drive and access my sounds through the drive, one of the first companies that I used for that was Spectrasonics, and I still use and love Atmosphere, their Stylus RMX, and they also have the bass module Trilogy, and it's just big, rich, beautiful sounds. They also fascinated me with their -- and I know these are old now, you know, but I'm just talking about when I first got into, especially getting the sounds on the drive, Digital Distorted Reality and Bizarre Guitar, some of these fabulous Spectrasonics things from Ilio is I think the company I get them from. But anyway, what a tremendous, creative boost they gave me, you know, and so I still use those and I love them, but I'm also finding other plugins now that are -- If I can tap something here, I'll give you an example here of something called XPand, right here, and this came -- It was a nice surprise I must say. When I went from Pro Tools 6 to 7, this was part of the package, and --

[DAVE HUIZENGA PLAYING A NOTE ON DIGIDESIGN XPAND]

Let's see here. I got it, just record enabled this.

[DAVE HUIZENGA PLAYING A FEW PASSAGES USING DIGIDESIGN XPAND]

You know, and it's a little four-track. It's not multitimbral but what you can do is you can assign high and low keys, so in a sense, you're -- you can mult -- you know -- you're multi-ing out of the same MIDI channel, out of the same track, but you have four opportunities here and four mixing opportunities to just split up your keyboard in this particular little XPand thing, but I love it. It's got a lot of arpeggiation and a lot of great string and pads and synthy stuff which I think ultimately I would probably describe -- Actually, maybe I can just play it. Can I play a quick tune?

JOE WALLACE: Sure. Sure.

DAVE HUIZENGA: Let me. It's a good example of -- I think this might just give you an idea. This might give you an idea of my -- kind of my sound, what I like.

[DAVE HUIZENGA PLAYS BACK ONE OF HIS ORIGINAL TRACKS]

What I like to write.

[DAVE HUIZENGA PLAYING BACK ONE OF HIS ORIGINAL TRACKS]

So, what I'll try and do here, of course, is hit picture -- I mean that's my job -- is to follow this and be a third -- really be a third voice in this program. The first being, of course, the actual voice we're hearing, and that's Bill telling the story, and I learned that early on is that while I'm a third voice, I'm there to help him tell that story even better, you know. I think it might be the plight perhaps or a problem maybe for a young composer, who -- because I know when I first came on, especially I was in rock bands all my life, you know, writing pop tunes and singer, fronting a band, and you come in and immediately you see picture and you just want to take over, you know. It's like, "Oh, I can make this great." Well, yeah what you're playing is nice but are you truly, to the best of the whole shows, are you working on the best interests of everybody here involved? And that is the writer, getting the words said properly, and very importantly Bill, who threw his delivery and his professional take on storytelling. You know, my job is just -- I just need to enhance and punctuate basically. It's kind of how we like to describe it to each other, you know, and you can see that punctuation, of course, visually when the scene changes and I make a hit [VOCALIZES A HIT] or, you know, or when just it could be as subtle as Bill talking and setting up something and saying, "You know what, all of the sudden then, the culprit decided he had had enough," [VOCALIZES A HIT], you know. Again, it's kind of an -- It seems obvious now when I describe it, but -- And it also does not have to be a [VOCALIZING AN INAPPROPRIATE HIT], you know. It can just be --

[DAVE HUIZENGA PLAYING A SIMPLE ARPEGGIATED ATMOSPHERIC SYNTH PASSAGE]

It could be...

[DAVE HUIZENGA PLAYING A SIMPLE ARPEGGIATED ATMOSPHERIC SYNTH PASSAGE]

"And then the culprit decided he had had enough."

[DAVE HUIZENGA PLAYING A SIMPLE ARPEGGIATED ATMOSPHERIC SYNTH PASSAGE]

And you just need then -- You need to turn to make the story take a turn there, you know, and it could be one note, you know. It doesn't have to be, and I mean in the beginning, I probably had guitars slamming. I had Hans Zimmer guitar samples slamming, or what is it? Steve Stevens and [LAUGHING] all these guys, and Clearmountain was his name. Bob Clearmountain drums [LAUGHING] and [LAUGHING] then the whole thing, and quickly found that that is not necessary, you know. Just be thoughtful and literally, you know, be sensitive to the fact of what's happening up here.

Now, Cold Case, and of course it depends on your production, but Cold Case, what's cool about it, I love the way it came on the scene, is that it gave me the ability to then just pump it up though a little bit. I didn't have these driving rhythms necessarily, certainly not with today's sounds in The New Explorers because for one, we're in Africa or we're in the Amazon, you know, and so I try and keep, you know, I'd use drums but they would be of course native drums and I would use, you know, stringed instruments but I'd try and keep it more native.

Here, however, now I can do, you know, kind of like some of my favorite type of music which it's kind of hard to explain. Maybe you can help me with a genre, but it's, you know, it's arpeggiated, it's kind of -- maybe it's the trance or electronica, you know. It really moves me. On XM Radio, it's their chill station on the Internet, on Mac it's Groove Salad, you know, it's just -- it's very almost Alan Parsons, you know, that kind of hypnotic, and I take it even back to Pink Floyd days, which is who I grew up with, doing the kind of music that's still to this day I like to get lost in, kind of hypnotizes me a bit. So, that's the -- Yu know, I can play you a few examples too, depending on how much time we have but just again of that style of music that I really love.

But getting back here, I just want to show you, if you have a shot, you know, of this here of how you can see how I'll try and crank -- It's not Bill. This is an editor at this point, a scratch track that I'm working with here, but --

[DAVE HUIZENGA PLAYING A SCRATCH TRACK]

It's getting ready to change the scene here.

[DAVE HUIZENGA PLAYING A SCRATCH TRACK]

This is the feeling I'm talking about. It's just trying to keep the motivation under here...

[DAVE HUIZENGA PLAYING A SCRATCH TRACK]

...and just playing around with a little piano part there that may or may not be necessary.

[DAVE HUIZENGA PLAYING A SCRATCH TRACK]

And then you'll hear --

[DAVE HUIZENGA PLAYING A SCRATCH TRACK]

You know, that's what I mean by punctuation. I'll try and be out, you know, almost like "Shoom!" a setup, "I think I killed somebody," you know, that kind of thing. And I tried and do quite a bit of really what Brian does so well in the next room is sound design. I just try and add -- You know, if I can write music and create my own, you know, hits and ambient kind of drones and what have you, even though it's not necessarily music, I'd much rather do it in here, not write something a bit lighter and say, "Well, I'll leave it to Brian. He'll fill it in with some effects and what have you." Excuse me. In most cases, I have my own bins filled with drums and drones and all of the kind of hits and things that I want to help bring it to life here.