If you’re ever on the road in Burbank, California, you just might pull up beside a Suburban sleeper. It doesn’t look like much, but when the light turns green it can go from 0 to 60 mph in 4.5 seconds flat with the power of 750 horses. At the wheel is composer Dennis McCarthy having one hell of a great time. He scores sure and fast, just like he drives, always taking risks, making things better, having the time of his life.

Dennis has been hard at work scoring projects for over twenty years. His career includes countless movies of the week, twelve years of scoring episodes for Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, as well the theatrical films Star Trek Generations, McHale’s Navy and Letters From A Killer. He is a twelve-time winner of the ASCAP Scoring Award and he has been nominated seven times for the Emmy Award, winning twice: once for the episode "Reunification" on Star Trek: The Next Generation in 1992 and again for his main title theme to Deep Space Nine in 1993.

Cruising the sedate streets of Burbank is quite different than drag racing in Palmdale—just as scoring for television can be very different than scoring theatrical films. In either case, when you’re traveling at 300 mph, control is of the essence—just like conducting a full-scale orchestra. We spoke at Dennis’ studio in Burbank where he was polishing the V-8 mounted on top of his grand piano. I actually wondered: Was he was going to put in the key and start it up?

What is film music?
Film music is one of the main support systems for the director’s vision of the film. You [the composer] are one of the pillars that he builds his film on, creating the point of view and attitudes that the audience is supposed to perceive in what he’s done. As the composer, it’s your job to determine what his vision is, how you can make it come to life, and still put some of your own thoughts and ideas into it.

How did you get into film scoring?
My studies consisted of piano until I was twelve. I studied engineering, math, physics, and geology in school. When I went to college, I only took one semester of music. So, I got involved with these oddball small bands like The Hot Rods, The 4-Speeds, and The Super Stocks, which you can still hear on the Beach Boys Shut Down album. I was one of those car/surf type guys. Soon I met Glen Campbell when he was a session guitarist. When I was six months away from getting my degree at Cal State Northridge, Glen called me up to play. I said, "What does it pay?" He said, "$28.50 a night." I said, "Can’t beat that." So, I dropped out of school and played piano with Glen. Later he got his television show and through that I met Marty Paich, Ray Charles, and Nelson Riddle—just wonderful people who basically took me under their wings and said, you’re basically an arranger. Marty Paich tutored me for the next four years, it was like an apprenticeship, just a great education. I ended up staying with Glen Campbell nine years and wrote a thousand arrangements. When I left Glen I got a call from Dick Harris who was doing a spin-off of the Dukes Of Hazard called Enos. I’d never really scored a show in post-production before, so now I had an opportunity to write a little bit of underscore. The show went on for a year and I developed some good relationships with people at Warner Brothers. They’d already finished the first mini-series of V. They had started scoring the second mini-series, V The Final Battle and were not happy with it. They really wanted more of an orchestral score, not a synth-based score. I got the call and had nine days before it aired to score it. This was an hour and six minutes worth of music for a sixty-piece orchestra. V was a total success and I ended up doing the series as a follow up. After this I scored Dynasty, The Colby’s, Hotel, all those Spelling shows, as well as The Twilight Zone, the new series. Everything just kind of built on the last project. When they came out with "Encounter at Farpoint" on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Rick Berman called me and set a meeting because he’d heard my work on V and The Twilight Zone. He liked what he heard, and he wanted me to come up with a synth version of Alexander Courage’s opening horn fanfare in Jerry Goldsmith’s theme to kick off the show which I did and he liked that. That got me this job twelve years ago and I’ve been there ever since.

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