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Murderville Composer Matt Novack on Musical Approach & More: Interview

For Senior Detective Terry Seattle (Will Arnett), Homicide Division, every day means a new murder case and a new celebrity guest star as his partner. But here's the catch: each episode's guest star isn't being given the script. They have no idea what's about to happen to them. Together, the guest star and Seattle will have to improvise their way through the case… but it will be up to each celebrity guest alone to name the killer. That's the premise behind Netflix's six-episode procedural crime comedy Murderville, based on the BAFTA award-winning BBC3 series Murder in Successville and dropping this week. To offer a perspective on the musical side of things, Bleeding Cool had a chance to speak with series composer Matt Novack, to discuss his approach to music, handling an improv style, soundtrack inspirations, and more.

Eden: With the improv nature of "Murderville," the guest stars have no idea what's going on or what they're walking into because of the improv nature. What challenges, if any, did that present in kind of setting the musical tone of that world?

Matt: Generally with comedy, you definitely want to stay away from the comedy; you want to make sure the jokes breathe, have space. You're not taking up too much sonic space that distracts from the dialog; You don't want to overemphasize a joke. It's very easy to do a ding or a pizzicato string or something that steps on a joke that can make it less funny. This is the first thing I worked on that's so highly improvised. They had general outlines for scripts, especially the supporting cast – they have clues they need to tell the guests, but the main guest doesn't have a script; it's completely improvised. It was a little bit of a challenge to figure out how to score those scenes. We found there were moments of awkwardness, like where the guest didn't know what was happening or didn't really know how to react. You can't really score awkwardness, you just have to let it be. There are a few scenes where we temp-ed it without score and this kind of plays well, but it needs something. So we would try to play with different things like I made this "catch-all sonically interesting but simple" bass/percussion pulse. It was a good tool to shape a scene. 

Eden: More of an underlying ambient soundscape and less of a musical soundtrack?

Matt: Exactly. Just something to give a little bit of energy to a scene, and we actually used that a couple of times in the final score because it works so well. One of those rules of film scoring is that you want to do just enough to support a scene. This is mostly a synth score, a little bit of guitar, a little bit percussion, but the trick was to find and tweak sounds that wouldn't call too much attention to themselves. Something rounder, a little bit more muted. Still a little interesting, so it's hopefully not too plain and boring. That was an interesting challenge and fun, working on these cues and just making sure that they were telling the story, not getting in the way, the comedy, letting the awkwardness and the improv breathe, but still driving the story, still musically interesting, still fun.

When Krister Johnson, the showrunner, and the editors were temping the show, they have some music libraries they'll pull from for temp music and they found they had a hard time temping it because even if there was a simple temp cue, it would be too overproduced, a lot going on. They were really struggling, trying to temp it with preexisting music, so that really informed the score – finding sounds that weren't calling attention to themselves too much. We had to make sure we weren't putting too much, especially with the mid-range and the high.

Eden: You have a history of scoring horror shorts – that is definitely a genre that benefits from the "less more" philosophy in the realm of music cues. Did that help you in any way or play into this at all?

Matt:  I think so. It's been a minute since I've done horror, it's always fun though. But now that I think about it, you start minimally. You start building tension and give it a base to explode from. Like if you're having a horror sting like a shock, like a screeching violin or a cymbal crash or something or brass blast. They work so much better if you're coming from a foundation of just simmering tension. So, absolutely. I think that that absolutely helped.

Eden: What pieces or composers have been some of your greatest inspiration for your career?

Matt: I love film scores, so it's hard to it's hard not to say John Williams…but John Williams. Elliot Goldenthal, his film scores, and also his concert work have been a major influence on me. Also, I love Estonian composers; Einojuhani Rautavaara, and Arvo Pärt. it's a little bit minimalistic, but also very cinematic the way they wrote. Whenever I'm looking for inspiration or references, I'll go through a lot of things but ultimately almost always end up referencing one of those composers. And also minimalist composers like John Adams and Terry Riley; I think minimalism is great for film scoring. Especially as a percussionist, you start with rhythm or ostinato, have it evolve or devolve based on what the scene needs.

Eden: You'd mentioned collaborating; you frequently collaborate on other shows with a few other composers. What's it like working within that team? Do you each play to different strengths?

Matt: A little bit. It's really interesting. we've built this group of composer friends who help each other out. It started with Allyson Newman, who's been one of my closest friends for years, we went to USC together. It's one of those things like whenever one of us gets a gig, we know that the other is going to be helping on it. We've co-scored things together, scored a few movies together. We all have our own careers too: she co-scored the L Word with Heather Mcintosh, who is also great. And other friends, like Greg Martin is my go-to guitar guy who did additional music for me on Murderville. And then with Jefferson – Jefferson and I met working for Craig Wedren on Wet Hot American Summer. We were both additional music composers on that. And Craig – I was his assistant for years, we co-scored a couple of movies together, I've done additional music for him. When Jefferson got Harley Quinn, he brought me on to help with the orchestral stuff that the show requires. And Chris [Christopher French], the other third composer, is this great songwriter, who's fantastic. I'm currently helping him with a couple of things. It's so great because every composer has a team, whether it's assistants, additional music composers, orchestrators… 

Eden: Art doesn't happen in a vacuum.

Matt: No, no. And it's so much more fun to collaborate, kind of crucial in times, especially when you're writing. I'll write a new theme I'm really excited about it. Like, "Hey, does this sound like anything? Did I accidentally rip something off?" So it's good to know you have someone you can bounce ideas off of, either making sure it's original or sounds good. I like to mix my own cues, but I'm not a mixer by training, so it's good to know like "If anything sounds weird, let me know." And you know it just it's it's so much more fun to just have a team that you can work with together. Otherwise, I'm going to be so lonely, you know? I don't know if composers actually get lonely scoring stuff, but yeah, it's it's it's it's so great. And it's also great to see people I've collaborated with succeed. When Murderville started, I called up Ally like, "Hey, got a new show!" and she goes, "That's interesting, because I was just about to call you telling you the same thing." So she was too busy to help, and that's a little sad, but it's great. It's great to see – you know the cliche saying, 'the rising tide lifts all boats,' let's all help each other out and support each other. And there's competition; we're all kind of going after the same gigs in a lot of ways. You can go down that road and be cutthroat, but that's just not me. And I don't think that's most people.

Eden:  That was all I had in the way of questions. Do you have anything else you'd like to talk about or discuss?

Matt: Well, Harley Quinn, we've already talked about. I recently just did my first podcast theme, which is interesting – it's called Better than Heroes. I don't know when it's coming out, I'm patiently waiting. It's like Dungeons and Dragons, but with a sci-fi twist: Dungeons Dragons in space. I wrote this big orchestral Star Trek-y anthem theme that I'm pretty proud of. It's actually also by Abominable Pictures who did Murderville and Children's Hospital and Medical Police – they're getting into doing podcasts, so it's the same company and some of the same people I've worked with. Other than that, a big shout out, big thank you to Will Arnett. This was my first time working with him, and I've been a fan for years – it's so exciting. And my friend Krister Johnson, who's the showrunner. I worked with him on Medical Police and he did a little bit of work on Children's Hospital too, so it's great to continue to work with him. I love collaborating with these guys, it was so much fun. 

Murderville is currently streaming on Netflix- here's a look at the official trailer:

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