Welcome to the DMF. I'm Justin Younts. This is part two. Now you guys did the scoring process in Air Studios, right? Just for the choir. Just for the choir. Yeah, so we flew out to London to record there. That was maybe one of the best experiences I think we've had recording. It was very, very special and cool. But yeah, it was just a small choir. And so everything had already been written. So it's just about going in there, getting rid of our MIDI choir, any of our temp choir, making it sound more human. Other than that, everything was done here. How did you guys go about choosing the themes for the characters? How did that process go? And was that something that you could really only... Before you got hired, were you... Because you did the first episode and that was kind of like your test. And I was like, yeah, you guys are hired. But were you privy at that point of kind of where the story was going so that you could know? Madsen gave us... We had access to everything. We were very close with Madsen, so we were able to get in from that side. So when we started doing character work early on, pretty much around when we were scoring the first episode, we knew where all the characters were going. So we had a very clear picture of their arc, which helped a lot. OK. All right. So I think now we're going to get into spoilers here. So this is going to be hard to talk about the music without talking about spoilers. So let's let's do it. Doing spoilers now. Click off if you don't want to hear any more. I love the idea in this story, you know, that we find out at the end that Aiko is really Malcolm Lee's mother and that the Oracle sends back his mother to save him. I just thought that was such a great twist. It didn't come out of nowhere. You can tell they protected the twist, you know, when they're on the bridge, you know, never sees her. Was that something that you got when you guys... Did that influence you guys when you knew that was kind of where it was going or is that something you guys found later? I think it influenced us a little bit. We the two themes for, I guess, like Malcolm's theme and Aiko's theme do have some similarities. And I think that was intentional. We never wanted it to be blatant, but I think having just like a it's a little bit similar. Like you hear his stuff and then you hear hers, but hers is in the future and dressed completely differently. But, yeah, there was some similarities between the two. And I think we used we knew it was going to happen. So it was we started thinking about that in the beginning. And then there was a really small, like vocal line, a female vocal line over. I forget which episode it is. I think it's episode it's when Malcolm's talking about his origins, his origin story. And, you know, during the birth moment, we have this vocal sample come in. Then again, we have it come in when he's talking to Aiko in episode eight as all this action is coming around. And then we have it again. Can I do big spoilers? Yeah, yeah. We have this vocal line that's kind of threaded through and it's subtle, but it's like we were very aware of when to thread it in. Was that something when you guys were looking at the script? We're like, oh, wow, this is really interesting where they're where they're going with this. Yeah. I mean, it was pretty fun. And there were other characters, too, that like really. But like those are spoils for other seasons. So I can't really. A lot of the kids, they have they're just starting their arc, you know. But it was really helpful knowing the clear picture of everything so that we could really create themes that would last. The theme that I feel like kind of defines the show is it will never be the same. That's kind of like we keep hearing that kind of this is that you guys talked about how you wanted to play it. If you can play it simply. I'm paraphrasing exactly what you guys said in the interview. But you said play it simply or sing it simply like just so that's something you just came up with on the on the on the piano or something. And then just for like, we'll just build on that. Yeah, well, it took time to figure out how I mean, so that was an early demo. So that was like, it'll never be the same was was from the demos way back when. So that was probably the biggest one that stuck and now and run. Yeah, the opening sequence of episode one. But Madsen kept being like, if I had it my way, it'll never be the same would be the theme of the show. And we were just like, it's not like, it's not it's really sad. It's like all everything about it feels like you're just kind of like, falling back. And we were struggling to find a way to create a theme for that ending of episode one. We had like, so many different ideas, it was a week was horrible. And then we were toward the end of it. And again, having that just ring in our head that Madsen was like, if this could just be it. We took it'll never be the same, put the chords on guitar. And I feel like it's a good songwriting trick. Anytime I get stuck with songs, or you get too caught up with production, it's like, can you play it on guitar and sing it? And does it hold up? And if it doesn't, then maybe you got too many tricks going. And you know, you're relying on production too much, like, is it solid or not? So instead of, you know, playing it on piano, I just started palm muting the chords. And then we just started singing. And naturally, we sang it in a different way. It's like it's it's very similar melody lines, but it's swung in a more anthemic driving way. It's less sad. And then that just like opened it up. They're like, Oh, right, you can just play it'll never be the same like this. And then it feels like it has more agency and it feels like a theme. It kind of comes back in the end of the world. And underground. Those are the two times where I like really noticed that being replayed. And it's laced throughout as well. But like, those are the most distinctive moments specifically into the world. That's like when we were like, okay, now let's play it as sad as possible. That's an example of just like, it was completely low hanging fruit for so long, but it took us a while to see it. And then see it that just everything unlocks. Because with Run, which is, I believe that's the first song we hear that, you know, when she's, you know, trying to get away from the, you know, the Terminator, and it's kind of, you know, gets us all going. Like right into it, you got that little distorted voice that that comes in. Was that the voice you guys are talking about with the... It almost signifies that, you know, the Terminator is coming. Is that kind of what you guys were doing with that theme? Yeah. And specifically with the beginning of Run, we wanted to take acoustic instruments and distort them to hell. So I think a big one of that was violin samples and make them sound robotic. And we kind of like made them into like a scary melody line. And it wasn't... I think the piece of Run that we wrote to the demo, like was the demo, was once things pick up. Once you get the four on the floor action part, we had written that as a demo. So it was about like, we had that piece, but then we had to kind of build it a bit because it was like... And the scene was super long. Five or six minutes. So it was a lot more to do. Yeah, because you talked in previous interviews that you didn't want the Terminator to have like its own theme. You just kind of wanted like a sound cue for when he's coming. And I think for that, it was like this like two note bass line, like duh, duh, was one of the... There's a few different signifiers for like he's coming. And then there are the metal hits that we use whenever he's sort of like attacking. And then there's like a three note horn line that we use a few times when he's like really in action. But we wanted to keep it because he is not human. And the other characters, for the most part, are at least have human tendencies. Like he didn't... He didn't... He didn't deserve a human theme because he said he needed a, you know, a more robotic. Very atonal. Atonal. Yeah. But I like that, that you guys came in for that. Because the audience might not know that, you know, but subconsciously, they'll pick up on the fact that, you know, that that's happening there. One of the themes I really like that I don't think it's talked enough about is the traveling in time theme, where you've just got like this, it almost sounds like a bell or taking like a fork and you're just hearing this. Oh, there it is. Is this what it is? That's what it is. Top of a candle holder. I thought something like that. Yeah, it's like, and the other also have this bell that we use. These are just like tongue bells. Wow. So a lot of that. Yeah. A lot of sampling those running them through like a crystallizer. Yeah, found twice crystallizer, which made it much more swirly and washed out. Yeah, a great reference that Madsen brought up was the score to brick. I don't know if you remember that. Yeah, yeah, I know. Love that. And it has a ton of melodic bells. And that was a big inspiration. It does. And it was like, this felt like a moment where we could really do something different. Because a lot of the score, it can be really moody. It can feel like it's everything's really weighing on you. And this just kind of lifts us up. And it, it became a really good sonic palette for any time they're talking about time travel. There are other moments in the film or in the in the series where time travel comes up. And a lot of times where it was appropriate. You can hear a little swell of these bells. And yeah, exactly. I so what made you guys decide on on using bells to come up with that? I think it highlights everything because now she's alone. She's just witnessed her friends, supposedly all dead. And now she's in a new time period as she's erased the clock. And you're hearing just this distorted, you know, it just is like, all I kept feeling is like alone. It's distorted. What made you decide on bells or, you know, the candle holder? I think I think that that's, you know, a testament to direction for Matson of just like, Oh, check out brick. I think this this like scene from Rick, like kind of the vibe that could be cool. And then just, you know, a late night experimenting with bells and, yeah, and piano and other things. And, yeah, you know, just like trying something out. But it was nice to use. I like we still affected it quite a bit, but it was nice to use bells in a slightly more organic way. Because a lot of Kokoro, a lot of scenes with Kokoro have I use those tongue bells on a lot of that and filtered heavily with different pedals and distortion stuff. So like you have two versions of the bells, the AI version. Yeah, this was an opportunity to bring it back, but in a more natural way. Yeah, because I don't know that one just stands out so much to me because it's such a change from what we've heard in the series. That's what I really like about this score is it's like, it's not just relying on the same thing. It's you're going for something that I mean, it's bold. I mean, you could have just gone for this, you know, very determined score thing. But that's what really stands out to me is just the complexity of the music and just those different sounds. Talk a little bit about Choose and how you guys came to that. God. I've been talking a lot. No, but this sort of started with you. Well, so back when we were doing episode one, they were like, and you kind of even gotten the kick, but they were like, can you? Can you create like, a bunch of other music that we can like sprinkle in later for temp music later or something? They were starting episode, they were working on episodes like two and three, and we were still on one. And they were like, we would love you to write us some temp music so that we can animate to it. And we were like, Okay, hope we get the gig. Funny enough, they never got temp music since it was all this stuff. They probably worked on it, though. Maybe. But so we had this whole other group of songs, a lot of the character themes came from, from this, this push, and it was this, this was a potential Terminator theme. When we first wrote it, we thought that this could maybe be like the theme. It wasn't, and it wouldn't have been good for it. But we had this idea that was like half-baked, but it had like all the elements that you hear in Choose. And we were working on the last episode, and we're like, wow, we still haven't used this one idea. And we were watching this scene, the death scene. And, you know, oftentimes, sometimes you get lucky when you just throw things in. And we were like, okay, let's use this theme. And then it can be a theme that we can carry out through other seasons. And we just dropped it in and it just like, just took off. And we obviously changed it and made it way cooler. And we brought in the choir element, which was like really awesome. That was one of my favorite choir moments. Yeah. I think I have a video of us in the, at Air Studios, like that happening and us all listening to it. And it was one of those moments that like, you know, we'd written these choir parts and, you know, I usually will sing them in as my voice. So it's like a bunch of my voice stacked. And they were really dissonant and they were weird, but like getting in and hearing it with the choir, like it's like this pulsing, dissonant, crazy chords that hit really, really hard. And it was like a very intense experience to just be in this like iconic studio and hear them, like this like wall of sound coming out of just eight singers. Yeah. Very cool. And then- Just a real moment, you know? Yeah. Like probably what Beethoven felt when he discovered the Ninth Symphony. You know, just like, wow. Exactly that. Exactly. Bliss of God. Please like, share and subscribe. Thank you for watching.
