For our very first episode of the Composer Magazine Podcast Michael Abels, who's known for scoring Us & Get Out, invited our host Charles Steinberg to his LA-based studio and talked in-depth about director Jordan Peele's latest film.
Abels shares his perspective on the different sounds of strings and brass, Peele's indisputable horror of rabbits, and the surprise that often comes when watching the finished film.
This interview is spoiler free, so whether you’ve seen the film and are eager to learn more about the creative process behind it, or simply want to whet your appetite before you watch — sit back, listen and enjoy.
Maybe it’s because of my background in writing concert music, but if music suggests itself… I will let that happen. As a composer you try to transcribe the music that comes from above, or beyond you.
Charles Steinberg: Having come this far with a director like Jordan, and I imagine you understand him a lot more now than when you started and know what makes him tick – what does he find scary?
Michael Abels: The first time I ever met Jordan, we talked about ‘what is scary’. And what makes - not specifically what scares him, but what makes scary music and what is scary sound and quite simply it comes down to the unknown.
What Jordan’s good at is taking what he finds scary and showing us, all the rest of us, why we ought to be just as scared of it as he is. And I think he actually enjoys doing that! So it’s been kind of a pleasure to watch him mine his own nightmares to pawn them off on to everyone else in the world. So when we had that first conversation — the main character in Get Out is Chris, Chris Washington, and Chris is a city boy. So what he’s afraid of — or what’s unfamiliar to him — is the country. You see Jordan’s understanding of that in the main title to Get Out where all you see are the trees going by as he and Rose drive to her parent's house. What someone else might see is just a pastoral setting, but because he’s from the city, it’s a strange environment and something that he’s not sure about… and that’s just a perfect example.
With Us, I actually asked him “What’s with the rabbits?” and he just said, “They scare me.” And the way he said it, there could be no follow-up question, like what do you say after that? They’re scary, end of story.
Charles: In Winkin' Well I heard some sort of the grandeur of what Morricone was doing for, let’s say, The Untouchables. Not only did you get that Western feel from him but also that kind of epic, stand-against-crime-and-injustice with soaring horns and strings. A little of that came across too in this score for Nope.
Michael: Well, I love that you heard that… I can’t say that that was deliberate but that cue needs to have that feeling of grand, soaring ‘a hero rising against a great obstacle’ sort of feel to it, so if you heard that in the music then that cue is working.
As much as I love switching genres — and working with Jordan gives me even more of an opportunity than I would anyway — there’s a part of me that worries that I go so far afield that things don’t relate, but when people say they do, that makes me feel good. I do worry that maybe it will feel like I’m just plucking things randomly — and even though I’m doing that as a joke, I am actually wanting the score to feel like it’s a whole piece that goes with the film.
Charles: Were you surprised by anything in Nope? Did something jump out at you as new this time?
Michael: Sometimes Jordan will experiment with what the music being in a different place reveals about the film, about the characters. There’ll be something that totally doesn’t work, and there’ll be something that seems like genius that just comes from moving the music... But he’ll also take the music and he’ll move it to an entirely different scene. And that part is just… really surprising and kind of fun to see where the music ends up. You can feel like there’s a loss of agency as a composer when doing that, or you can look at it as a really fun surprise.
Track listings as heard in the interview:
1. The House
2. Educational Video
3. Hypnosis
4. The Deer
1. Anthem
2. Outernet
3. Les Fleurs (Minnie Riperton. On Soundtrack)
4. Beach Walk
5. Keep You Safe
6. Run
1. Pursuit
2. Haywood Ranch
3. Skin in the Game
4. Preparing The Trap
5. Em & Angel Fly
6. Progressive Anxiety
7. Abduction
8. Nope
9. Winkin' Well
10. Blood Rain
11. A Hero Falls
Out now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify & all over leading platforms.