Keeping score 🎵
Composing music for podcasts
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Hey there audio storytellers,
I hope you’re doing well in what’s been a tough couple of weeks. We’re more or less a year into lockdown now, but hope is definitely on the horizon.
I’m finding music is a real source of comfort and escapism at the minute (shout-out to Spotify’s Music for Plants playlist). And a perfectly judged piece of music can underscore a podcast (pun whole-heartedly intended), bringing the characters to life and adding resonance to the emotion of the story.
I especially love the score for Poetry Unbound, so I got in touch with its composer, Gautam Srikishan (who also has work in The Cut, The Verge, Vox and more ) for a chat about his process, musical influences and how he collaborates with producers.
What is the challenge in having music enhance a story rather than compete with it? How do you compose for voice?Â
All of this should be taken with a grain of salt, but typically, music with a lot of activity (for lack of a better word) can get distracting. The same goes for music that changes really dramatically or shifts too often.Â
On the other hand, music that’s more repetitive is less likely to pull attention away from the voice. And of course, it’s crucial that the tone of the music matches the mood of what’s being said … unless you’re trying to make a point by having the two clash in an artistic way. This is what I mean when I say to take it all with a grain of salt!
That said, testing if your music works under a script is really as easy as putting them together in your DAW and just listening. You might have to ask a producer you’re working with for tape/script reads from an episode to give it a test run, but it’s always worth the extra bit of work.
Does your approach differ depending on whether you’re composing for a narrative podcast, talk show or fiction?
I’d take this a step further and just say that my approach differs depending on each individual show—even within a specific genre. Sometimes a show might need a consistent sonic palette to keep the listener in a specific headspace, or it might need a lot of variety to hold a lot of attention. Some shows need the music to be front and center, and others need it to be more of a background to the content, and still others might need a mix of both. Needless to say, the sheer variety of approaches to scoring podcasts and radio shows isn’t an accident!
One of the things I love about the music in Poetry Unbound is that it has a real emotional weight to it without being overly sentimental - and in that way, brings a depth to [host] Pádraig Ó Tuama’s interpretation of each poem. How do you achieve this balance? How do you convey feeling through music?
Well, first of all, thank you! That means a lot and I’m very grateful for the chance to talk about it.Â
Second, I have to apologize, because articulating this is going to be very hard without using jargon. I’ve studied music theory most of my life, so there are certain chords or particular uses of instrumentation that can be almost cloying in their sentimentality—like a violin playing a high melody with tons of vibrato over a minor plagal cadence. Or this very Christmassy chord. So there’s certain sounds that are broadly understood, at least in the US, as cheesy that I can intuitively recognize and avoid.
But the other key factor with Poetry Unbound is that all of our music is broken up into stems, or the constituent parts of a track. So in a track like Memoriam, we have individual audio files for the left hand of the piano, the right hand of the piano, the strings, and the pitched percussion. So when we’re putting together an episode, we have a lot of options to shape how a particular track works in an episode.
For example, we might decide that the piano isn’t working and opt to lower its volume in the mix, or cut it entirely, leaving just strings and percussion. In short, working with stems gives us a ton of flexibility and helps us thread the needle of making music with emotional weight while not being overly saccharine.
Finally, I have to add that Pádraig is such a central part of the whole show, and that it simply wouldn’t work without him. His readings and reflections create so much emotional space and depth for the music to fill in. So, I guess my advice is to make sure you have an amazing host!
At what stage do you begin composing—when the episode/show is complete or earlier?
This really varies from show to show. On shows where I was working as both producer and composer, I could do it in tandem. With Poetry Unbound, I actually wrote most of the music before any of the episodes were complete, or at least before I’d heard any of them.Â
But more often than not, music tends to come later in the production process, once scripts and tape have all been laid out. This has its advantages, because knowledge of the material can really inform the direction and pacing of the score, but it also means that you’re probably working on a tighter deadline, and that can be its own hurdle.
Can it be difficult to interpret what a producer is looking for in terms of music? How do those conversations happen?
Absolutely! One of the trickiest things for me has been bridging the lexicon gap between people with formal Western music training (i.e. me) and people without. The easiest way around this has been using reference tracks. If someone is having a hard time articulating what sound they’re looking for, but know that, say, Daft Punk (RIP) nailed that tone at the end of their song Touch then that’s a great start. It can be a long process, but zeroing in on exactly the sound you want is worth the work.
Who has influenced your musical style?
I’ve always tried to listen really widely and take in as much as I can, so this list could go on for a long time, but a few artists on rotation for me lately are Moses Sumney, Typhoon, Lomelda, Chuck Sutton, Lena Raine, and Darren Korb.
What other podcasts do you think are making great use of music?
The two shows that come to mind for me are (sadly) over, but the first is The Habitat. Haley Shaw crafted such a perfect sound for that score that feels both otherworldly and familiar at the same time, and integrates in brilliant ways with the tape that make me smile every time I revisit it.Â
10 Things That Scare Me also always surprises me with the places it goes, and a big reason for that is its composer and sound designer Isaac Aaron Jones, who pulls from such a vast variety of sounds and feels and genres.
Gautam is a composer, sound designer, and audio producer based in Brooklyn, NY. Check out his work here.
Composer resources
📌Producer Will Coley put together this list of composers creating original scores for radio, podcast and video projects.
📌You can also search for composers on POC in Audio.
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What I’m listening to
🎧 I really enjoyed this episode of How I Found My Voice with Kate Winslet; she’s an actor of such talent, intelligence and integrity. (It also reminded me to re-watch Eternal Sunshine this weekend - what a gorgeous film.)
🎧 BA Parker’s various attempts to escape the stress and trauma of this year in The Cut’s Get Out of Your Head episode was relatable, clever and poignant.
🎧 And I’ve been wolfing down episodes of Sentimental in the City, a hilarious, sharp dissection of Sex and the City from writers Caroline O’Donoghue and Dolly Alderton.
Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your comments, thoughts and what you’re listening to / working on: tweet or email me. If you think a coworker or friend would also benefit from the newsletter, I’d appreciate you forwarding this email. They can sign up here.