Writing music alone can be a very solitary experience. If you are trying to tap into the minds and emotions of a character or a show, would you want someone to bounce ideas off of? If you normally work solo, how hard would it be to bring in someone else just to play around with?
In the Original Music Composition for a Series Emmy race, duos are popping up every year for shows like Lovecraft County and Ozark. In the Original Music & Lyrics category, it’s even more prominent. Since 2010, only three Emmys have gone to solo artists or composers when it comes to songwriting (Diane Warren, Randy Newman, and Labrinth, respectively). Maybe two minds are better than one?
In order to grasp the allure and comradery or songwriting duos, Awards Daily interviewed pairs from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Essex Serpent, Maid, The Wonder Years, and Midnight Mass to weigh the pros for teaming up to write music for a successful show.
I have had the pleasure of speaking with Tom Mizer and Curtis Moore a few times about their fizzy and vivacious work on Prime Video’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. They were nominated for season three’s earworm, “One Less Angel,” and they are back on the Original Music and Lyrics ballot for their fantastic tune, “Maybe Monica.” They know how to capture the sound of the time period while evoking authenticity through melody and lyrics. “Monica” comes in a pivotal moment for Midge when she attends Shy Baldwin’s wedding and she has to let go of some anger and sadness regarding her relationship with the crooner. Who wouldn’t want Harry Belafonte to drop a new calypso hit at their wedding?
Awards Daily: Do you have a set way of working with one another? Did that change at all during this project?
Tom Mizer: First off, we’ve been working together since college which was (cough cough) some time ago. That kind of long-term partnership allows us to have a safe, consistent, but flexible way of working with each other. It also means we are like an old married couple.
Curtis Moore: I think it’s less that we have a set way we work and more that we have a trust that, however we come at a problem, we know we will find a solution together. The process changes from song to song, but the underlying focus doesn’t. We are always going to start from figuring out how best to tell this particular story.
TM: In our theater work, we are usually the driving force behind a project, so the main change to our process working on Maisel” is that we are collaborating with Amy & Dan.
CM: This is their world, and we are there to support their vision. We may love a song, but if it isn’t right for what they have in their heads, then it’s not the right song. Our job is to translate their vision into music.
TM: The other thing that changed, for all of us, was that Season 4 was written and shot during the height of COVID. I live in LA and the show is shot in New York. In Season 3, I was able to be on set and in recording sessions, but this time, I was video conferenced in for a lot of the work. It made it more challenging to stay focused, to really pay attention to the details we care about.
CM: Not to mention the musicians and singers had to be kept in separate booths in the recording studio. It’s hard to record when you can’t feel each other. But I’m particularly proud of how seamless the work feels given the challenges of the year. And that goes for every department on Maisel. It’s astonishing what they pulled off under very difficult conditions.
AD: Why should every composer consider working with a partner for at least one project?
CMs: You have someone to blame.
TM: Except when it turns out fabulously and then you can tell yourself it was all you.
CM: The truth is having a partner makes you better, pushes you beyond your usual tricks and instincts. You end up writing things you would never write on your own. It creates this third person that is the combination of the two of you. Tom and I are SO different in many ways and that collision of styles, ideas, and emotions can create fireworks, in a great way.
TM: You also have a built-in truth teller when you aren’t at your best. I’m so glad that Curtis is there to catch my clunker lyrics before the rest of the world hears them. He has saved me so many times from total embarrassment.
AD: hat is the biggest compromise you had to make with this project?
CM: Speed. I love to really dig into a song, to rewrite it and rework it until I’m happy. But with TV and Maisel we don’t have the luxury of an out-of-town tryout or years of polishing a show. Most of the time we go from getting the first hint of an assignment to recording & filming in a couple weeks.
TM: But to bring your question full circle, that’s where the trust and partnership comes in. We know that as fast as we are going, we have each other’s backs to get it right and help push it to be as good as it can be. If one of us is stuck, the other can jump in and carry the ball forward. (Did I just use a sports metaphor. My father will be so proud.)
AD: Did you do anything unconventional with this particular project that might surprise audiences?
TM: There was a lot of interpretive dancing.
CM: You think he’s kidding…
TM: I think the thing that would surprise people is how many songs we actually write for the show that they never hear. We write lots of options for every moment we are assigned and that means a lot of songs in the trunk. We wrote at least 5 songs for the fake musical, and you only hear a snippet of one. We wrote SO MANY different Harry Belafonte songs before we really figured out what it wanted to be. It was the hardest thing we’ve had to do on the show. But it’s always easier to talk about something that exists, even if it’s not right, than to talk in the abstract.
CM: Our proudest moment was when the person who licenses Belafonte’s music catalog called up Maisel’s music supervisor Robin Urdang. He asked if the show needed any other Belafonte songs because for some reason his company didn’t own “Maybe Monica.” She had to laugh because of course they didn’t own it; we wrote it for the show. But this man thought for sure it was an actual classic Belafonte song that had somehow slipped through his company’s fingers!
AD: This is your second season scoring for Maisel. Did you approach the time period the same way the second time around?
CM: It was all exponentially more difficult this time because the assignments were so varied.
TM: It got to the point where we thought Amy might be punking us. We’d hang up the phone after a call with her and say, “Nope. She’s totally teasing us.”
CM: Instead of just studying the Brill Building and American Songbook styles for Shy Baldwin’s sound, in season 4 we had to move his sound forward into the 60’s AND write for Belafonte AND write a fake bad Broadway show AND write a bunch of burlesque tunes. The range of what we had to research and get under our fingers on the piano and into our imaginations was daunting. But it’s what makes working on the show exciting. It’s a dream, really. We get to play in so many worlds…
AD: In season 3, “No One Needs to Know” really dives into Shy Baldwin’s hidden pain. With Midge and Susie visiting Shy’s wedding in season four, how did you want to echo that hidden life?
CM: That’s a really interesting question because “No One Has to Know” is such a singular moment. Shy was truly singing his feelings, even if hidden behind a pop song. That was like writing a musical theater 11 o’clock number. But with his wedding, the songs had to be “entertainments” on the surface. They were there to be part of the party.
TM: But no matter what song we are writing for Maisel, we always try to have it move story forward or comment on the action in some way. Even if you don’t notice it right away, hopefully you’ll sense what is being communicated between the lines. So, for Shy’s new “single” “City Lights,” we keyed into one line of dialogue about how his ex-manager and best friend Reggie wrote the lyrics. Boom. That tells us so much. So, we tried to layer it with a certain wistfulness, an irony that when Shy sings “Baby, you are my home” we know it is Reggie speaking. It may sound like it’s a song about Shy’s new bride, but I think it’s about his true home, a home and a simpler time that is gone now.
CM: Same thing with “Maybe Monica.” On the surface, it’s Harry teasing Shy and Monica like a best man giving a wedding toast. But the song is also asking the major question of the episode, “How did Monica get Shy to marry him? Why is this wedding happening?” Even if Harry Belafonte isn’t aware of the underlying question, we and the audience are. The song wonders aloud if maybe Monica “prayed” or “played” to get Shy, but we know by the end of the episode what is really happening. And it’s heartbreaking.
TM: Nothing says dance party like setting someone’s lonely deal with the devil to a calypso rhythm.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is streaming on Prime Video.
Sometimes you work on a project, and you are not working alone. For Dustin O’Halloran and Herdís Stefánsdóttir, working on Apple TV+’s The Essex Serpent was a chance to create a deep, soulful mood in a story shrouded in mystery. Their score to the limited series really recalls a mournful, curious tone while giving us gentle piano notes in some sections (I personally love the arrangement of their track, “Fata Morgana”). Even though The Essex Serpent is a period story, this pair wasn’t interested in going back to a certain time as much as creating textures of an emotional mystery.
Awards Daily: Do you have a set way of working with one another? Did that change at all during this project?
Dustin O’Halloran: This was our first time collaborating and we both have different approaches, so it took some time to find the best way. It ended up being that working in our respective studios on themes and sound ideas, and then coming together to record them worked really well. A lot of things happened and changed during the recording process as well, as we were also very specific on how everything was recorded. We did a lot of close micing and sound treatments to try to get a more raw and detailed sound out of the cello, viola and violin.
Herdís Stefánsdóttir: Like Dustin said, this was our first time working together and we have quite different approaches. Dustin is really organized and I’m a bit all over the place, so I definitely stepped up my organizing skills! We worked in separate studios but it all came together when we started recording and figuring out the sound for the show.
AD: Why should every composer consider working with a partner for at least one project?
DO: Writing for a limited series is like running a marathon in a way. You have to somehow keep yourself sharp and creative for a long period of time, which can be hard when it’s 6 months of work and 3 hours of music! So I think collaborating can really help keep the creative level up and you can be inspired together and lean on each other. Not everyday is a day of writing great music, but with two composers you really can get so much further and have a bigger body of work to pull from. It really makes it more dimensional.
HS: I think you can learn a lot from collaborating with someone that inspires you. TV series can be a lot of work and very hard creatively so having a partner can also make things so much better!
AD: What is the biggest compromise you had to make with this project?
DO: Time is always the great compromiser, and sometimes when you’re getting last minute picture changes that could mean working on a long scene of music again and re-approaching it, you have to find ways that work and sometimes you just don’t have the time you would want. Somehow it all works in the end. But good music needs time and you don’t always have that luxury.
AD: Did you do anything unconventional with this particular project that might surprise audiences?
DO We worked with a really creative percussionist from Finland named Tatu Rönkkö (also a great name!), and he used a lot of unusual items to create some of the soundworld we created, like tapping on bowed shovels, big ceramic flower pots, metal cutlery and long 4×4 timber – basically things he found around the studio and outside. We also did a lot of pitch shifting of whole orchestra recordings and cello to create some of the deep low sounds you hear. We were never precious about what we recorded and did a lot of sound shaping of the acoustic instruments. There is nothing electronic in the score so everything you hear is something we created from our recordings.
AD: What research into the time period was important to you in scoring this new series?
DO: From the beginning it was clear we were not going to do a period sounding score, but instead approach it from a more visceral and textural place. Clio Barnard, the director, put so much detail into the production design and feel and how it was filmed, and this was also a big inspiration. Wood, lace, dark waters, swamps, religion, old science tools, damp homes, and decadent homes of London are all sounds we were trying to represent.
HS: We didn’t do any research into the time period as we did not want the score to necessarily represent a certain period. It just had to tell and elevate the story and fit into the world and visuals.
AD: The Essex Serpent is about a search for the truth of something monstrous. How did you want to allude to the mystery without giving too much away?
DO: The serpent has many meanings in the series and we don’t want to give anything away, but through the music we tried to capture the allure and seduction of darkness and the unknown; the feeling that something is lurking out there and there is fear but also desire to understand.
The Essex Serpent is streaming on Apple TV+.
What scares you? Is it religious fundamentalists on an island and a blood-suckling vampire/angel hybrid? Well, fingers crossed that you don’t land on the island featured in Mike Flanagan’s accomplished horror limited series. Midnight Mass. The Newton Brothers have worked on The Haunting of Hill House and The Haunting of Bly Manor, but the pair knows that horror can be subjective. For some, like myself, ghostly horror can live side-by-side with religious fanaticism, and the score features a lot of angelic vocals. The hymns used throughout Midnight Mass can comfort but also terrify.
Awards Daily: Do you have a set way of working with one another? Did that change at all during this project?
The Newton Brothers: Yes, we start off by writing ideas separately in our studios and then we’ll come together and pick out the pieces we like. We’ll then write or arrange on each other’s cues and then we’ll bring these ideas to the creatives.
AD: Why should every composer consider working with a partner for at least one project?
TNB: We learned early on that collaboration is a strength for composers and filmmakers. It gives perspective to have another person there to give input to your pieces. Sometimes you think a piece is wonderful but it’s not, or vice versa – you think a piece isn’t working but it actually is. Having the input long before the filmmakers hear the music gives you an extra layer of filtering. Ultimately, this leads to them getting the best music and choices for their film.
AD: What is the biggest compromise you had to make with this project?
TNB: One of the biggest compromises we had to make was due to COVID. Having to record several vocalists isolated, one by one, is a tedious process. Essentially, we had to build a Midnight Mass choir with this approach and mix it all together to sound cohesive.
AD: Did you do anything unconventional with this particular project that might surprise audiences?
TNB: From a musical perspective, we used very unconventional devices mixed into the score, such as: tuned water bottles, processed cellos, a Theravox and some bizarre percussion blended in with choir and traditional orchestra.
AD: Horror can be very subjective—what one person finds scary another can find silly. With Midnight Mass, how did you two work with one another to keep a balance of mood and dread that felt universally unsettling?
TNB: Mike Flanagan is a master of this. Our job is to stay out of the way and let the performances shine through until it’s time for the music to heighten a moment or an event. Overscoring can be a quick way to kill a scene, so it’s important to know as a composer when to push further and when to pull back and this is especially true for horror. Getting the tension just right is a must.
AD: A lot of religion, obviously, leans heavily on music. How did you want to honor that with the score of Midnight Mass?
TNB: Our approach was to keep it very authentic. We wanted the hymns to feel genuine, humble, and sincere as the characters on the show. So, it was very important that the choir didn’t sing everything perfectly. They needed to reflect the community on the island. Also, in some cases of the score, we used similar instrumentation as the hymns, choir, organ, etc. The main goal was for everything to feel connected.
Midnight Mass is streaming on Netflix.
For ABC’s new version of The Wonder Years, composer Jacob Yoffee & Roahn Hylton wanted to create a signature sound. Music is synonymous with The Wonder Years and this pair drenched the entire season in it. Whether a chicken pox diagnosis and quarantine reminds you of the last two years or the end of the school year is approaching, Yoffee and Hylton’s music offer us to look back like a perfect coming-of-age tale knows how to do. Yoffee and Hylton often work closely together to chart their progression through the project, so the recent pandemic was a real challenge for them. Music is part of The Wonder Years‘ soul and DNA, and Yoffee and Hylton know exactly how to make you wistful.
Awards Daily: Do you have a set way of working with one another? Did that change at all during this project?
Jacob Yoffee & Roahn Hylton: We most often work side by side working note for note on cues. A lot of film makers think that since there’s two of us we divide the cues. We wish! What we find is that more times than not, it is useful to put two minds on a piece of music!
AD: Why should every composer consider working with a partner for at least one project?
Y&H: Perspective! In our case we have very different styles and approaches to music making so, for us, those differences complement each other, creating amazing results.
AD: What is the biggest compromise you had to make with this project?
Y&H: Not recording in person. It also became one of our biggest advantages because of the pandemic. The entire score is all live musicians, but because we were remote, it allowed for more collaboration and more music to be made simultaneously.
AD: Did you do anything unconventional with this particular project that might surprise audiences?
Y&H: Watching the show I don’t think most audiences will realize how much music had to be created both for the score and the on-camera music. This season included several gospel choir performances in a church, a large middle school wind ensemble, saxophone challenges and, of course, Bill’s band performing on screen several times. The scripts did an amazing job of interweaving music in a way that we’d never seen on network television. It asked a lot of the music department but was a real gift as it allowed us to flex and show some creativity.
AD: The original The Wonder Years was so synonymous with music of the time. How did you want
to change that with this new iteration?
Y&H: The music of our show has evolved as the story evolved. Going in we had an idea of what we thought the show would need. But as we got further along with the characters the sound of the show grew. One of the more specific examples of this is in the case of Bill Williams, the father figure of our show. Being that he is a jazz musician and music professor we wanted the approach of the score to be as if it came from his band. Our ensemble of drums, bass, guitar, organ, wurli and horns makes our score unique to the show but also of the time that our characters live in.
AD: What is the key to scoring a coming-of-age tale?
Y&H: Balancing the intimate with the universal – there are moments that need to feel incredibly personal. At these times audiences need to feel a part of one specific character’s emotions and their unique journey. But the flip side is that it needs to be universally understood and applicable. We’ll say to each other that in a particular moment you want the audience to lean in, as if you’re whispering to them. But a moment later things widen and you want them to lean back and see the bigger picture.
The Wonder Years is streaming now on Hulu.
Even though Este Haim and Christopher Stracey have never worked with one another, you can tell there is an immediate connection. Something worked since they joined forces again for Apple TV+’s Sundance darling, Cha Cha Real Smooth. To subtly convey the dramatic journey of Netflix’s Maid, the duo turned to a lot of guitar cues, and that would change depending on the mood. Margaret Qualley’s character is already going through such a turbulent, unpredictable time in her life, that Haim and Stracey purposely avoided making the score dreary or melodramatic.
AD: Do you have a set way of working with one another? Did that change at all during this project?
Christopher Stracey: This was actually our first time working together so it was very much feeling it out as we went along. The first day that Este came to my studio, we just started jamming together on some ideas and straight away it felt like we hit a good groove. We were talking about the scenes and how they made us feel, playing each-other music that we love, we quickly found that we were on the same page musically.
Este Haim: I think it really depended on the cue. If we were really stuck on something, we turned to YouTube and would trade videos and music that could maybe spark something and get us inspired. Once we had a template it was also pretty easy to go back to sonics and instruments we’d used previously, kind of like our little tool box of fun.
AD: Why should every composer consider working with a partner for at least one project?
CS: I think that the best thing about working with a partner is that they can break you out of your “normal way of doing things.” Having someone to bounce ideas back and forth with, and develop together can be very rewarding. That person might see something in a musical idea that you might have initially downplayed, or buried, but that sparks something for them, and then it becomes the focus and you end up with something totally different to what you would have done if you were on your own. I think it’s a fantastic opportunity to see things with new eyes.
AD: What is the biggest compromise you had to make with this project?
CS: I wouldn’t say this was a compromise, so much as a learning curve, but this was one of our first times making music for film/tv. With both of us working primarily in the world of having artist projects and putting out songs, we quickly found that things work very differently in score. When you’re writing a song, everything’s about grabbing the listener and making something that’s front and center when it comes to the attention of the listener. You write your song, record it, put it out. That’s it. When you’re scoring, you’re one piece of a much bigger puzzle, and you’re helping the story along with music, and sometimes you almost need to be “invisible” in that you’re making the audience feel something, without telling them to feel something. Knowing when to hold back and when to come forward and be noticeable was probably the biggest challenge.
EH: I think just having more than two cooks in the kitchen was a slight compromise for me, I’m used to making a body of work, mixing it, mastering it, designing the artwork, and then turning it in. There’s never been anyone else we show music to, including our label. So when we’re finished with it there’s no tweaks that can be made. Working on Maid was a little bit of a learning curve for me, but after the first round of notes I knew this was a challenge and an experience I wanted to have over and over again. I loved working with the whole team on Maid, everyone was so smart and thoughtful with their suggestions. I loved it.
AD: Did you do anything unconventional with this particular project that might surprise audiences?
CS: One of our favorite cues happens in the courtroom scene. There’s a percussive sound that’s happening which is a bit atonal and arrhythmic. It’s used to illustrate the disassociation and confusion Alex is experiencing when she’s in the courtroom feeling helpless as the lawyers are babbling on in their “legal legal legal” speak. I had been working on music for something else and I’d put gaff tape over the strings of my piano which gave it this unique sound. Este went to sit down at the piano and started playing, thinking it was going to sound like a regular piano, but when it came out sounding like that, we decided it would be the perfect sound for this scene, and it made her play in a way that really just fit the action like a glove.
EH: I mean, we played an acoustic guitar with a paintbrush that was laying around Stray’s studio–I don’t know how much more unconventional we could have gotten with that one.
AD: Alex’s story is very emotional but also very intimate. How did you want to represent that with the score?
CS: The themes in Alex’s scenes are often represented with different shades of guitar. We chose this because we felt Alex’s character would listen to bands that had guitars, but also because it’s a familiar instrument which can be approached in many different ways to give off many different colors of sound. It can be acoustic, electric, plucked, picked, bowed, you name it. There’s moments of attitude for instance when she’s first cleaning Regina’s house where it’s really driving, heavy rock electric guitar tones, contrasted with light and tender acoustic strumming when she moves to the nursery and is thinking of Maddy. Later in the DV shelter we also played the acoustic guitar with a paint brush, and put the microphones right up on it to get the texture of the brush dragging across the strings which gives you this feeling of closeness and intimacy because you’re right up against the source of the sound.
EH: I think because the story was already so heavy and emotional we didn’t want to add anymore weight to the story by giving it a dreary score. Alex is also super resilient, and I was very much inspired by her grit, spirit, and her perseverance. I wanted us to bring a little bit of that to the score.
AD: One of my favorite relationships in Maid is between Alex and Regina. Since both of these women are at very different places in their lives, how did you want to connect them emotionally through the music?
CS : Regina starts out as quite a hard character, but gradually throughout the show loses this edge and we start to see a very tender and caring side of her. They help each other a lot as the show develops. In the beginning, they were on separate sort of musical journeys when it came to the score, but gradually we sort of started to soften the sounds that were used in their cues to illustrate the tenderness between them. I think the idea was to try to create the musical equivalent of a loving warm blanket that’s there to support and hold you.
EH: I love the relationship between Alex and Regina as well! I think both women are badasses. Musically I wanted to depict how at odds the two were but at the same time how connected they were. I tried to find a healthy balance of salty and sweet with the two of them musically, I tried to have a bit of levity with them even when the situation seemed heavy and stressful.
Maid is streaming now on Netflix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGtaHcqsSE8