The Thomas Newman Interview | Where Does THIS Music Come From?

since the beginning of this channel I've had a list of people that I was interested in interviewing and right at the top of the list is film composer Thomas Newman I first became aware of his music when I saw the 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption and since then I've been a massive fan Thomas is the youngest son of film scoring Legend Alfred Newman who's probably best known for this theme [Music] thank you he's also part of a Hollywood film scoring Dynasty which features his two uncles Lionel and Emil his brother David and his cousin the great songwriter Randy Newman I was lucky enough to interview Thomas this past week in Los Angeles here's my interview foreign [Music] foreign [Music] it goes on but we'll keep it up there beautiful I want to start out by talking about your upbringing tell me about your your music training growing up in your household what was what was that like you know required piano and violin lessons maybe starting when I was six or seven but uh nothing outstanding I always felt like I was behind the curve in terms of technique the ability to play quickly um I couldn't shift in violinist certainly not in the second position but uh third position was all tough but I played in school orchestras which was great you know retrospectively just in terms of what I was exposed to I remember playing in the Santa Monica Symphony the mahler's fourth Symphony being way back in the second violins but there it was Mahler um so a lot of exposure to music and a lot of listening in spite of really not knowing that I was listening um and then I studied music in college kind of because I didn't know what else to do my dad was a composer I died when I was 14. so there was this music obviously in the Newman family my cousin Randy all these things were you know Long Tall Shadows um and I guess slowly I I think I just started to emerge with a sense of who I was in a sense of of having an imagination um separate from a technique necessarily to support the imagination and um synthesizers and sequencers started happening in the early 80s and that was a way to kind of like that was an open door that I could kind of get in and I felt like I was a good programmer and on and on and um you know eventually I think my my training in college caught up with my opportunity and I was able to start standing in front of an orchestra and um you know making a difference in your house what kind of music were you guys listening to what would your would your siblings play music would your parents play music would they you know what would you listen to yeah my dad who was way older there was not a lot of listening from him there were kind of uh salons like Thanksgiving the Hollywood string quartet would come over and and play you know quartets I don't I don't remember my father playing that much other than in his Studio like plunking on a note and and writing the note down you know other than piano lessons and violin lessons it wasn't like we were we were absorbed in all this music and all this repertoire uh although you know through schools and through um uh teachers there was there was a lot of exposure would your mom kind of say oh it's time to practice and and was she you know was she tough about it she was Tom you haven't practiced today you got to practice your violin you didn't practice your piano yeah but typically we would practice the the violin on a Saturday night before a Sunday lesson and we'd go over the hill to the valley to a Sunday lesson and I was always unprepared violin was just a tough instrument for me I finally gave it up I think in high school or something did you play sports or do anything like that uh I I did I but you know uh I played a sea squad basketball but I think I was chicken Squad uh even on the C team I think I may have been the only uh kid who didn't score a point the whole season um and I love sports I definitely love sports growing up your dad by the time you're five years old he's already 60 years old and he's getting ill and he's getting ill yeah with with lung cancer kind of undiagnosed or whether it was diagnosed or not it was not talked about for sure but emphysema so a lot of heavy breathing you know a labor breathing I should say how did that affect you you think and your siblings when you have a a father that's that's ill like that it's heavy I mean he clearly was too old to kind of participate in you know Cub Scouts or I remember a couple of times him coming to baseball games we'd play down at Rustic Canyon Park um and and the the gravity of knowing that that he was this big man that he was that he was an important musical figure that was something I think on a certain level I took for granted as part of the bubble I was in uh and so when he died there was a bit of whatever it was it was no longer I mean life really changed um for me after he died do you think that that having your dad die when you're 14 years old I mean that's got a really affect a kid a teenager a teenage boy loses their dad yeah and affect the whole family I mean that's a real shocking on many levels one was death tax and will we be able to continue living in the house the other is who am I I've not grown into a man yet I don't have a male role model so yeah it's heavy it was really really heavy and I think it's something that just you end up just you know eating and digesting it becomes a new a part of a new you is kind of what I think happened whatever I was I was no longer do you think that your dad being two generations older than you that that gave you a certain set of values it was a large Clan family my dad was the oldest of ten they had come from poverty New Haven and by way of of Long Island New York into my dad certainly into Manhattan you know um as a pit conductor it was a prodigy comes out to LA in 1930 at the beginning of talkies works with Charlie Chaplin all the way up and stuff so there was this this sense that that whatever had been written I mean in his life had been written and that I was there was a little bit of Dustin in the Attic by the time I'm born so much of that literally is in boxes in the Attic of our house I'm not sure that answers your question but it it it's there you sense real deep blood there and real deep blood line but on another level like how do I how do I relate to this what does that mean to me as a young boy I'm not sure I I mean I think I can connect them now but as a young boy you think I'm I'm part of this family I'm proud to be a part of this family but I have no sense what that means to me in terms of making my next steps in life when did you really start to compose things you know never when he was alive I think the summer after he died my mom made me go to um isomata which was a USC run camp in Idlewild and you you were in cabins and there were three other kids in my cabin one of whom wrote poetry and it was like you know your our age and you write poetry and it was like wow I never thought of it I'd never thought of being creative and I and I went home and started kind of messing around with words and and realizing that there was Outlet in it um and how I drifted into writing music was it's just very gradual but it was not like I I have to do this I have to hit the ball hard and I and I have to succeed and it was never this kind of uh you know blind ambition when you went to school for music though obviously you had assignments you'd had to have to write things for for class or whatever right what was that training like I mean it was it was rigorous I mean I I you know Theory uh history of Music uh Counterpoint which I never felt like I could quite Master other than species Counterpoint like you know Renaissance Counterpoint was more fun or more approachable once you got into 18th century Counterpoint it was like Wow Bach and you know fugues and and that was daunting a lot of it was just daunting like all of this stuff that had gone before not only in my own family but just in the huge you know Canon of of music was like wow what does that mean and and where do I fit in so I was kind of bobbing along but I don't think with any sense of confidence in in having a a voice or any anything meaningful to to to share with anyone what was your first film homework what did you do did you do any orchestrating or anything like that before you even started writing writing uh you know I it was a bit of a bone toss I think I've said this before but John Williams um let me he's great friends with my uncle Lionel and Star Wars was going down this must have been I guess mid to late 70s and John asked me to orchestrate the death of Vader in Return of the Jedi but it was a very I don't want to say uncreative job it's just John's uh manuscript was so complete that it was it was truly like okay here's the flute there's the flute and and I would be interested to see my penmanship you know my pencilmanship whatever um but so there was that not that I felt like I had any knowledge of truly other than abstract knowledge of what it meant to orchestrate what does orchestration mean how is it different than piano how how does it expand even though I did I'd done a lot of study you know throughout school okay this is a real out out there question what do you think your dad would think of your music what do you think of of things like synthesizers and and combining synthesizers and and sampled sounds with orchestrated music have you ever thought about that I mean I guess I have to a degree I I think my dad did have the ability to move forward in what you know his career started early and I mean I mean he was in Hollywood from 30 to 1930 to 1969 and I think he saw a lot of changes and he was able to adapt to those changes so I think he probably would have been interested I mean you know you think the thing about my dad is when he would get up in front of an orchestra with a clock or with you know he this Newman I don't know if you've ever heard of the Newman system which was yeah yeah punches and streamers I think it would derive from like uh doing ADR and and voiceovers and things like that I mean that is true expertise you know Emma Bernstein was supposedly amazing with a clock he could conduct and he could speed up slow down as he watched a clock tick that would have been pretty tough for me I think um but I hope he would have been proud I mean I'm certainly not my dad and I never wanted to be I think a lot of times my approach to string writing can approach this sense of what he um could do with strings and of course he was a really noted conductor so his ability to bring out performance was really I think unparalleled in his time it's interesting how your string writing is so different from your piano writing the line movement that you have in your string rating is very different than your piano work that you play you you seems like you always reduce down to the most basic elements which I think is really beautiful to leave space for other things right or to say I mean you know what is it to have an idea and then how does that idea get adorned and I think that always interested me uh and and I I think there was a time it probably still exists where I thought how can I say the most uh by doing the less by doing the least and and therefore what what was it in the case of American Beauty uh to to say what is Harmony and how is harmony expressed you know in three notes when I first became aware of you I'd seen uh some of your early movies and I didn't realize that it was you that had scored them but when I saw shark Redemption the film score is so prominent in the movie and to me I feel like that really gives the movie its heart Brooks was here has has a voiceover over it yeah right yes but because there but there's so much space for the music to speak and all those unexpected surprise notes that happen in it right they also had you know a drone behind it which also kind of makes you feel like there's Stillness and it it kind of I think gives a listener or a reviewer a a sense of how time is passing and of course you can only do that when there's time there to pass obviously I mean one of the things about film music is form is dictated by you know A Cut You Know by how much dialogue is there how much space is there between dialogue and at the end of a scene or the beginning of another so all of that tends to be accidental into terms of one's ability to um to express in a period of time there's something I like about that that it's that it's foregone that film tells you so much what you are and the first requirement is to do what's required right to to say this is what the scene is and this is how how it has to transpire and then I thought beyond that how can I fit things in how can I how can I make this have more personality without distracting from the Nuance of uh an actor's uh you know reading his or her lines if you go back to that time period versus nowadays film scoring though was changing with the tools that were available to composers to do things like mock-ups or whatever and right we're mocking up as much you weren't that or if you were mocking up the strings would just kind of go off a cliff you know there was it was hard to like do fades and things like that at least for me and there was not that expectation I think to to work it up to a degree that it could be digested favorably by a director in terms of of accepting an idea tell me how you would work with a director then during that time period when they had to actually use their imagination there were yeah there were moments I remember on on Road to Perdition with Sam Mendes we got to the end of the movie and and the issue was okay here's Tom Hanks in in his character and he's in a different space he's he's he's come through all this therefore it should be a different tune right I mean it was kind of there was this kind of thinking and and um I remember Sam said yeah that sounds right or is it he kind of he kind of said yes but no and said see you later and I think that was the last I saw of him I had to kind of make a decision about what that theme would be it ended up that it was a repeat of of a theme that we had heard earlier but it wasn't as if everybody was watching all the time and listening so you know intently at all times and that's kind of what technology has done I think has just made it you know it's so I mean to say unpoeticized the procedurally it just doesn't have it all the Poetry that I think it had 20 years ago or 25 years ago would you come into a project that had temp music back then when you're first beginning there there would I mean the thing about tent music you know you want tent music to work in the in the most average way you wanted to get the point across but if it's if it's too filled out if it's too impressive then your ability to to push up against what's there becomes tougher so the question is how do you satisfy those dramatic requirements in a way that doesn't pair it what's there because you kind of think all right that's there and that's what this is so what I would try to do is try to drive it out of my head and say well okay it could be that but what if it were this so that so you wouldn't just feel boxed immediately I mean the thing about 10 music is it really does creative and one's ability to just be open and creative because your mind kind of goes boom there there it is I get it I see what it's doing it's approved you know conceptually already by an editor and a director and I kind of got to go there so that's that's the danger the danger is how do you remain open creative and not ignorant because you know at some point they're going to say can we hear what the temp was oh that's different I may I may like the temp better and that's just again human nature it's just how people operate I mean when a film is being created it's only as good as the moment you last see it so if here's the music that's that's their movie until you improve it if you don't improve it in their minds then you can bet it's not good in the movie how often does it happen where you listen down you've got the director there they like it and then the next day they call you up and say you know what I was thinking about this I'm not feeling it does that happen often I think it does with certain types of directors because there's this issue too of of director wanting to be um open and collaborative but that can oftentimes be uh displaced by Just A desperate like I I could be wrong so there's there's a moment I think for all directors when they have to kind of um abide the newness of a new idea right say I don't know what I think of this but I'm not going to say anything or I I don't know what I think of this one I'm going to reject it just in a heartbeat and and I think that's a lot of what separates good from average directors is is an ability to say I need to be open to this being better than I think it is at the moment I hear it do you ever think oh they're totally wrong about this this is really the right thing for this and often yeah often so but the only way out of that one is to write your way out I think to say okay let me do something else because it's going to be easier for a director to to know if they're right about an idea if I play another one and that's again just human nature and the other one could suggest that the original one is far better than right or the opposite that they were right and then and that would give you insight and to go wow not only is this better this also solves problems later on and now you it's if it's all about effort and the amount of effort you need to just get through something you say I'm glad I rewrote that I mean there have definitely been times when I'm grateful for the rewrite when you first sit down to work on a film and you're looking at a scene I mean you tend to start right at the beginning and and start well I mean sometimes you do in a case of the Bond movies I remember thinking I'm starting at the beginning I'm going to do this 11 minute Chase yeah I'm just gonna I'm gonna climb that mountain and then you think nah it just doesn't work that way I mean creativity is just a non-linear thing it's chaotic and it's so if you you just glom on somewhere you think how about this how about that and if it's this then maybe this goes there and I still need that and oh this could go there so what I'll do a lot is get tons of ideas put them in a session where I can see the whole movie and just start moving stuff around because that's easy it's really easy to say oh this is good would I like it there no or if I like it there it becomes repetitive here so this notion of overview of of being able to see the whole thing I think is really is a real way to save heartache and how would you uh so what would you put it in in Pro Tools would you have the movie in Pro Tools and you just literally slide things around right how does that look there I'm going to move it a little earlier let me a little bit and moving it earlier or later is a great thing too because if you say okay I see it starting here so you know there's there's something inherently precious about any choice we make I like the music starting here but so and then you write it great I love it you say well let me just move it three seconds to the right and you go whoa look what that does down there and so you you kind of check your own sense of arrogance is the wrong word but predisposition about what something is and say I want to remain open to it being anything as long long as I can until like I run out of being able to have those options and that that suits me that's a that's a that's a good thing it's kind of contrary to this notion of being in school and saying I want to write my paper and turn it in right I want to be done right which is a lot of what you can get into is get me out of here you know well I asked you last night about 1917. now I I've never seen a movie like this and for those of you that haven't seen the movie it's it's so uniquely shot but it's a Thrill Ride It's A Thrill Ride and I asked you about that one scene that starts in the dark and I said how do you know I'm going to play it here actually because I think it'd be instructive for people to hear it how do you know where it starts and ends so let me let me just it's the night window let me just play it and we can kind of listen to it and talk [Music] foreign [Music] six the old flat six now where that happens okay that is a an important point there do you figure out where that is and then and then back up I think I didn't even get there yeah well here's the thing whatever idea I had and I had many for this area yeah Sam would always uh be at a console right with it with a with a fader yeah and he would just be pushing it whatever it was I was doing he was making it louder and louder and louder so clearly he needed something with volume and breath and scope to happen I guess as the camera goes out the window yes so that moment had to deliver so you know then you think okay it starts with raindrops right or like like rain is dropping on on his head on his head yeah and it's gone black so so you know you're going to begin with with that yes that you have to hear raindrops so that tells you that it needs to start very quietly and the chillest gives you that that sound of rain yeah this is that's right that's right and in a sense of hush yeah and then where am I what am I I'm gonna go up the stairs is the guy that shot at me dead um no yes he is dead the camera's moving towards the window so then you start to chart and you think okay I have maybe this many beats in this in this period of time to get to that chord with enough of a you know a gronkasa role and and a big moment that you're delivering okay oftentimes just that the idea of this amount of time let's say it's 30 seconds you can you can you can cheat phrases in order to get to the place you need to get to that's required emotion required as you're conducting did you have a mock-up first of this I did okay I did and how much does your mock-up sound like this does it sound is it oh no it is it's you know I mean that's the thing is how much time do you put into a mock-up which you can ultimately discard and you don't want the director to get used to what that sounds like either too right that's true but then if you don't sell it enough this is where it's the salesman part of it if you don't sell it then it's over and if you oversell it then you're kind of screwed in another way so it's kind of not fun period you know this this notion of having to say this is what it is um and part of it is then you you you uh think about the ears of the director that you're working with and say how how sophisticated are those ears and how can I talk my way out of this and say yes this will be bigger imagine this and I kind of do talk through it and say this may not sound as good or this area May bore you for a few seconds and whatever it is that you say to kind of give context to your idea ahead of it being you know rejected or accepted well it starts out with I believe it's C minor then D major just the chill s part then it's a G minor F major and then back to uh that that repeat of that but just that from the C minor to D major you know there's a little all this tone these tonal shifts right but then with the grand D major with that flat six and that has this uplift to it that you haven't heard before and that it's it's so powerful right there I think two uh Sam and I maybe others were worried that you just couldn't go back to dark you know more of you know a guy with a gun running and getting shot at that it needed to have a different vocabulary and to a degree it was really hard to know what do you mean what is it if it's not that what is it he's still running he's still being shot at it's more dreamy why I don't know this was something that Sam just knew it had to have a real sense of relief from the kind of uh dramatic content of the music that had come before and would come after so that was a Hint it was also a dreamy sequence and even though I'm in I'm in you know using a lot of ambience in synthetic sample colors ahead of that I couldn't go to that well so okay it's got to be big and it's got to be orchestral and it has to have muscle and it has to drive you forward but gee what does that even mean well that has muscle right there when it hits that it has muscle and he's running it's interesting because there's The running's Happening then he falls and then he kind of gets back up and and keeps going but the thing keeps going on play a little play some more of this [Music] foreign [Music] major right [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] something glorious about it it's it's absolutely beautiful there all those those arpeggios there the the ad9 you know D add 9 there a d e f sharp and then to the the B flat a and then come down the D major it's built for power right yeah which it was just the requirement you know it was that was a requirement and then the layering where the brass comes in and it just keeps growing so you've you've left you started out with the little with the Celeste and and so quiet and dreamy and then comes in with the first swell into into this yeah Rich maybe more than loud but still there were no there's still loudness there but but real richness of color and and and and and and harmonic content how do you know where the thing ends because it's really unlike any other movie we just decided it ended when he's by a tobacco shop and he like looks down the street and then that mood just starts to shrink back into a kind of you know you know a decade and dangerous environment but it was it's interesting to me that on a certain level it just couldn't keep being what it was that was probably the biggest hint of all it had to be something different and if it was something different what is it and if I asked Sam for adjective you'd say if I wanted an adjective I'd write an essay something like that you know he was he was he's an incredibly bright guy with an incredible set of ears but it was clear that he was going to have to hear it to know he liked it who watches a film more than the the director in the com and the film composer the editor yeah but I mean you three yeah we we are very familiar you've seen these things so many times do you ever watch the film afterwards after it's done you know it I do but it's tough because it's tough to forget all of the things that you had to go through like here's a great phrase but it arrives a bit early so how what do I do to us to establish something to get it to a cut and you're just like oh man this it's tough years later I mean my line is you know I I forget what I used to hate about it right so suddenly I can look at it and forget I wrote it and kind of have it absorbent into me um on a just a level of of moving drama but it's tough it's tough to watch it's certainly at first I mean if you go to a dub right where you've just you've recorded your music you've mixed it and now it's gone to a final dub where they're mixing dialogue effects and music that's a really raw experience because you're just through it and now you're seeing is it going to be lowered is it going you know it's it's going to be rejudged right it's a whole other sieve of the you know the political process of what ends a movie which is what now do we still like it is it could it be more will there be rewriting all that stuff I mean they're they're they're they're moments of horror of true horror just in in the process of it all well you know will I survive you know what will they continue to like something that they liked once you know I went back in and watched a lot of these movies over the last few weeks to get prepared for this and I've noticed the level of music you know in some in scenes nowadays seem to be lower than they were back 30 years ago or something I don't know I don't know if that's I think it's sound effects sound effects are sound effects like for 40 or 50 more more loud than they than they were yeah movies I think in general I mean I remember talking can do a Debbie mixer we said they're just like 40 or 50 louder yeah than the old days and also sound effects um are really I think can can blur that line into what is sound effects and what is sound design and how to sound design differ from music because a lot of times sound design can come in in a key you know with with a bit of a little bit of music making in in the design in the uh the Shawshank Redemption scene of going through the pipe there before he does that they're in the soundtrack in your music there are what sounds like thunder sounds now those you I don't think so because there was Thunder in the scene I know there was Thunder kind of sounds yeah after I'd have to I'll play it to listen to it how's that yeah that's me okay and what is that what would that be I don't remember um I mean I mean this is all kind of prepared guitar and Sample yeah that's probably got to be uh Mike Fisher this amazing percussionist on a on a a bass boom that he's really controlled on uh that's being played off of a just a cat you know one of those bug drum pads yeah [Music] we used to call this a piano braid this is me playing something and detuning it piano break well it's it's some kind of you know whatever's I'm doing and then it'll come in with an octave on it so suddenly it just kind of braids with itself because it just I mean I did a lot of that of of sampling phrase and then trying it in fifths or in octaves just to see what kind of inner patterns would occur just by you know accident but this would be more on rudimentary oh yeah right they would have artifacts that actually would would be that's right like RF if you if you had a TV in the room and you play something way low you just hear this squeal that had like come down from The Ether into the range because the sample was so low right um [Music] foreign so that's the sample kind of played more at pitch so we used to call that a piano braid I don't know why [Music] yeah most of these synthesized most of these ambient sounds are played live okay by players okay oh that's right then I go back to the phrase at the beginning foreign minor second rub I hope that it's going it's going to go to Major that's kind of what it is yeah because there's your major chord right yeah [Music] foreign [Music] okay so so there this is what really struck me when I first heard this because I said who wrote that that is amazing because harmonically I'm hearing that and I hear the d flat major it has this beautiful Rich sound and then that e69 and then it goes to dsus four and it's like that's like a jazz player would do that or something but it's not a jazz vocabulary and right there at the end you went to the D you have the D cells but you have that Major Seventh the C sharp on the top of that your vocabulary is unlike anyone else in that way kind of the way that you hear Harmony or you put those harmonies together right yeah unintended just kind of this is this is where my ears went probably more than like I know just what to do it's like you know messing around and messing around and that just sounds good to you that's it that's right and then you think okay after that this prayer one phrase wants to expire and it'll expire by going you know a one two three four to a one two three and then kind of a hold and then it'll kind of pause and resume so there's there's a whole sense of start stop I think that you you kind of have to get into with in film music which is it can't just muscle forward all the time right so how does it gain momentum and then how does the momentum relax and then how does it how does it restart I always thought of this scene when he comes out of the pipe it's like he has this rebirth essentially yeah and my I want to continue to play this because the way that you change this whole theme is is really brilliant to me [Music] and you have the voice over over this Morgan Freeman and some really loud Thunders everything yeah it's really loud so there's a kind of an e-sharp ish thing yes I think that's John Clark an oboist on an English horn doing a overblowing yeah right so the mood is starting yeah to lift right now would you be conducting would did you conduct this yeah okay [Music] foreign [Music] there that comes in is why would you put that in there that's because it's so it's so roiled right I mean it's so not just one thing right yes there's glory in the major but there's still this something that is so wrong with everything right something that you think all right here's just an e next to it so it's a kind of a minor major thing yes kind of at once you let you I noticed that that you love to put minors and Majors together yeah you like the complexity of with something you know and and you do you you put you had that suspended core with the major seven there or you'll do things with Majors with the flat six yeah together all those all those beautiful all those distances those haunting tones or surprise notes all right just a sense of um complex drama maybe kind of trying to acknowledge that the drama is not one thing but many things as this goes on though so then you get you come to the Brass which which plays this more glorious right glorious just by virtue of a brassy sound yeah there's something masculine and uplifted by default or something and then the string line though that comes in now is kind of a new thing that you hear yeah yes and then that's just trying to get more kind of okay guys we're moving this is gonna happen it's gonna happen yes and that's [Music] that's amazing [Music] yeah six words I think playing that [Music] and then finally coalescing you know like I've done it I mean then the best [Music] foreign [Music] the way that you change there and you bring in you kind of repeat the it goes B the D then back to to uh to be with I mean you eventually end up on the F sharp suspended F sharp major Is So Glorious and you add the a major in there yeah and it's a fresh chord there are moments when I'm focused and this stuff can just happen sometimes it can be really quick yeah I I almost want to say when I got there yeah I kind of just kept going I I in all fairness I don't remember but I don't think I struggled uh compositionally with with that area it was a funny story you know if you listen to this area of the movie where he goes that that dumb yeah it doesn't happen in the movie because Frank cut it out right he said no movie's gonna go no no no movie of mine is going to go something like that so it was like it just ended on a bomb it just hit hit it down beat right I remember that yeah I thought it was personally a wrong choice that he was he was nervous that we were overselling it I think was would have been his reasoning behind it um but I thought it was musically so earned by that point but clearly he didn't the rebirth thing musically how you changed there how you brought in the a major cleansed by the rain and all that looking to the sky and all that yeah and then you know if you follow it one of the the the with this this follow was a big moment in my creative life which is how do you put this extroverted moment next to this really introverted okay what what is playing here is that a harp that's playing probably a sampled harp oh but I think it was in a part of a Pianist a a keyboard player who was on the date who played along with it I didn't know he would and I really liked it it was one of those wow that sounds good and I don't remember having it made that instruction um but you have those low booms next to this very tinkling kind of you know interior uh psychological interior thing and but just that juxtaposition of huge next to to quiet was a moment for me in terms of what what could music do in terms of its A to Z issuance if you will okay what is the difference between suspense and melancholy well suspense must mean what's going to happen is like you're talking about suspense in drama now not in music you don't mean a suspension you mean dramatic suspense yeah dramatic suspense yeah it's just what's going to happen next is is suspense Melancholy is is an emotional state I would say that Melancholy is in motion and uh suspense is more dramatic and what would you say that scene is what is this this is something that's got to be like what's going to happen what's going to happen it's got to be suspense right but followed by a kind of spill you know and and you know he does uh the character does go and and and and you know get money out of a bank and all of this kind of stuff is is happening so it wanted to just kind of I think drift like like the rain in a way so I don't think there was as much dramatic requirement in that area that followed that uh climax now one of my favorite parts of the movie is the second time the Brooks Was Here theme came in the compass and guns both of these happen when there are leaving the prison yeah thematic by by filmic Design yeah yeah now these sounds here are the pedal steel guitar guy named Chaz Smith who would take a pedal steel and put all kinds of like harmonizers on it and create these amazing just beds and and and again prepared Guitar by this amazing player named Rick Cox that I've known since 1983. so they just raised this bed up okay and on it then you know and it's pretty either just tonic or dominant right just AES and then on it you can you have room for for different harmonies which will be consonant to that to the Drone are you playing the piano part here well well this is is this an overdub the piano part then to this how does this it must be a bit um it could be that when I wrote it that that there was some kind of either or maybe maybe I I wish I could remember it could be that I created this drone with the idea that I was going to play on you know on on top of it I had a kind of a drone idea that was much less interesting okay that I knew that I knew would be constant with the harmonies and then you know try to to Spruce it up a little bit with with the real guys when you're playing these things right um are you back then this is 1994 was this on tape it was it was on I think it was 59 IPS with Dolby I think because there was a moment where Dolby was better where Dolby Sr was better at 15 nips than it was at 30ths and in those days yeah you really like we got to save tape we got to save tape or we have like you know you'd have 24 tracks one of which was simply the other which was a click and then see and then you have to leave a blank thing that's right yeah your 23rd track had to be blank so you had like 21 tracks and I think all right we've got space here from bars you know 11 to whatever to do a you know an English horn thing it was that kind of thing yeah this was tape I I don't remember when we switched over probably 99 or so something when people were switching over okay so then and then we would we would switch over to Pro Tools to early Pro Tools but we would still record Orchestra with 15ips Adobe Sr so it was a there was a hybrid moment when when Pro Tools was really unstable it was pretty unstable for a long time it was so you're playing this I mean would you have played it in this studio did you do anything it could be that it was in the studio I um there was a there was a studio in in Hollywood called Signet sound um near um yes the old Goldwyn Studios which was lot one near the Formosa Cafe it was like essentially Formosa and Santa Monica Boulevard and that's gone a lot of these both Studios I mean that's what's great about the village is it's still here and it's still up it's still got a Vibe it's still got a real sense of being a place to make music but I think I did I mean I know I I recorded a lot of Wally here and um I forget where American Beauty was done but yeah a lot of a lot of recordings a lot of time spent in Studio D for sure okay so this continues on foreign [Music] major to F major over a are just beautiful yeah and then somehow this chord this D major chord is just a feeling of forgiveness too yeah you know it's it's funny how certain chords just do that you know in the oboe which you've not heard right yeah as the truck is driving I think before uh red gets out of the truck yeah there's so much space for this in the movie it's just him walking yeah and he takes off his code and wipes the sweat off his brow it's really a moving scene it is I mean whatever it is he's searching for yeah I think it's a string start he begins walking I just love how that feels out there with harp foreign okay so right there those all those moving lines that you're doing this is your strings thing that is but I'm still trying to take that Brook's tune essentially and and orchestrate it for Strings yeah I mean it's essentially I think but there's so many but you have so much Inner Line movement there all this CR these lines that cross over there there's one thing I learned in school some line writing and I guess you know how what is it to to keep to keep something interesting by by interior lines and that is that that uh I just love this to me it's this so emotional foreign [Music] and then you go even lower right you still had to get up that hill right [Music] oh and then there's that moment he sees that obsidian rock or whatever under the tree and just the sound effect of those is he's moving away dirt is beautiful just I I noticed that when I watch it the other day there's as he's brushing the dirt off it's a perfect sound effect it really is really is and there's all the birds all the all these these sounds you've really not heard in the movie because it's just all been a prison and then the the harmonica right so the harmonic I think comes in after this so this was now he plays the harmonica in the movie and I remember thinking this is a stupid idea and it was clearly a great idea a great idea but I forget who had it but this was not my idea to have a harmonic ear but it was it was great [Music] yeah really beautiful I think I was all improvised by the harmonica player I love that yeah that really sad radio and kind of sound beautiful yeah and there you are with the birds you know it's it's really kind of handed off to the to the bird song really well no Anna on a film level the Morgan Freeman's character in the scene is incredible I love the way he's he opens the envelope with the money and he's looking around yeah he keeps looking behind him the whole time he's sitting out there that envelope and the and the card inside it's all so it's kind of just quintessential Frank Darabont like you know a hobby shop you know whatever Frank is in terms of those types of details those types of objects he really was just so wonderful to watch on a physical level you know the the movie then has become you know obviously over the last 30 years yeah iconic iconic yeah the end title I think is also just beautiful let's take I think I think [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] when you hear this now 30 years later do you think wow that was so long ago I do but I I still have a pretty vivid memory of being on the podium at audio another Studio that is gone from from Los Angeles and it being night and I remember kind of putting this together in a single day it was like one of these four a.m mornings where we had to pull it off I I knew the theme but like how could I get through five a five minute cue it had to be turned over to the orchestrator and then copied for a performance that evening okay so on the same day if I'm remembering correctly it sounds kind of unreal but I as I remember it it was we were just out of time one of my favorite parts of this is the ending on the beach I really dug that oh my God this is the most beautiful yeah that kind of again it was just a spill of this kind of loveliness you know as they hug [Music] yeah I kind of stand up and and and proud and deserved maybe you know right with the strings coming in yeah I like this [Music] [Music] as a camera's moving back too I think too this is perfect it's so perfect [Music] and then you delay the [Music] yeah just to a straight straight octave so that I could get to to more Harmony as the end titles started yeah um I want to ask you before we go further about your group that you play with and I want to play something I'm going to play this is from Nemo um the opening opening yeah oh so who's that playing as a flutist named Steve kujala okay [Music] I think this is all kind of sample phrase that I've laid in in piano okay I love the the Reverb on it it's just so Lush and then yeah this is just a lot of percussion okay what is that instrument and who's playing it it's Mike Fisher who I worked with for I think since 1985 um and what we do a lot and I think we probably did a lot of Nemo here um or was it at Signet I don't gosh I wish I could remember um but I would I would bring in this stuff and I would say to my guys talk about your guys tell me tell me well there's maybe four or five like guys that I've worked with forever um you know two of them Rick Cox uh who does prepared guitar sound programming uh saxophone if you need it and George Dearing who is an amazing player of all kinds of instruments I think I met in 1983 on my very first movie I think I clicked on many levels mostly I thought I can work with these guys and try to get places without thinking I'm on a Podium here's my chance here's what I wrote play I kind of wanted to detour away from this obligation of of what is it to be a composer and what is it what is it to be a player who plays what's written and say what can we do here you know what what could happen here and what kind of instrument and these guys would have such an array of different instruments I mean kalimbas that were you know huge um and all you know we I always ask Mike Fisher what new instruments do you have and you'd bring them in a lot of times to this studio and we would just mess around so I would never come in and say um here's what I want here he'd look at the scene he would say it was Bubbles and you know reefs and and it would you know I would I would try to lure uh their creative sensibility based upon how they looked at an image and you know what could be done to it would you have an idea though would you have a piano thing that you say okay it's going to go over this oh sure and Tempo yeah absolutely yeah we do it in in in animation and you would be watching oh yeah on the on the monitor so they would be playing everybody would be playing to that right that's right and you could say okay here's this area and let's say this area is 11 measures long and it starts at bar eight and ends at you know bar 29 or whatever um and or 19. um and you know then you'd say huh that goes a beat too long or what would happen if you don't hit it down but you you hit just the eighth before the down but you could you could really get specific with these guys unlike when you're on the podium which is such a socially political place to be which is who am I how am I speaking talking how am I going to get through this we have a 10 coming up in five minutes we've got to get through this I just wanted to kind of not that you can always wipe that away but I wanted to get as creative as I could as much of the time as I could a lot of this is like in the 80s when I was doing a lot of teen comedies I'd have like a group down here right like drummer bass guitar and they would just start jamming and the jams were so loose and then they'd start playing my stuff and it was just not nearly as loose I thought how can I get to that looser place so it was all based upon liking how informal a lot of this stuff was and asking myself how do I get there how do I how do I make it easy so I hire these guys and we would just kind of go what about this you know George would be listening to Mike Fisher um as as Mike Fisher did something and years later it was John Beasley on keyboards and Steve tavoloni on uh all kinds of wind instruments eweed you know you know about ewes and um and sound programming and it just got real relaxed and the more relaxed it got the more you could go well that's that's cool okay so if they're doing something if you have your if they're playing to a your piano part that you have there are you in the control room listening and acting as the producer basically yeah I mean because that's we talked about this yesterday too but but you're also the producer too I'm letting I'm letting ideas come into my head and I'm saying yes no you know this is too low in the register could it be higher uh this is murky next to dialogue or it's too busy next to dialogue and I'm trying to just and I'm saying it you know try this again but try it on the on the rim of the skin as opposed to in the middle just simple things like that all right go out to the room and we'd Bonk on instruments and you know just just try to be as Loose as we could be so then it continues on after this section [Music] is it all written [Music] so now when you mapped it right up this is it okay that's what I was going to ask so when you go into the scoring session all this other stuff's been recorded correct right yeah and they are literally playing along with it do they have a click track they have a click track and they have track in their ear I mean it's it's uh so so they have a click track and there's a there's a guy on the or a person on the stage that can control click the level of Click coming into typically a one-sided headphone yep um and uh track as it helps them oftentimes they're worried about track because maybe something's Out Of Tune and it makes them have trouble tuning yeah but yeah so they know that at bar 29 they're coming in and they have a sense of the vibe that precedes it and you're conducting and you have the click track in your head I have two I have a two-sided headphone okay so I have a basically a control room mix and a click and um and I'm you know recognizing that there's directors and producers in the control room and there's something you know it's slightly nerve-wracking that way of course but yeah so so then and that stuff is is has obviously been written and vetted and orchestrated and it you know copied and is out on the stands was there a version of this with the strings pre-programmed or whatever before you went in yeah yeah I'm pretty sure yeah yeah it was 203 2003 was uh yeah so so would you have uh if you dug back through your files do things like that exist even or did you raise them after no no you didn't erase them but a lot of it that may have been on um no that was definitely on uh Pro Tools but it could be that we were still recording Orchestra on tape okay so it's it's who knows what there is a mock-up there's possibly a mock-up on a hard drive somewhere I think so yeah that's it this whole curatorship issue of what you know what what is in my archives that's you know because typically I'll work really hard on a movie and then I'll kind of say okay I'm done now does somebody though archive that for you or what what happens or you just kind of like you know this is our hard drive and the modern era yes because it's way easier now that memory is so yeah abundant um but in terms of like sometimes you'd have to deliver most times you're asked to deliver all of your Source materials so all tapes would go back to Universal or Warner Brothers or wherever it was do all your scores go to somewhere or do you keep a copy for yourself you mean a finished mixes no no your actual scores once they've been Oh you mean paper yeah um most of the time I I they're memorialized in some kind of book but never all of this stuff not not all of the intricacies right of getting together with players it's there's no way to know to do that so but but the orchestral writing though is is memorialized Memorials and you have a you keep a copy of those then probably right yeah as much as I can but it's a lot over the years you know it's been it's been many decades so so this here this is a beautiful example to me of how you blend in uh pre-recorded things and then you leave space for the orchestra and the orchestra comes in here [Music] but during this it's click click click right it's hard not to yeah and then but there are some things little little flourishes that catch you know tail Wiggles and things like that you know and then we're back to the the prelay stuff okay now as far as the mixing of this stuff tell me how that part of it goes like to get all the actually the music mix the music mix yeah it's easier than it was in the old days we would do all this this pre-lace stuff and we'd have to kind of do what is prelay means everything that's not Orchestra we would call it pre-lay okay um and we couldn't do monitor mixes so we'd be at a stage like like 20th Century Fox or Sony or whatever and we'd be like okay get this up get this up this okay this is good enough okay I'm going out in the podium I'm going to conduct it now you can you can um yeah you can now you can you can stem mix stuff and you can be a lot more ready for that type of thing yeah it's typically the most chaotic uh in terms of controlling sound and noise in in an orchestral environment and it's also lots of people and and it's a it's such it's such a spectacle so then all of that's recorded and um then we just start to sort through everything um uh takes the takes you want to use are cut and spliced or whatever and you you stem everything out in the old days you you would stem like all perk elements together all Plucky elements together all wind elements I mean now you can stem so wide that a lot of these things just are are all separated like I think modern song mixes are like that too and then you would start to put up dialogue and say well I like the sound but it's not going to survive dialogue and then ultimately you finish a mix and you'd invite the directors down and you play back with dialogue and they would say hmm or is this perfect or can we bring that sound down or if we needed to could we yes it's stemmed so you can you could theoretically cheat the guitar down in this area if you think it's um it's going to hurt dialogue and if you have dialogue and you have something that's competing with it you'll maybe pan it to the side or something or put it in a different spot where it doesn't compete or you could do that that's what yeah that's one element because because typically dialogue comes in a center speaker you know in in movie language its left center right speakers and then 5.1 means two two surround speakers and then I guess the point one is a subwoof and I guess if it's 7.1 add two more speakers to that so there is that of of separating uh on a on us on a just a proscenium way from a left to right and saying we can get out of the way uh physically of the line of dialogue but if it's a phrase if it's something that that gets in the way and and draws your ear away from dialogue you can bet that won't be heard now are there other EQ things that go into do you ever say oh I need to notch this out so that the dialogue can speak and typically if that happens it's it's not me I I mean maybe I can say can can we do something to make this a little less robust or something but uh I think an engineer will be doing that is scoring an animated film the hardest thing to do it is because there's nothing but Transitions and and so there's there's it's a high amount of writing you know there's there's moments like in the Shawshank piece where or that spill after the the big moment where it just kind of rolls forward for 90 seconds right you know but in in a animated movie typically it rolls forward for about 3.5 cents and then suddenly you're transitioning so the issue is transitions have to be written and transitions are also tend to make you feel overwritten right because transitions are not as interesting as you know main ideas if you're on your way somewhere else that's a that's a vulnerable moment for a composer I think making transitions when you first start because back in during the Nemo time period it used to take a long time to render these things oh yeah for sure would you have a animated or or storyboards that you're writing to or something in the early in the early parts of the process yeah you look at storyboards and then they would animate 10 minutes and you would like you would you would work on 10 or 12 minutes of Music in in December and then come back to it in February and do a big chunk of it and then maybe finish up with the last 10 minutes I think it's different now so I wanted to talk about the uh the good German about the the opening main title [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] okay so this is um kind of a 1940s 1940s style I think Soderberg had tempted with Max Steiner so it's like well why not use Maxine he says we can always do that but right now try to try to write some music in that style I was like all right isn't wasn't isn't it satisfying that's beautiful I mean it is uh you know it's uh it's fun to be able to to use a lot of Harmony I think my Orchestra said you've written More chords in this queue than in your entire career or something but it was nice to know that I could do it and that you know that my choice in in in less Harmony um or in you know kind of saturated Harmony um that I still have it in me to to do kind of more expressionistic you know you know Western European harmonies there's a vocabulary though that goes with this era there's a certain um melodrama right melodrama right yeah and this is something that your dad the the types of things that that were written at that time period that he would write or and a real style of orchestral playing that was tough to kind of like in terms of just the vibrato how quick the vibrato was and how you could ask your Orchestra to to play in that style which I think was tougher than one would think you know and it's almost a thing that's not even done in that way anymore right and people don't play in that style that was the style of the orchestra of the 40s 30s 40s 50s High emotion yeah you know and then my dad was like really on top of all that I mean he really know how to get sound out of an orchestra there's a beautiful part here this next section here that was like the American theme [Music] okay so it's C major F minor major seven back to C major then F major F minor back to C and then we're here back to story right that to me is beautiful you so there's this D D over F sharp thing then it goes to g susta g add to d sus2 to g major they have a more complex yeah and then did C over e like D minor seven but then that that the the distance there that's so you no no that chromatic movement down you're it's like a flat and you have B and C together then you have B flat and C together and then it goes to F major and that is just bizarre that is so weird how do you come up with I mean probably it's just there's an expectation which is here's America and America was was no better than a lot of the other you know nations in in this movie so it starts with a a kind of sense of nationalistic Pride but as we we kind of end this sequence we realize that there's there's con complexity in in the addition of of America in this movie so it was probably just trying to make it more complicated and make it just less kind of white bread on a certain level but that but that particular I mean those notes chromatic movement there that's probably just you know noodling around and saying what if I did that or how can I you set up an expectation with these kind of more diatonic harmonies and and then say well how can I how can I interrupt that expectation and be somewhat more surprised but I think that's uniquely you though those kind of distances there the the dramatic Inner Line movement that is not what a jazz player would do it's uh what we would call a line cliche in jazz but it's done in a completely different way it's in a classical sense right and and the going from a flat down to F major just hits your ears like whoa yeah what is that you just take stabs at things and you if it Delights my ear on a certain level or if it seems like it satisfies a dramatic principle then yeah I'm gonna go there I don't think it's ever like I wanna this is me and I want to insert me here so much as is this possible um and it's just typically the case because you know the music the movie will always win out over the music so you just have to know that what you're doing has to be supported uh it has to be in support of what's Happening dramatically I want to go back and talk a little bit about how you will voice things and and you uh look for these a lot of it in your piano writing very you know reducing down to simple Triads suspensions things like that yeah primary colors in a way yeah is that how you think of it in a way I mean I don't know why I'm triadic but I end up being triadic I guess because it's it's basic and um it is like primary colors uh and then the the variations that come are more in contrast or something but I don't know I don't know why it is I mean you could argue it's facile you know or reductive as you suggested which is probably a better way of describing it but um it's kind of where my ear goes um it's very to me it's very him like it's it's very Midwestern right where does that come from I mean my mom's from Mississippi okay um and there is a sense of congregational I mean I you know I was raised in church not that it means much to me other than I enjoyed I think uh hymns and I enjoyed church singing I enjoyed congregational singing and not singing myself but listening to it yeah um so I think I do have that background um and I like I think I like it the Simplicity of its communication how it communicates I think I like it's not um it's not overly adorned and I think I'm maybe that's just my nature is is one of non-adornment or certainly not in in a florid kind of you know franzelicity in way it's just never been me I think my adornment has always been color and this notion of saying when does color become compositional so I think the cleaner some of these harmonies are the more chance to hear other things that may be it too is what you hear behind those harmonies and what kind of complexities you know Sonic complexities do you get at because of the Simplicity of the harmony do you feel like it leaves space for if you have a thing that drones and it leaves space for that or if you have uh or for reverbs or things like that that the simpler the harmony is or the voicings the more expansive the listening experience can be yeah for sure and that's where I think repetitive patterns interest me because the ear stops having to listen the ear is no longer required to listen to the pattern and is able to kind of listen to the deeper colors that um that emerge or that that that that are there but can be heard behind them so I think I'm a I tend to like repetition the repetitive pattern when you get asked to do a James Bond movie to score a James Bond movie that's an honor right amongst film composers you've done two of them yeah okay is the first thing that you do do you go back and listen to John Berry's original do you go back and listen to Goldfinger listen to Dr No or anything like that you know if you do you don't want to be stuck studying because the minute you're stuck studying then you think okay this there's this huge cannon of music and it's all great and sexy and everything and British and all these things that then would make me think why me and what can I offer it so I didn't do a lot of study other than than you know you want to you want to know what is Swagger and how how much Swagger can a modern Bond movie be allowed um and just say okay well here's the thumb line you know maybe just that little Motif but never really the whole kind of money Norman thing um yeah study if I'd studied too much I think I would have been totally hamstrung I want to talk about the way you use percussion too on some of these things like in these Chase scenes and things like that now do you use uh is it always with real players or some of it generated with uh by some of them are Motors I mean Motors that that have elements I mean that you might get out of of some synthesizer omnisphere or something like that yeah um but no a lot of it I mean and you know in the case of the Bond movies much of it is generated um you know in the studio Yeah by real players but you know when I went to to England to do it um we worked extensively with percussionists in overdub pre-lay environments so that we could do that um you know have that uh that that that kind of uh control over you know percussive elements and are they playing with a a click track to the field you have to because I mean it just if if it it's one thing to say here's a piece of music like like a good German you could have said that could have been off a click because it's everyone playing at the same time yeah but the minute you're overlaying and the minute you're you're over dubbing then you you have to know that bar 10 is always going to be bar 10 because if you get down to Bar 50 bartend has to remain constant so yeah if you're going to be over over dubbing you're always on a click do session players string players I mean when I would work with string players they would always play behind things like that right a lot of that is just because a string takes a while to speak to speak exactly now in here though do you I mean do you always kind of anticipate a little bit and you're conducting slightly though just to make sure that they're really honest well if you do not need to do that if if you're on a click then you need to say please listen to The Click as Oppo you can say you know please or I can start counting if we're rehearsing I say one two three two if they're behind come on three four oh I can do that in rehearsal but in the end they've got to catch up on their own yeah um and a click should make that pretty simple you do sometimes are in situations where a percussion player will be frustrated because he's ahead of strings and he's uh on the click but it appears that he's early and he's blamed uh for something that is really not his fault do you ever go back on playback and and say oh I don't like the way this sounds that from on a technical level the uh the the the way this the things miked or it doesn't have the right Ambience it's just in an orchestral yeah orchestral settings are so advanced in terms of you know we have these left center right trees they call it which captures a room sound and then you have all these close mics that for me to go in and say all I could say is this sounds more close-up than I'd like or I mean I could say something very general but I could never say if I if I didn't like the sound I don't think there'd be anything at that moment I could do about it so I would have to at that moment say I don't like this why is it is it is it the is it the writing is it the is it the performance from the podium is it what I'm doing or is it some miking thing that I have no control over how often do you change things in a session where you're like you know uh second violins one can you play this at right in in the in the moment the VZ here or something yeah or or bases layout or you know second violins come in niente I there's too much presence on your entrance how can how can you feather it no you're always composing I am I'm always trying to improve it because you know you only get to where you get when you get notes and notes or notes and I mean what I often find is Dynamics you know what is a phrase a two-bar phrase with um a crescendo and a decrescendo where's the peak of that Crescendo does it come before a downbeat if it if it hits the downbeat does it hit too hard so you're constantly saying okay rise in this measure but but start to fall ahead of the downbeat because I don't want a point to the downbeat that's that's really tough for me Dynamics do you ever go and um listen back after the session's done and say you know what I'm going to lay in a sample here on this cello line or something to to augment it or anything like that yeah you can you know you you do the best you can I think with anything we do we we do the best we can with the resources we have and then we say what else we got you know how can I make this better and all the way down to through the mix you know um I I think to myself that mixing is still an active composition for me you know so I'm always trying to improve it where do you get new ideas from I think if I let myself go I you know you just how do I just loosen up and try new things I mean oftentimes it'll be sitting down and doing anything at a piano and you know taking things into Ableton and just messing around play it's a sense of how do I get to a a sense of having fun playing around with ideas um and surprising myself I guess there are all those moments we have to sit down and write a tune in which case you're saying okay what is that and what kind of tune am I trying to write um and you know sometimes with success sometimes with less success on a practical level over the years you have to learn these new programs like Ableton I mean these things were invented and you just you start to adopt them that's learning a new instrument right and you get better at it and better at it and there were moments of real frustration and anger like why do I have to learn something new you know what is an instance I that that was a real tough thing like here's a sound but you know how many sounds can come out of this instrument before you have to have another instrument all that stuff really confused me for a while and things like omnisphere for example I mean there's so many multiples versus patches yes yeah and there's so many great tools nowadays for creating sounds do you ever get kind of overwhelmed with things and say ah well I have some people who help me just navigate because I'm not a person who wants to just explore libraries yeah um I'd rather work with players than than say okay and and because like you say anything any app any uh you know uh any box that you'd want to use has so many possibilities you just get lost in anything so that's another thing is how do you how do you you know what is your template you know and how much stuff you're going to go for I mean you know I have a a lovely uh Reverb unit I've never touched it I've just never touched it crazy one day one day I was like okay a little a little longer verb or something but you know uh you know where do you draw a line in terms of what what is the act of creativity and where do you get lost I think Ableton is is a big experimenting instrument for me and and you know it's it is like a little like Hansel and Gretel like you know the um you know whatever crumbs you leave behind I have no idea how I got to these great places and and therefore no idea how to Circle back and and say this is what I did to get there other than to say there is so interesting to me okay so I asked you this last night at dinner um where do you go from here okay you're going to be 67 in in a few days a few days okay so where are you at 77 where where are you are you still writing are you still doing film scores are you in concert music are you not doing anything are you playing basketball um I think I think as I said last night I can't imagine a life without music I don't know what I would do I mean it really makes time pass yeah um and it it's involving and at at its best moments um I'm just in it and the world is a simpler place you know because the world is such a complex place it's nice to focus energy sort towards something that's abstract on the one hand but just deeply rewarding on the other um so yeah I wouldn't rule out any of it um I guess it'll be a depend on uh physical energy you know and you know this notion of involvement with others and and what the stakes of that involvement are because I think the stakes are are way higher in in the industry I mean maybe they were always high it wasn't like anyone would ever let you off the hook you know it's like oh you do it and I'm sure I'll love it it's never been that but it seems like everyone has such access to all of these tools yeah you know that that directors editors they can cut music they they just know so much about it it's it's hard to kind of uh think that I'm here and it's there so that that can be exhausting well this has been an incredible experience talking to you today Tom and this is just an honor to get to uh interview you today well honor to talk to you thank you for the great questions truly been fun how was that guys fantastic thank you truly did we go on how long did we do that I don't even know perfect [Music]

Channel: Rick Beato

Views: 275,401

Keywords: rick beato, beato, music, music theory, music production, education, thomas newman, film music, film composer, film score, american beauty, Finding Nemo, Wall E, shawshank redemption, John Williams, Alfred Newman, Randy Newman, lemony snicket's a series of unfortunate events, lemony snicket, Skyfall, James Bond, Interview, thomas newman piano, 1917, Tolkien, tolkien movie, road to perdition, Finding Dory, the green mile, Spectre, Cinderella Man, Little Women, The Good German

Id: TnRoHPaTFqA

Length: 82min 50sec (4970 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 12 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Shogun243]

Pretty solid interview. Gives good insights into how film composers think and the process they use.

[u/brightlights55]

Cousin of the more famous Randy.

[u/CatBreathWhiskers]

I enjoy Scent of a woman soundtrack makes me nostalgic for the early 90s