You originally were in bands. I assume the soundtrack work is likely the most income-oriented part of your music?
That's my day job, for sure. I remember at one point in college – before my first band, The Origin, got our record deal in 1988 – I was listening to the TV. Remember that show Thirtysomething? There was someone playing acoustic guitar on that soundtrack, and I was like, "I can do that. I like playing acoustic guitar." It was almost like new age music, like a broader version of Michael Hedges.
Sure, Windham Hill Records style.
Yeah. I never saw music as a career. I saw it as something I wanted to do. I thought, "Well, if it doesn't work out, I guess I could have a regular career." [laughter] Fortunately, that never happened. I was writing songs. We got a record deal. The band, The Origin, got dropped. I went home to San Diego. I met some people, started playing music. It made absolutely no sense for me to go from being a lead singer and songwriter to a guitar player in a funk band [The Greyboy Allstars]. It was what I needed spiritually at the time. I was like, "I just want to be playing music. I want to be in a fun environment. I want to meet people. I want to have a good time." Then that band randomly got asked to do a movie soundtrack [Jake Kasdan's Zero Effect]. I thought, "Wow. I feel good about this. I like being in the studio. I love recording."
Were you all writing cues for the soundtrack?
These guys were all great, in their own right. Robert Walter is an amazing composer and keyboard player. Zak Najor, the drummer, was writing cues. Chris Stillwell, the bass player, wrote the main theme. Karl Denson was busy, so he didn't write as much. I procrastinated, but I ended up doing all my writing in the studio while we were there. That's one of my ways to do it. I sit down in the moment, watch the picture, write, and then distribute parts amongst everybody. I love writing on the spot. I love the pressure of the moment, as well as the functionality of the music. The picture dictates the structure.
Do you read and write music?
I can read very slowly.
It seems the way you score and work is also trying to find the right sound for the parts you want.
Yeah. I'm definitely sound-driven.
Your soundtrack for Donnie Darko has such certain tones and feel.
It's what's evocative in the framework of the movie. What gives it another layer. I hope that the director wants their film to be set apart.
Film to film, do you think, "I'm going to use certain instruments"?
I try to, but I guess I've done enough work where people think that I have a "thing" that I do. Some people come to me for that. I used to get resentful about it, but now I think, "Oh, well. They want me to do that thing that I came upon by natural inspiration." I'll think, "I'm going to get that 'band' back together." I get those instruments out again, and I say, "This is that 'band.’" I write with that "band" again, whether it be the …Darko thing with the vocoder, the Univox Mini-Korg, or my piano. Whether it's been done over and over again or not, it's still composition.
When you say "band," you mean the instruments?
Right. My concept of my "band." The different elements. The instruments are the band, and I get those textures together again.
You started out as a guitar player, and then you were doing keyboard-heavy soundtracks.
That was the thing with Donnie Darko. I met with [director] Richard Kelly, and he said, "By the way, no guitar on this." I was like, "Okay." He was tying my hands, because I wasn't really a piano player at that point. That's why it was so slow. I still can't play very fast. If I do something and use MIDI, I can speed it up. I can play better now because I’ve been doing it for 25 years. Hopefully I got a little bit better! I'm still not a great keyboard player. I wish I was better.
How often do you bring players in for soundtrack work?
I would say about a quarter of the time.
If there are parts that you know someone would play well?
Or if I don't want to be alone. I have great friends that know my idiom. They understand my process and what I like. I'm not asking someone to write the song, but I'm asking someone to give me more than just what I tell them to do. I like movies to feel like records. I want them to feel like there's something at stake. Many soundtracks are the performers reading it for the first time and they're just laying it down. Everyone's like, "It's going to be under dialogue. It's going to be quiet. No one cares." But I care. I want to listen to it after the movie's done, and I want to feel like what I'm doing has vitality. Even if it's just for a moment and it's just for me and the others in the room. We're doing something cool. We're putting our heart into it. I want that interaction with other people to give it that life, and also that tension where someone's playing against someone else. I try to do that when I overdub.
Become different musicians in your head?
Yeah. I try to sabotage myself. To be a really active bass player over a track. And then the challenge is, "Shut up!"
When a movie starts for you, do you sit down and have a cue meeting with the director?
There are all different kinds of ways to do it. Sometimes I start before the movie starts; I get a script, and we talk about the vibe of the music.
Or themes?
Yeah. "This character will have a theme." They might say, "Just make a bunch of music for this and see what it is." I did a season of the show Platonic last year, and I basically made two records and gave them those two records of instrumental music. They used them throughout the show. They used it in ways I would have never used it. Then I came back, and I made connective tissue for it. It would need 30 seconds of an intro and an outro, or it would cross scenes and then go from one of the pieces of music to another. It’s like musical plumbing!
It's nice, because then the work isn't so last minute. Some scores can be, especially for television.
The streamers are a little bit different because I'm not working week by week. When I did Freaks and Geeks, that was week by week. I did Freaks and Geeks basically alone in San Diego. That was a lot, like 25 cues every five days. I look at it like there's X amount of time to work on something, and that's what it is. I can't really get ahead, because – no matter what – I'm going to be working until the film is mixed. I just finished a Will Ferrell and Reese Witherspoon movie [You're Cordially Invited], which is a classic romantic comedy with director Nick Stoller. He's a great person to collaborate with, but there are little things that pop up. We did a cover of "Islands in the Stream" with Will Ferrell for this. It was supposed to be a karaoke track, so we had to do two versions. One was a karaoke version, and the other one was a full blown version of it where we put orchestra on it for the end title. For the karaoke one, I was like, "How can we make this sound bad?" I used all my canned drums, canned keyboards, and everything's canned.
Some of those karaoke versions are sonically hilarious.
It's so good. That scene is funny, and it's a pretty fun movie!
Harry Shearer told me that on Spinal Tap they had to recut all the songs because the way the editor cut it they were visually playing at the wrong times.
Oh, that's funny. I was so adamant about that when we did Walk Hard: [The Dewey Cox Story]. There was so much done to picture. Jake Kasdan, the director said, "You have to come to set and make sure this looks real." I would come and meet the set director, the set dressers, and all the people that were involved in making it look real.
That's time period-based all through that movie.
Yeah. "Show us what we need the studio to look like when we do the 'Brian Wilson’ scene." I wrote the tune "Black Sheep" with Van Dyke Parks [Tape Op #145]. He put orchestra on it. It's so cool.
What a great arranger.
He's such an incredible guy. I showed up on the set, and the console was pushed up against the wall and the speakers were in the wrong places. I was like, "This doesn't look like a recording studio!" They said, "Dude, get out of here." I came back ten days later and there was a two-story studio built with a control room that was up. There were all these people there playing this song that I did with Van Dyke, and it incredible to realize, "We've created this whole thing." This was completely make-believe, and it was so amazing.
What audio files do you deliver for songs in films?
We give them stereo stems. I don't do the mixing or the stems. Alexander Thompson does it, or Todd Burke, who I've worked with since way back in the day. He has an Atmos room at his house in Monrovia, so he'll do that. I remember when I was working on Donnie Darko. I had reverb on my keyboards and then they put reverb on my reverb. I was thinking, "Okay, I don't need reverb on my reverb." Now, people are getting their heads around what to do and being bolder with it. "This is supposed to be a dry recording. Don't do a bunch of weird reverb and make the thing lose its presence."
The King of Staten Island soundtrack was different than a lot of your scores.
Sometimes people say, "Collaborate with this songwriter or producer.” I did that with Emile Haynie and Nosaj Thing. That was really fun. I love doing that. I don't get an opportunity to work with a lot of different artists because I'm busy working on my own thing. I still love making records – that was one of the reasons why I built this studio. I want to work with more people, and I want to be able to walk away and have people continue to work. When it was at my house, I couldn't do that because I was with my kids. I want to be able to kind of set someone on fire here, walk away, and let the engineer and people explore and continue to work while I'm not here. It hasn't happened that much because I've been working a lot. But it would be cool to do that.
To keep overdubbing on something and say, "I'm going to get dinner"?
I don't need to be in so much control. "Here are these instruments. This is the paradigm we're in. These are the cues. Express yourself."
There's a second studio up in the front here. How does that get utilized?
It's wired to the rest of the studio. The whole studio is wired together.
Even the bathroom?
Yeah. Everything's wired. The whole idea was to have everything be able to move in both directions. We have a crazy ethernet switchboard thing up in the attic that connects everything. That studio primarily has been a room for me to do mockups. My composer room, where I do my arrangements. I do a lot of arrangements, but I do them by ear. I started out not knowing how to do that.
You'll end up with a score based on your work?
Yeah.
Do you send those out to someone to have them double check the parts?
I do. It has to be orchestrated, for sure. I send the MIDI to someone, and I send the audio stems. I'll often put my hand on a MIDI note and then let go of it. If I'm on a staccato or pizzicato note and don't lift off exactly when the note lets off, then they see it as a quarter note when it's really a sixteenth note or such. Everything has to be gone through. It's a proofreading that goes on. I have a technical orchestrator guy that makes sure that whatever ends up on the score is what my intention is. I have a lot of my keyboards setup in that room. It allows me to get away from what's happening in the main studio. I'll start something in the main studio, Alexander will be finishing it, and I'll go up there and play around or write something else.
There's probably always more to do than there is time.
There is.
You've always had people engineering for you. Picking the right person is important, I assume.
Yeah. I'm a big backseat driver, which is bad. That's why people lose their minds and want to quit!
You're producing as well as composing.
Yeah. People have to get used to me. I've tried to engineer. I think it's just a different job. I've always invested in a technical person because I'm not going to be as good at that as I am at the other thing. It's worth the investment. I need a second set of ears at the end of a project. It's quality control.
Your new studio looks like it's from 1965.
I've worked at Sunset Sound a lot over the years. It’s one of my favorite places to work. Todd worked at Sunset Sound for a long time. Ryan [Castle], my music editor for ages, worked at Sunset Sound. I did a record [An Invitation] with Van Dyke and Inara [George] there. I went to Sunset Sound 's manager, Craig [Hubler], and I said, "I love Studio 3." He told me, "George Augspurger did this studio." I called him up and said, "I want to make a studio, and I want it to be like Studio 3." That was the Prince studio, with the DeMedio console.
That's where Elliott Smith [Tape Op #4], Rob Schnapf, and Tom Rothrock [#9] did most of XO. I went and visited for a week during that.
It's such a great little room. The one thing that that studio lacks is there's so much recording going on in the control room these days.
Studio 3 has a pretty tight control room.
You don't need the couch in front of the console anymore. It's like there's only room for the engineers. So, I got together with George, I found this building, and I brought him here. Then, Todd, Alexander, and I worked very hard in terms of what we thought we needed here. I knew my console was going to be here, and I knew that there were certain things that worked about my old room. I kept the dimensions and the side-saddle vibe. [The console is not facing the window to the live room. -Ed.] So much of the recording I do is just me and the engineer, and it's nice to not have to look right at each other all day long. Mainly I'm out there, so that allows each of us to be in our own space. We did a variety of layouts trying to utilize as much as we could on the width. The primary idea was to get the biggest live room with the most isolation, the best ergonomic control room, and have two control rooms so that I could have two sessions going on at one time. And to still have storage, which was the other challenge. I told George, "I love the way Studio 3 feels, but I don't need expensive materials. I don't need the maple and all the weird woods. I want it to be very utilitarian.” We used all the material that's been around forever, like the Guilford of Maine fabrics and high-density pegboard, which is hard to find. He gave me hand drawing after hand drawing.
Of how to lay it out?
How to lay it out and how to make it a reality. Alexander and Todd did all the wiring and built all the patch bays. The old Quad/Eight used to have its own patch bay, so we had to get rid of that when we put in the Neve 8014.
What type of Quad/Eight console was that?
A Pacifica. It was a great-sounding console, but I wanted it to be as good as it possibly could be here, and I also wanted something simple that I could use. Everything is mic'd up and connected all the time. There's nothing that inhibits me from having an idea and capturing it. The live room right now is set up for me to jump around and write. Two weeks ago, we did a string group and some woodwinds, so that was a different thing.
Are you working on a record of your own music?
A little bit of my own music. I've been working with Michael Fitzpatrick from Fitz and the Tantrums on his solo album [Summer of Us], writing with him, producing that, and also working on some Fitz and the Tantrums music along the way. It's been fun. I worked a little bit with Brooks Nielsen; he was in The Growlers. I did a record [One Match Left] with him, and then mainly I jumped on movies and started another Greyboy Allstars record. I always have something that's in the works, and then if something pops up where I've got to do a movie or a show, then I jump out of it and get that done.
Does your ego fit into the scoring equation at all?
I have thousands of pieces of music that have been denied.
Do you ever pull those out to use on other projects?
Sometimes I will, or I'll look at those for inspiration. It's all part of the process; I assume there's going to be waste. It's not uncommon for people to say, "That idea is not really right anymore." There was an idea on this last movie to do something very operatic. I did my version of that, which was interesting, but it wasn't traditional opera. It didn't give that feeling, so it was like, "We'll license the opera, and you'll do the rest of the score." I'm not suddenly, in the next six months, going to become an opera composer! [laughter] But, sometimes people will say, "I'm interested in your cracked version of opera." That's cool. The other thing that I love about score composing compared to writing songs is that there's just so much work that has to be done that there isn't time to doubt or hate. It's just got to be done. If I was left up to my own devices, on my own music, I would be over-evaluating it.
Are you ever fighting with temp scores that directors or editors have dropped in? It's like demoitis!
There's so much temping going on now, which is where they put in music before they hire a composer. Most of my movie scores that people know and like, a key part of it is they didn't have temp scores.
Maybe that's lucky.
I've been very fortunate in that way. Temp scores can be informative, but I believe that people should have the opportunity to be inspired by something without music. A composer should have a chance to do that. Editors might lay music into the movie while they're working on the edit, before they hire a composer. Sometimes it's, "This is what we want." But then, when I do the thing that I think is what they liked about it, occasionally that's not it. Some people don't know how to communicate about what they like. I've been up against silly stuff where someone will say, "Here's one of the best pieces of music of all time. Can you make a piece of score like that?" I don't think I can do Jimi Hendrix's "Foxy Lady." [laughter] I don't know what the score equivalent of that is! I know it's so nuts. You asked about the ego. It's important to be invested in the music that you make. That's important to me, so I invest myself in it. Do I care about it when people say they don't like it, or they want me to do it again? Absolutely.
But you have to move on.
Yeah. That's the thing. I take a walk, take a breath, and have a coffee. Everybody that's ever done this has had to do that. Whether it's Elmer Bernstein or John Williams. Everybody's had to do these revisions and it's a collaborative process. It isn't a solo album.
It's much easier to produce a band or an artist because you're only trying to make a small group or one person happy.
I have a lot of fun making records and that's why I do it. I don't promote myself as a producer. But for people that want to make music with me, I enjoy making records and it doesn't feel like work. I'm super psyched to work on records because it's always a much lighter process. 
