Brian Langsbard has been deeply involved with baseball since composing his first opening theme for an MLB broadcast 15 years ago. He has since provided the music for a wide range of visual content, from the bone-chilling underscore for the murderous women of Snapped on the Oxygen network, to the backdrop to an animated Batman series to serious documentaries.
But baseball has been a consistent theme, and for the past four years, the huge heroic themes that companies like MLB Productions have come to Langsbard for have been written, produced and mixed through his 8260A Smart Active Monitors from Genelec.
Most recently, Langsbard finished up a four-part series titled Rushmore – narrated by Martin Sheen and profiling the lives and careers of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams and Hank Aaron – in the studio in his Laurel Canyon home ready to air in 2016. ‘What I like about composing for baseball and for sports in general is that they want the music to be big and up front, but they want a lot of detail in there, too,’ he says. ‘That’s what I’m always looking for, and the Genelecs always let me find it.’
Langsbard chose his 8260As in 2011, when dealer Westlake Pro brought them and another set of monitors over for him to compare. ‘The clarity was extraordinary,’ he recalls. ‘They’re a real pleasure to listen to, but just as importantly, they’re a tool for my work. They let me zero in on particular frequencies and other details that make a huge difference in the end.’
Langsbard says the 8260As give him that kind of specificity across all of the genres he works in, improving the tracks and the mixes he creates. ‘These are speakers that really, really make a difference.’
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