EXCLUSIVE Q&A: Music Editor Skye Lewin talks Cinemax's exciting series 'Banshee' and more

Cinemax's hit show Banshee is one of the darkest, most exciting series on television today. The music of the show is clearly part of the draw and expression that keeps viewers coming back each week, resulting in a recent third season confirmation from Cinemax as well as a great second season. The show's Music Editor, Skye Lewin, took some time to talk with us about the show and other aspects of his job within the industry.

How did you get your Music Editor position on Banshee and what does this position entail?

I've been [a music editor] for several years now after having a career in music as a musician, songwriter, producer, and recording engineer it kind of was a natural extension of those skills. I've been doing various television shows and worked with [music supervisor] PJ Bloom on some of the other ones. He got me involved on the show and I'm very grateful that he did.

As far as what my job entails as a music editor - it's almost like the middleperson, in a sense, between the composer and the producers, and the music supervisors and the producers. The main portion of my job is to take existing music - like all the songs and any music that wasn't already created specifically to picture - and edit it to make it look like it was intended to go to picture. So anytime you see a song that essentially scores a scene, I take the full-length song and then I cut it and manipulate it to make it look like it was intended to go with that scene. The other part of my job is to work with the composer to get his music in and often times what will happen is his music will require certain changes along the way, on the mix stage or anywhere along the line - if a producer or someone has a note: "hey maybe this music should do something different here" or "let's make the music build here," that sort of thing - then those are changes that I'll make to the score. Besides from the creative aspect of it, the other thing that I do is I track all of the uses of music and create queue sheets and basically document what music is in the show.

Are you a fan of the show and does that help with your work? 

Yeah it's frickin' awesome! I had no idea what to expect when I started, but it didn't take me more than watching the first cut of the first episode to know I was going to like it. And the whole crew is great; it's a really good team!

I like to give everything my best all of the time anyways, but if I'm a fan of the show I'm working on it's just easier. Like I don't even have to think about it. I always want it to be completely as good as it can be. It takes it from a job to a more pleasurable place.

How much freedom do you have in the music editing process? Are there instructions from producers that you follow?

I think it depends on the scene. A lot of the time what will happen is, yes I cut the music but there's usually more than one song. So for every scene that you see in the show, there could've been any number of different songs that we tried. Usually what I'll do is I'll get those songs, PJ and Janet from Neophonic will send how ever many songs we're going to try in each scene and for some of those they'll send notes saying, "hey we really like this part of the song so make sure you include it" or maybe "start with that part of the song" or "maybe use this part of the song at this picture cut." So they'll give me some sort of direction if they have something specific in mind and the rest of the time I just kind of follow my instincts of what seems right. Usually I'll cut anywhere between 1 or 3 or more versions of each song and send a Quicktime out to the producers. They watch them and either pick one or give notes and we tweak a little further.

What's your favorite part of working on Banshee?

It's a really good team and everyone is one: competent, two: pleasurable to work with, and three: they do give us a lot of creative freedom to do what we need to do in the show.

Do you have any other projects that you're working on?

I'll do a TV show here and there. Usually they run for shorter periods of time so right now I will work on Banshee for as long as it runs, you know, as long as I stay on the show, which will hopefully be until the end of it. That usually runs some time from late July to around the New Year. Then the rest of the year I'll do other shows. Right now I'm working on the new Fargo TV series ... and then on top of that, nights and weekends I still write music and record and produce. I'm working with a few different artists right now and doing some composition projects. Pretty much just all music stuff!

For more information on Skye, head over to his website right here!