This Podcast Is... Uncalled For - Mike Hall

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

Mike Hall is an Iowa-based musician and composer who does a lot of film compositions.  He was kind enough to join us to talk about music and film.

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Just press play. We're on our way. Hi everybody, welcome to this podcast, I'm called for. I have another great guest with me today, so if you could please introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Mike Hall. I'm a U.S. composer, music producer. I've been doing this for about 30 years. doing music for film and record and, you know,

done a little bit of everything, mixing, mastering. So great to be here. Good deal, good deal. Of course, I found out about you through a film website. I think it's a Stage 32 is the name of the websites, which is for those not familiar, it's kind of a Facebook type thing for people in the film industry that I hadn't been at that site for quite a while,

but recently got back on there and so I'm a, oh yeah, I should probably work with this guy somehow. And yeah, here we are. Now, if I remember correctly, you're based, I'm in Kansas City and I think you're in Iowa somewhere, so not too far. Yep, right along the Iowa, Illinois border along the Mississippi. So, yep, on the other side. Good deal. So tell us about some of the types of films you've done music for and all that. Well, originally I started out just as a magician,

playing in bands and touring around. And I got into recording because we could never. afford to go to a real studio. And so I ended up, you know, recording, producing our bands, records, and stuff. And then after that, I started producing records for other artists. And then I started working for record labels, doing mixing and mastering. And then one day I was in a studio where they said, you know, you ought to do music for film. And I'm like, nah, those are for those educated types, you know.

And before long, I got contacted by a film director from Germany who wanted me to do, you know, is the music for his, you know, horror film. And, of course, I had no idea what I was doing. But, of course, like everything else, you just jump in head first and fake it. And it seemed to work out pretty well. and I've been doing films ever since. Oh, right. You know, also on the side, I work. I sometimes give lectures at colleges for, like, vocal production,

for like voiceover and stuff. So, you know, it kind of goes to show the path that you start out on, you know, in your artistic career will probably not be, be the one that you end up on you know i mean i still i still do records and stuff like that but you know it's kind of good to taste everything i guess you know yeah well that's like that's like me you know i kind of did a little bit of everything i went in as a filmmaker you know wanting to write and direct my own films and uh wound up acting a couple of them which uh for those listening i do not recommend trying to act in your own film

You already have enough stress going on. You don't need the added stress of trying to learn lines and trying to make them sound good and all that. And that's led me down the path to podcasting. And I really enjoy it. I haven't done a film in quite a while, but I'm still very much open to it. All that. I do have a couple of ideas in mind. But, yeah, that's pretty cool. Yeah.

So, so, yeah, what kind of, what kind of bands have you been, had you been working with since you mentioned that? Well, you know, I started off playing in singing or playing guitar and like rock and metal bands. Well, then once I got into film, I started working with all kinds of different styles of music, also producing other artists, you know, every, every style you can imagine, you know.

And then, like I said, you know, working with films, most of my film, film work are for, you know, films overseas and, you know, some of them are completely different cultures, you know. So you end up learning quite a bit about their style of music. Although one thing that I found is that, you know, you can create music of another culture or style to your own vision of it. But it's still not authentic, you know. So whenever possible, I'll always use musicians from that culture. And so like recently I did a film for this, I did a film score for this London director who she was doing a film in Ireland, this dark dramatic feature. And so she wanted a lot of, you know, Irish instruments like various pipes and stuff.

Well, I could create that, but it wouldn't be authentic. So I suggested, you know, I think it's better when. you use, you know, musicians from that area, keep it authentic, they send me the recordings of their tracks, and then I'll kind of weave a score around their instruments, you know. So I've done that for films from India and China and stuff like that. So it works out quite a bit better that way. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, that's a great way to learn about it.

different cultures and find a way to work around it. You mentioned that Germany was your first film. What was that like working with German music? You know, a lot of them, a lot of films, especially overseas, they'll want the music kind of in their style or instruments of their style, you know but they wanted Americanized you know and so

that could kind of be you know tricky to the German film you know it was same type of you know same type of regular score music you know but like I said you know

it was it was something I'd never done before and once I did it it was you know, it seemed kind of like a natural fit, you know. I don't know if it was just because, you know, I grew up always loving watching movies or whatever. But usually when I start a film, I'll talk to the director. And as soon as they start telling me about the characters and, you know, the storyline, I'm already hearing music ideas and themes, you know, going on.

So it comes to me pretty fast and then, you know, then we go from there. Very cool. Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. What is if there is any difference between scoring music for films and just composing songs on a regular basis? Is there much difference between the two? I'm always somebody who's like, you know,

there is no rules. As long as it fits for the film, it's good. A score doesn't even have to really be music technically. It could just be, you know, sounds or percussion sounds or, you know, voices. You know, there's not, it's whatever really fits. With traditional music you're using, you know, like drums, guitar, bass, you know. or horns or whatever, you know. Whereas when you're creating that kind of music, it's meant to be listened to.

The weird thing about film is, and again, I always say there's no rules to it, to anything, but, you know, most of the time in film, you want the music to be not noticed, you know, because, you know, you want the audience to focus on the visual. with a dialogue and the music and sound is just there to enhance whatever the emotion is that the director

wants the audience to feel whether it's coming from the characters in the film or the environment you know whatever they want the audience to experience or to enhance but it should never

distract from the visual or the dialogue you know you know that would be the probably the closest thing now there's films that will have like popular songs or songs and that drives the energy of of the scene you know but again it's only there to enhance the visual you know it doesn't really you know the main focus is on the characters you know in the story yeah so Yeah, I would tend to agree there. So, yeah, I think some of the best music out there, well, certainly, you know, being a child of the 80s, I think of those 80s movies like Beverly Hills Cop and Top Gunn and how those movies had these awesome soundtracks,

and we could go and buy the CDs or, I guess, back then, it would be cassettes and vinyl. buy those and just listen to those songs at your at your leisure and everything uh but uh but uh you know those those particular yeah when you heard those particular songs it took you right back to the film you know so yeah makes you think about it was a good strategy you know yeah makes you think about the film but uh like you said i i uh within past couple of years saw a couple of documentaries on particularly the Top Gun soundtrack. You know, that was one guy doing most of those,

writing most of the songs, and finding musicians to do this. Fortunately, he found Kenny Loggins and Berlin and so on. And, yeah, they just added to that film significantly, I think. And it was pretty interesting. interesting hearing that can you loggins do a acoustic version of danger zone oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so uh have you have any independent filmmakers uh reached out to to you about doing the music scores and and uh in fact that's that's another great question uh what advice do you have for independent

filmmakers looking for music? These days, I mean, the way the industry is, you know, there's more films than ever before, but there's less budget. So, you know, there's a lot of royalty-free music and stuff, which, you know, that's, you know, nobody, no composer wants to say, hey, you know, use royalty libraries, you know, instead of a composer if you have to, you know. But everybody's art, you got to do whatever you got to do to make your art happen, you know. And I would say I would reach out to a composer because here's the difference.

Normally, they'll have their own little production library of all the tracks that they've done. and when you use like a like from a stock library it's it's way more affordable but the problem is is that when you're putting together a score or tracks for your film you want them to blend and you know one of the things like i notice with new filmmakers is that you know they'll they'll pick tracks you know, like different score pieces, and they don't blend very well. And so whenever there's a new scene or there's a new piece of music,

it's very subtle, but it jars, it jars the audience. You know, it disrupts that flow, that audio flow. So I always suggest, you know, go to a composer and say, You know, I've got this film. Is there any way that I could license some tracks from you?

You know, because I'm not going to be able to, you know, I've got a low budget. I'm not, you know, unless you're looking to build your library with tracks that you own the rights to, I can't afford to have you compose all the music to my film. But, you know, would you, you know, I've heard some of your music. I really like what you do. I think it would fit well, you know, with my film, would you be able to license some tracks, you know? Now you've got several tracks from the same composer that's going to blend a lot easier and have a better feel in the overall film. Not only that, but you can get various mixes from that composer of previously recorded.

tracks. You know, a lot of music maker, well, even other artists, you know, you'll, when they record a track, say, hey, I really like that one song, they can actually take that, go back to the multi-track and make a version without lyrics, do shorter edits for like bumpers, you know, or scene changes. And, you know, there's lots of options that filmmakers can do very affordably working with original tracks, you know, just working with, you know, other composers. On the composer's side, I would always say, you know, always be creating music for, you

your library. And, you know, because you can always license these tracks out for newer filmmakers and stuff, you know, or lower budgets, you know. And, you know, I think it, I think it just passes the work around where I think some people, some filmmakers feel that, well, my only option is to go to a stock library, pay them like $300 a year, pick and choose tracks. And they'll sound fun. And they'll sound fine, but the thing is, is you want the score to blend throughout the film. You know, you don't want different productions, different things that, you know, have a way of, you know, unless you're using, you know, using actual songs, you know, I find that a lot of times of stock music doesn't blend very well, you know, from scene to scene.

and that's on the editor too i will i will say that's on the filmmaker so that the editor has it doesn't have a good ear for that sort of thing yeah and that and that does take a lot of practice folks listening uh the um just get in there and uh start editing and that's one way that's filmmaking translates easily to podcasting is that gives me a practice in finding you know what works what doesn't and all that so and and there is a plenty of great music out there that can be licensed you know through the career of commons process which I I think is a great resource especially for filmmakers and those just getting started but at the same time we want to keep in mind

guys like you who make the music and try to make a living off of it. They can't all be Taylor Swift, folks. The other they notice is that, you know, one thing I noticed with newer

filmmakers is that they feel that they have to use music in every scene. And I'm actually somebody who's like, you know, less is more. Yeah. You know, sometimes the most dramatic sound that you can get in a scene is silence, you know. You'll notice like in a, in like a thriller, it'll build up.

And then when it meets a climax sound, you're hearing silence and like maybe the breath of the character. And then it goes into something, you know, so. Yeah. silence is a very powerful you know sound to work with as well yeah and uh and that's another film components that hopefully hopefully filmmakers and errors are familiar with the concept of room tone

yeah yeah just everyone shut up for a couple seconds i'm just going to record the room how's it sound everything and they use that as part of your background, you know? Yep, exactly. Yeah. So pretty simple stuff, but once again, it takes a lot, a lot to get used to

and all that good stuff. All right. Good deal. Good deal. Any projects coming up that you can talk about, sir? There's a couple of film projects. coming up later this year. The other thing is it's a lot of hurry up and wait. So I go in between film work and then album work.

And, you know, I produce stuff for other artists. So I've always got projects going on. There you go. There you go. Yeah. I always try to stay busy. And for anyone who might be interested in using your music, how they contact you.

and you can contact me through my email which is Mike Hall film composer at Gmail.com so feel free to reach out to me or if you've got any questions about filmmaking I'm always happy to help with advice or anything with music or film or whatever all right

all right sounds great so I'll put them a show notes and and Mike thanks so much for coming on it's great to talk with you and for everyone I appreciate it yeah and for everyone listening thank you so much for listening and we will talk again next time this podcast is Uncalled for is hosted produced and edited by myself Mike Chernevsky our opening music is the this podcast is Uncalled for theme which was created at Suno com s uno.com. Our outro music is industrial cinematic by Kevin McLeod at Incomptech.com. It is licensed of Creative Commons by attribution 4.0 license. Please support the podcast and purchase our exclusive uncalled for merchandise, t-shirts,

sweatshirts, mugs, stickers, and so much more. Go to www.com.com.com. coffeepress.com slash uncalled for pod. Thank you so much for listening. We will see you next time.