March 10, 2024 • 59 mins
To celebrate Oscar Sunday, we're returning to our talk with Oppenheimer composer Ludwig Göransson!
To begin, Göransson describes the collaborative process with director Christopher Nolan (6:48), the instrument at the heart of the film (9:30) and its hauntingly beautiful theme (11:06). Then, we walk through Ludwig’s instinctive approach to making music (13:07), his coming of age in Sweden (15:20), and the influence of Metallica and Danny Elfman (18:51).
On the back-half, Ludwig reflects on his early years in Los Angeles (24:56), finding kinship with director Ryan Coogler (27:55) and polymath Donald Glover (34:53), and how he slowly began to understand his voice (38:21). To close, he shares how his process has evolved from Black Panther to Oppenheimer (42:30), the potential impact of AI on the music industry (44:58), and what he hopes for in the years ahead (49:15).
For questions, comments, or to join our mailing list, reach me at sf@talkeasypod.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin, this is talk easy. I'm studd forgo soo.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Today in honor of Oscar Sunday, my conversation with music
producer and composer Ludwig Gorenson. We sat back in early
August of last year upon the release of Oppenheimer. Since then,
the film has made over a billion dollars around the world,
been nominated for thirteen a cat Me Awards, and is
poised to become one of the biggest winners in the
(01:12):
history of the Oscars later today. That includes Gorenson, by
the way, who was nominated for a Best Original Score,
his third nomination in the category, which he first won
in twenty nineteen for Ryan Coogler's Black Panther. By now,
I have to imagine, if you're listening to this, you've
seen the film Oppenheimer, directed by Christopher Nolan, either in
(01:35):
theaters or at home, or on your iPhone or on
an airplane, and regardless of your feelings about the film,
I personally love it. Ludwig's composition is pretty remarkable. It
manages to both push the film forward while somehow holding
it all together. It's powerful, but not overpowering. Throughout the
(01:56):
episode we play some of my favorite tracks and talk
through how they came to be. We also discuss his
musical childhood in Sweden, coming to America in his early twenties,
his decade long collaboration with artists like Donald Glover and Hiam,
and how his work in Oppenheimer marks a new chapter
in his already storied career. Two things before we jump
(02:19):
in here. The first is if you haven't heard our
episode from last Sunday, it was with doctor Sima Jelani.
She is a pediatrician that was recently working in Central
Gaza to provide aid for Palestinians. If you haven't heard
that episode, I would encourage you to check it out,
either today or later this week, whenever you have the time.
(02:41):
It is one of my favorite episodes that we've ever
made on this show. And to all of you that
have listened and have written either on social media or
over email, over text, I don't say this enough, but
I really thank you for listening and thank you for
reaching out. It is a special episode, is a difficult episode,
(03:05):
and to all of you spreading it and sharing the
conversation that I had with doctor Jelani, I just want
to thank you again. For doing that and for showing
up and supporting the work we do here each and
every Sunday. And so that is an episode with doctor
Sima Jelani. You can find that wherever you are listening
to this right now. And the second thing is that
(03:28):
this is the third year in a row that we
have rerun an episode with an Oscar nominee on Oscar Sunday.
In twenty twenty two, it was Questlove for Summer of Soul.
Last year it was actor ki Wee Kwon for Everything Everywhere,
all at once. Both of those people took home an
Academy Award that night, and so we are hoping to
(03:50):
keep this tradition alive later today. And so with that,
I want to wish our guest some good luck tonight.
His work in the film is truly incredible. If you've
listened to this episode before, or if you're listening to
it for the first time, thank you for being here.
I hope you like it. And with that, this is
(04:13):
Ludwig Gorenson.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Enjoy Ludwig A pleasure to have here.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
Thank you, Sam. It's great to be here.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
You know, we rarely have someone on the show whose
hair is longer than mine.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
And how do you feel about that?
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Profoundly insecure.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
I've been thinking a lot about it lately. Should I
cut it off or should I keep it? But now
I've passed the stage where I'm like, I don't know
so much of my personality in it and my identity.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Are you afraid of like the new person you would
become if you cut your hair?
Speaker 4 (04:57):
I'm not afraid of that. I'm more afraid of like
everyone losing interest in me.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
That's it, Ryan Coogler, Donald Glover, Christopher Nolan. They're just
in it for the hair they don't have.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
That's the secret.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
How has your summer been back home in Sweden?
Speaker 4 (05:18):
It's been incredible. This is the first time and I
moved to America about fifteen years ago, and this is
the first time when I'm in Sweden, my home country,
for more than like a week at a time. I've
been here for three months now. It's great. I mean,
the biggest reason why I want to spend more time
here now it specifically because my kids. I have an
almost four year old and a two year old, and
(05:39):
I just want them to have the Swedish identity and
want them to be able to speak the language. Fluently,
and so it's important.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Being back home. Has it forced you to kind of
like reflect on the last fifteen years of working in America.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
Yeah, I don't know who I am here yet a
little bit. I feel like everything around me here has changed,
and I'm a different person. I never I never had
a professional career in Sweden. It's always a student or
you know, the kid. Coming back is as someone that
has some kind of work experience and just trying to
kind of navigate life here. And I feel like a
(06:16):
lot of things in Sweden changed too in the last
fifteen years. So I'm still trying to find the balance
and trying to find myself here. But it's an exciting
time to do that.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Well, it's been an especially exciting summer for you because
I don't know if you've been reading, but people seem
to be liking Oppenheimer. It's brought them back to the movies,
the Barbenheimer phenomenon. I don't know how it happened, but
I'm glad it did. In the film, there is roughly
two and a half hours of original music, which some
(06:48):
publications have reported you made in five days. How does
someone make something like this in five days?
Speaker 4 (06:56):
Well, I think start off some of that publication, isn't
that correct? Beautiful to go back? You can't this is
not possible during five days. It was published that recorded
the music in five days, which is also not true
because I recorded this for about six months with different
musicians like string quartet, string octet, soloists. But when I
(07:18):
had the whole orchestra together in the same room, that
amount was five days. The recording process, when you record
the full orchestra together, that's kind of the last piece
of the puzzle. So that's the last final stage of
putting together a film score. The hard work is often
way before that. So normally when you hear the orcst
are playing the score, that's like the climax of the
(07:41):
whole process, when you can kind of take a step
back and just listen to the music, almost like seeing
your birth of your child or something.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Well, if that's the climax, why don't we just go
back to act one? Mm hm. You get a call
from Christopher Nolan, He says one.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
He says, I finished a script and I'd love for
you to read it, and can you combuy and read
it tomorrow or in two days. Chris is kind of
in a way where he doesn't really talk about what
he's working on, even though we spend time together and
talk and by stim were like, oh, think about writing this,
and this is about this. So it's always kind of
a call out of the blue. So I get the call,
(08:17):
I go out to the studio, I go into a room,
close the door, and sit with the script for as
much time as I need. And this was a pretty
heavy script. I had no idea what it was going
to be about, and so I immediately get just sucked
into the story and it's like into Oppenheimer and the character,
(08:37):
and the way that the script is written is from
Oppenheimer's point of view. Everything you're living the world through
his eyes. So that was something that I was quickly
taken by surprise to read something like that. And I
was completely floored after the script, and I immediately also
thought that the music needs to kind of do the
same thing and the same experience I had when reading it.
(08:59):
Then music needs to get the audience to feel like
they're in his eyes and feeling everything he's feeling.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
The first step, or the only specific instrument he wanted
was the violin, which, as I understand that you don't
play the violin, but your your wife does when you
drive back home, what's the pitch you make to her?
Speaker 4 (09:25):
Well, it was kind it was kind of after I
read the script and secrets. Actually it was not until
a few days later when he went to his house
and we talked about it, and it was also we
talked about the script, we listened to music, we talked
about movies, and that's when he kind of mentioned that
I don't really have any ideas other than trying to
(09:46):
use an experiment with the sound of violin. And Chris
also knows Serena and my wife, so he knows that
he's a violinist, and we kind of have that advantage
to being in the studio with her and an experiment
and try out some different techniques and spend time on
just sounds. Was definitely a luxury.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
You two working on it before you bring in this
big orchestra that you're talking about. Do you remember a
moment where it kind of started to click.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
I remember, we've been recording the whole day, just different
kind of glissandos, just one note, little vibratos and long
notes and doing glazanos up and down and changing the
pitch and changing the speed of the vibrato, going from
something somber and beautiful something horrific within seconds. And then
I think, after a whole day of recording that we're
kind of both like, okay, this is this is not
(10:36):
that fun, like sitting there for hours wearing noises, and
we were like, okay, well, we had to go home
see the kids. I remember I was like putting down
something on the piano really quick. It took me like
five minutes, and I was like, why don't we just
record this idea over this bassline thatever? And she played
the melody in one take and it was beautiful and
(11:00):
haunting and intimate and kind of sad and fragile. And
we recorded that within ten minutes, and I sent it
immediately over to Chris, and then he called me later
that night and he was like, this is an open
Emer's theme. I think that's the theme.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Well, since we're telling this story not exactly in chronological order,
which is kind of fitting I think for Christopher Nolan work,
why don't we play the titular track from the film
Oppenheimer not bad?
Speaker 4 (12:42):
Thank you?
Speaker 1 (12:43):
What were you thinking about hearing that just now?
Speaker 4 (12:46):
It brings back a lot of memories because you know,
we're trying to find a tone of the of the movie,
and I remember that the way I want I wanted
to try to find it was to really find emotional
core of the music instead of focusing on kind of
like the sounds and production. And I always try to
have a different way to go about how to start
(13:07):
a project. I always try to do it different way.
I always want I feel like I'm doing something for
the first time. But it was it was just so
interesting that probably like after writing two three hours of
music and trying really different type of compositions, and this
piece that was just kind of one more simple was
the one that really stuck.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
And then your wife recorded the song that you wrote.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
You know, I wrote it as we were kind of
packing up the packing up from the pseudo to go home,
and we're kind of in a rush, and I started
with that baseline due they form a baseline, and then
we have the melody on top of it, and the
other melody that hears is a counter melody to the
original melody.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
When you're in the process of creating this elaborate score,
it's fascinating that the thing that landed most the emotional
core that you were looking at. It came about when
the two of you were rushed anxious to get back home,
thinking about your kids, probably more than you were thinking
about putting down this track. In that process, have you
(14:12):
found that that typically happens like when you're not expecting it,
it kind of finds.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
You absolutely, especially when you've done you know, you've been
doing something for a long time. In a day, you've
been writing, or you've been recording with your band, you've
done it for ten hours, like the last two or
three hours, everything is going to start sounding bad. It's
like your head gets tired and you start to criticize yourself.
I like, there's all this noise coming into your minds,
(14:38):
your brain, and like this voice is telling you that
you know, telling you what telling telling it? Like you like, oh,
this is not good, this is not you know, it's
time to go home with ten trap up. But a
lot of those times that's also when when the magic
can happen.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Well, I want to pinpoint when this like magic started
happening for you, because, like we said at the top,
you're back home in Sweden, which is where you came
of age and a pretty musical household. Your father was
a guitar teacher, your mother a flo a pianist. Even
your sister was musical, she played the violin. You, of course,
(15:14):
began playing music at the age of seven. I think
it was yeah, you wrote once. I've been making music
every day since then and tomorrow. But my understanding is
that the only reason you started playing the guitar was
because your parents refused to buy you video games, which
is what you kind of wanted like every young kid,
(15:36):
and instead of a gaming console, you received a small, portable,
four channel cassette tape. Is that how this all began?
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Yeah, that's how my music production and songwriting came about.
When I was about six or seven, I started sitting
down with my dad ten fifteen minutes every day, just
some alone time and just playing some very simple songs
on guitar. And I didn't have any opinion really about
it was nice to spend some alone time with my dad.
But then two years later, I think it was my birthday,
(16:06):
and I was like so excited. I was finally it's
going to be aintendo in the car waiting for me
like a secret package, and then I got it four
track tape recorder. Instead, we put it up in the basement,
and I never left. And then every birthday it was
just another thing, like a drum machine or eight track
digital recorder or a new guitar, and there's always something
(16:29):
musical that replaced those urges of video game consoles.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Was there a particular day and a particular song by
an American metal band that kind of fortified your desire
to make music?
Speaker 4 (16:43):
It was. Actually the way it came about was that
my dad, he's a guitar teacher. So when he started
out as a classical guitar teacher, and then you start
playing blues and they love blues and soul. And then
one day he's guitar students gave him a Metallica album
and asked him if you could teach them how to
play these songs, and he was like, no way, like
I hate this music. And then but he took it
(17:04):
home and he wanted to be a good teacher. So
I was like, Okay, I'm going to learn this so
I could teach him how to play this. I remember
being a kid and just hearing like a crazy noise
from the basement where the studio was, and I go
downstairs and I open the door and I see my dad,
like head bang. Me'sall like a play inner semin and
like my mind is explodeds, like what is this sound?
(17:26):
What is what is this music? How can I play it?
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Had you ever seen him headbang before?
Speaker 4 (17:30):
No? I never seen him like that, like unleashed. And
since I already knew how to play a little guitar,
I could pretty quickly like pick it up and start
playing the rifts and stuff and then the solos. Obviously
I had to practice a lot, but then it became
a thing, like we got me and my dad went
to see him live. We started playing the songs together.
I started a band. I was all in from that moment.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Were your parents like excited that this was your obsession
that you would like stay in the basement and just
like stay in it?
Speaker 4 (17:58):
Yeah, there were my there were my biggest fans and supporders.
Like I'm thinking back at it now, like I started
a band, and my dad was He arranged for us
to play on the on the square of our hometown.
He set up our instruments, he drove us around, he
opened up the rehearsal space. You know all the time
just now, I just at that time took for granted,
like that's what you know parents do, but now thinking
(18:20):
back at it, just every weekend, how much he kind
of spend his time and energy on that. It's pretty remarkable.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
When you're in high school and fall in love with
like American rock and roll, when did you discover the
possibilities of film scoring.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
I think a big part of that was like Napster,
and it was a program called DC plus plus.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
I don't remember that one.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
Okay, Yeah, he allowed me to if I found a
song that I liked on Napster, I could click on
the user and then I could go into that user's
like sound libraries or music libraries, and I could just
pull that user his rehearsal library to my computer and
find music that, like I had never heard of. Some
of that music was like like Boston and music, some
of it was Turkish music from different parts of the world,
(19:06):
and some of it was also film scores, and that
was really fun for me, like listening over and over
to like the mccayvory theme song on the Turtles theme songs.
And I think a big part of it also was
like technology, Like I liked being on the computer and
finding this type of music. And I also had a
program in my computer call like impulse tracker. It was
(19:26):
like the first type of sequencer where you don't have
like an range window. You have is everything's just zeros
and ones and numbers. So basically when we play the song,
it just looks like a like a crazy like screen
of just numbers up and down. And that's how I
made my first kind of songs in the computer. And
then obviously I went into qbas and logic and all
(19:47):
that stuff, but being part of the thing that excited
me was also how the production of it and using technology.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Have you listened back to any of those.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
No, and I don't want, I don't feel like what.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Your debut as an orchestral composer came at the age
of seventeen. It was called five Minutes to Christmas. The
night that that was performed. What happened.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
It was kind of out of body experience because you
were seventeen years old. The only time you've had your
music performed is with your band with three or four people.
And then the fact that like sitting and writing orchestral scores,
we had an opportunity. We had a great school, so
I had an opportunity to write for a symphony orchestra
and I was one of the few chosen from the
class to do it, and since we had such a
(20:36):
good education, I already knew I how to write it,
you know, by hand, and write down the sheet music
by hand. And I was sitting in by the piano
in our living room and just writing that the whole summer.
It was very inspired by Star Wars and Night before
Christmas and had like slabels in it and kind of
a Darth Vader theme in it. Not that great, but
you could clearly hear what the inspiration was. And then yeah,
(20:58):
it was opening. We opened it during a school concert
and there was the whole concert hall was full of
people and they played my music and it was really
wild because everyone loved it so much, and like they
played it on the Swedish radio and it really made
me feel special. But the big takeout and that was
to hearing your music being performed by seventy people in
(21:22):
a concert hall, to live audience, and just the feeling
of that. It was like how I just asked myself
over and over again, how can I do this for
the rest of my life, and how can I be
able to do this in as a.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Job After the break More from Ludwig Gorensen coming back.
(22:04):
We were talking about the five Minutes before Christmas orchestral
piece that you put together. You then studied jazz and
provisation at the Royal College School of Music before eventually
moving to the US at the age of twenty two
in pursuit of your masters at USC here in Los Angeles.
(22:25):
This I think was in the fall of two thousand
and seven, a period that you once described as a
very difficult time in my life. What did that look like?
Speaker 4 (22:38):
Just crying every night and missing my life that I
had in Sweden and feeling very lonely.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
That is the opening of Oppenheimer.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
Yeah, it is, it is. I had those times. And
the funny thing is that I had that already happened
once in my life, Like when I was fifteen, I
moved to Stockholm. I lived in a smaller city, and
I moved to Stockholm. I started like a music high school,
and then at that time I moved home again. So
I gave up and like I moved back home and
then I always kind of like regretted that decision a
(23:09):
little bit. I didn't want to do the same thing twice.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
You couldn't give up again.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
I couldn't do that. I knew how much I would
regret it afterwards. I feel like la is probably like
one of the loneliest city in the world. Everything is
just so difficult to know where to go. You have
to plan everything if you don't have a car. But
the school, I mean, the school was great and it
was competitive. The professors and that's why I wanted to
go there. The professors are all professional, and I think
(23:35):
one of the things that was difficult was that the homesickness,
like I didn't understand what that was either, Like I
didn't know why I was having all those feelings. I
was just confused, why am I feeling like this? I
couldn't navigate it and not being in control of that,
and that was very scary.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
What do you mean scary?
Speaker 4 (23:52):
Just not just it's almost something like a jealousy, if
you know. Jealousy is like a feeling you can't control.
At least for me, I remember the times when I
had those feelings that are extremely jealousy something like that.
It's just eats that you or it comes like a
big hole in your stomach, and that's what it was
like at one night. It can be that can have
the best time of life, and then like all of
(24:13):
a sudden and thirty minutes later it can be just
completely crushing and not knowing why.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
When do you think you started to get some control
over that? You're like never still.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
Here, No, But it's not until recently where I'm like
kind of starting to understand how those films came to
be and what that was all about, and how I
can try to give my kids some kind of stability
that so they don't have to kind of go through that.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
It does sound like, i'd say, you, really, of all
the things we've talked about, it does seem like the
thing that's most on your mind right now. Oh of course.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Yeah, definitely want to try to understand myself as good
as I can for my kid's sake.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
In that period when you're in your mid twenties, did
meeting and beginning to work with Ryan Coogler and that
Donald Glover did that help you understand yourself in that moment?
Speaker 4 (25:14):
I think that was maybe one of the things. I
don't know if we had that in common, but like
one of the things that Ryan and I had a
common was definitely like feeling like we're far away from
our families, and having a hard time.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
He's from Oakland.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Yeah, he's from Oakland. And I was like, well, you're
just two hours from home. It was like five hours
from home, like you can just but that's not what
it was about. It was like your community. It was
everything that's familiar to you and leaving that for something
new and how difficult that is, and that we could
talk about that special and then yeah, and then to
go back to our teacher, Kenny Hall. Kenny Hall was
(25:48):
an incredible teacher professor at UC He was a music
editor who worked with John Williams on et and Jerry
Goldsmith and a bunch of best movies. And he was
the only teacher at school that had a class for
both composers and directors in the same class, which is unusual,
Which is very unusual, but should be obvious because music is,
(26:10):
I mean, music is one of the most important parts
of film. And to get some direction from a professor
for the directors to how to talk about music and
how to approach that, how to talk to the composers,
I think was incredibly helpful. And to have a class
where we can discuss so we can also understand how
the directors talk about music. And how they think about music,
(26:32):
because we're all students, We're like, oh, this is you know,
music is the most important part of the film, Like
it should be the loudest, you know, the part of
the whole student film you're doing, and take out the
sound effects and the dialogue and like and don't give
me any notes. That's kind of how you approach it
from the beginning.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Was that your policy back then? No notes?
Speaker 4 (26:51):
No? I was was? I was pretty open, But I
definitely remember before I started USC that had like this
romantic image of the film composer getting getting the film,
having several months to himself at some kind of lodge
up in the mountains and just being able to write
the whole film score by himself, and then taking the
orchestra and getting performed and magically it's in the movie.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
You had to settle for Los Phillies and Silver, like
I guess, you know, as your romantic hopes were kind
of slowly dashed by the real process of making and
creating these scores. You did like dozens of scores for
students at USC. What stood out about Ryan and his work.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
First of all, I was friends a little bit with
Ryan before he did a student film, so we had
we already had a little bit of a relationship before
he asked me to score his film, but also like
his way of you know, although it was this student film,
it was a student film called Locks for his first project.
And at that time, the student film he did didn't
have any dialogue, so it was just music and sound effects.
(27:58):
And the movie is beautiful. You see this this guy
in Oakland with long locks, like long dreads, wandering around
the streets. You see some some gang members getting a
handcuffed by the police. He goes through the neighborhood is
hees like other kind of rough things, and you're like,
what's going on? Where is this story going to go?
(28:19):
And then he goes into the barbershop and he gets
his hair cut off. They sweep it up and they
put it in a plastic bag, and then he walks
on his way home. And then he enters his apartment
and he opens a bedroom door and you see his
little sister sitting there who has cancer, and it doesn't
have any hair. And that's the short film. And I
(28:40):
wrote some music for it. And at that time I
was living in a I was living on twenty eighth Street,
which in La is like fraternity street. I didn't know
what fraternity, so Storties was before I moved, and I
wasn't part of the fraternity, like they had gone thrown out,
so it was only for grad students. But I was
sitting there in that little little room trying to write
music and it was like crazy parties going on every
(29:01):
night on the street. You know, all the dudes look
the same and drinking from the red cups. And I really,
I literally felt like I was in an American pie movie.
And then Ryan comes in and we sit down and
I have headphones and I give it to him and
he's like, oh my god, is this guitar? Oh what's
this instrument? And he was just so excited and having
that reaction and like learning about the instruments and we
talk about the you know, the techniques that we played
(29:24):
and the take in and that was the That was
the beginning of our working relationships. And that's still how
it still feels like that.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Why don't we take a look at that first collaboration
for a moment so people can get a sense of
what it sounded like. This is Locks directed by Ryan Coogler.
H What do you think seeing that.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
It sounds so very early in my career, you know,
like all your teacher at the time, like us, you know,
you have to find your own sound and all this
what are you talking like? What are you talking about?
How do you find your own sound? What is that?
And I'm not saying that that was my own sound,
but you can definitely hear some an interesting balance between
(30:43):
like melancholy and happiness.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
You seem almost skeptical to say the word.
Speaker 4 (30:51):
Yeah, yeah, it's not the word you want to describe
your music. Maybe, but maybe maybe it is. Of course
it should make people happy, but it can be melancholic
and make you happy in that way.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
I think it's it's an amalgamation of both. But the
idea of finding your own voice that is something we
all have to try to find. Was that a challenge
for you now?
Speaker 4 (31:13):
I mean I think for a lot of people, the
way that you think about when you have to find
your own voice is like, Okay, I need to spend
a lot of time by myself in a room and
find my own voice. Well, at least for me, the
way that I did it was the complete opposite. It
was opening doors to other rooms with other people and
(31:34):
talking to them. Or jamming with them and learn what
they do, and like being interested and you know, wanting
to discover and have a musical exchange with people that
came from completely different backgrounds or cultures or play different
genres and to see if we can do things together.
And looking back at it now, I think that was
(31:55):
kind of what really shaped me to become who I am.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
When you started working with Donald Glover, this is like
before he became Childish Gambino. You were scoring community at
the time. Was it around then that you developed this
approach where you would say, what we're making can be cool,
it's just not cool yet.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
Well, well, to me, when I first heard his music,
I was hesitant before he even sent me into music
because I knew him as being an actor and I
was like this in my mind, I was like, well, okay,
a lot of actors probably think they can do music too.
And also in America, like people have the confidence that
you don't really demonstrate like that in Sweden. So when
(32:42):
he was like yeah, he wrote me an email like
I'm also a rapper and musician and I don't know
a lot of people in LA so maybe you can
take a listen to the song and recommend or help
me with the mixing of the track, and then he
sent me a song and I was so surprised. I've
run back, this is incredible. But what if we just
add some drums or add some live drums, or we
(33:03):
work a little bit on the arrangement. And he was
really receptive to that, and we met up and we
started to just work together for fifteen years. But I
thought his music was cool from the jump, and I
just I was like, is there any way we can
make this better? If there any way I can just
help in any way, I would love to be part
of it.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
In those early collaborations, first on Cul de Sac, then
Camp then because of the Internet, did it feel like
it was uncharted territory for you?
Speaker 4 (33:31):
Absolutely? I mean I listened to rap music, not like
the standard ones. Like the record I had listened to
the most was a fox A Brown album because I
just thought it was so cool how she had like
Egyptian music on there, and like how they use those samples,
and I was listening to that and like midnight culture
is like over and over and over again. I didn't
have that deep knowledge of hip hop at the time,
(33:51):
and I wasn't and I had never really done a beat.
But that's also what's so exciting. He was kind of
introducing it to me and showing me like all these
incredible songs that didn't know and it was like to me, like, yeah,
learning and a new instrument, and it was the most
exciting thing for me.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
You know.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Around the time you too started really getting going, you,
Donald and a bunch of your friends starred in a
short film directed by Hiro Maria called Clapping for the
Wrong Reasons. Now, this is a movie I personally obsessed
over with my friends as as soon to be freshman
in college back in twenty thirteen. Why don't we take
(34:30):
a look at one scene in particular where you are
playing on the guitar a little bit.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
Yeah, I haven't seen that in ten years.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
And what do you think.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
I think we're all like searching. I think Donald was
definitely searching. And I didn't know, you know, how big
part of I was going to have on the record,
or if I was going to be part of it.
It was a very kind of uncertain time for me
at least. And then there was those there was those
jump joy of moments where we were in the studio
(35:48):
in that it was like one of the libraries and
we were in the studio there and I think it
was Chris bosh Old House, just out of nowhere. Like
I was, I was always kind of on the spot
to come up with something in the moment, really really quick.
I was both stressful but also kind of exciting. And
because Donald had a lot of that time, I was like,
because I had a lot of things on his mind,
(36:10):
so if something was going to stick, we had a
very short amount of time in a suit of where
where he could just kind of get into the music.
And even though we spent a lot of time in
the studio, but I feel like when I was there,
like we had to do something quick, and it was
a little it was stressful, and then something great came
out of it and it was like it was like
kind of a moment of joy and I was and
and when that little moment of joy happened, it's like,
(36:32):
how you know I had sustained that, you know, Okay,
five minutes, ten minutes, okay, fifteen minutes, Oh this is
turning through song twenty you know. So it was like
it was a strange time. And also like with all
the albums that he's done, like I don't know where
he's taking it, and don't know where we're going. We
just start off like driving blindless. At least me on
(36:54):
that album, I thought we took it to some really
interesting places.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
The way you're describing it, like that period of searching.
Even now a decade removed, it still sounds as if
it's kind of a miss to you.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
It was a mystery because I was also in a
situation where I didn't like, I didn't understand those feelings
that I had. It was all about like trying to
get these music out, and I guess I think like
the feelings came out in the music. I mean, I
know that the feelings came out of music, and that's
why it's so interesting to hear that now, you know,
I can hear that anxiety and stress, but the magic
(37:31):
in that and just those little few guitar chords that
I heard, and it's like a calming thing, especially that
song like the Flight of the Navigator. They all kind
of feel like you're a kid or you know, and
playing that in your room. And I think a lot
of it comes back to maybe sitting there being a
kid and being feeling lonely and sitting in your room
(37:52):
and trying to figure out what life's about.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Back in the basement. Yeah, it sounds to me like
it was like a self soothing sound, like you're feeling
all this anxiety and yet that track we just heard
is extreme calming and kind of self soothing.
Speaker 4 (38:13):
Yeah, no, it's it's I don't know if you have kids,
but it's definitely a thing you see when you start
to understand a little thing a little bit with the
self soothing thing and how everyone finds their own ways
to self soothe. Some kids suck on her thumbs, some
kids like touch their face in a different way.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Some you know, some kids jam out to Metallica.
Speaker 4 (38:33):
Some kids jam out to Metallica. Makes sad, melancholic.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Songs that are also happy.
Speaker 4 (38:40):
Also happens in them because you have great support from
your parents. But yeah, there was I was definitely, I
think when I think back at it too, I was
lonely also a lot as a as a kid. You know,
my parents they also they also worked a lot, and
my sister was six years older, so spent a lot
of time just by myself too.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
You've clearly used that loneliness and channeled it into the work.
And I wanted to pinpoint those two moments with Coogler
and Glover, because at least to me, they seem like
the foundational building blocks of what would become a decade
long collaboration, going from Black Panther with Ryan for What
(39:23):
You Want an Oscar to producing This Is America with
Donald for Which You Want a Grammy, which, of course
through this decade brings us back to Oppenheimer. And part
of this film is about a man obsessed with his work,
a man who moves further and further into this project
(39:44):
and farther and farther away from his family. And as
I was rewatching it last night, I was reminded of
this quote you had where you said, when I go
into the studio, regardless of whether I write the music,
produce an album, or write a film score, you just
immerse yourself into this other world. You become obsessed. Most
(40:07):
artists are extremely You close yourself off and the work
becomes your world. That obsession that's central to Oppenheimer. Did
you feel that kinship and making the score for it.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
I think that's very true, but I don't consciously. I
don't think about any of that when I'm in the process.
It's more afterwards, like the conversation we have now where
I see that being a pattern in the way I.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Work, with the pattern of obsession, and for me.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
That's the only way I can do it, really, And
I think also with age comes, you know, you get
a little bit of different. You're having your starting family,
You're starting to see your priorities in a different way.
But I'm not saying that I'm doing having the wrong priorities.
But I've definitely been the last fifteen years just non
stop doing that, you know, without breaks, like extremist world
(41:02):
to extremist and they're also extremely different too. It's also
why I think it works for me, because it's so
I'm like a different person, different world every time, and
it's so exciting to discover these places. But it also
takes a toll.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
What toll has it taken?
Speaker 4 (41:19):
I think more now for me it's more important to
kind of take the time after you finish something like
this and think about how it affected you and think
about how what happened, you know, how it happened, how
it came together, and where the places you went and
reflecting more. I guess I'm just more interested in that now,
where before that I was just on a train, on
(41:39):
stuff train, and I realized now how all these experiences
had such a deep impact in me, both on music
levels but personal levels. And I'm excited because after I
finished Appathheimer, now I've had I've had some time to
engage with everything else in my life, and that's kind
(42:00):
of a very exciting chapter for me.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
We've spent a lot of time talking about, you know,
the personal side of making music and the process, your process.
But when we take a step back, this film is
like coming out at a very fascinating time, especially in Hollywood,
because of course there's this strike that's happening, and one
(42:26):
of the big existential fears and issues at play is
the use of artificial intelligence, which throughout the film's release,
Nolan has explicitly made the comparison between Oppenheimer developing the
A bomb in the early forties and the theoretical physicists
that faced backlash an uncertainty from the US military in Congress,
(42:50):
much like the tech industry is facing today in its
race to make AI more powerful. He said, quote when
I talk to leading researchers in the field of AI
right now, they literally refer to this as their Oppenheimer moment,
they're looking to a story to say, Okay, what are
the responsibility for scientists developing new technologies that may have
(43:12):
unintended consequences when it comes to making music? Where are
you at on what AI can do, will do? How
will change the job itself.
Speaker 4 (43:26):
I'm very interested in these type of questions and in
the technology. And it's not even at their doorshep's already
entered our houses, enter our living rooms and our listening experiences. Especially,
you know, with that Drake Weekend song that everyone you know,
I don't know how many million views it has, but
it's quite a lot.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
I still haven't heard it yet.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
So you can't like deny that it's going to change
music forever. You can. You can have anyone sitting in
the room and just like, oh, I want to have
a beat that sounds like Michael Jackson from the seventies,
and I want Brunan Morris to sing a happy birthday
message to my wife because he loves him. You know,
I don't think there's a way to stop that from happening.
I think we all just need to embrace it and
(44:10):
know that it's here. I think it's going to be
a big shift in music about you going to be
able to hear the difference, you know, I think people
are really going to be able to hear the difference
in what's made with computers and what's not made with computers,
and how much computer was a part of this and
how much what computer wasn't a part of it.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
Do you think people will be able to distinguish between
the two? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (44:34):
Absolutely. I think maybe there'd be a different service like
AI music will be cheaper and music that people put
their own minds and hearts and brains to would be
more expensive. And I think everyone's going to start using
these tools that are going to come to place, and
it's just like what shortcuts do you want to take?
Like how much you want to shut your own creativity off?
(44:56):
And I think that's going to be some important decisions
you're going to have to make.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Have you been thinking about that for yourself? Like what
you're willing to use and not use? Shortcuts?
Speaker 4 (45:05):
Taken?
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Not taken?
Speaker 4 (45:06):
No, I want tot try it all, give it all
to me and see what I can how I can
customize it as much as possible and make it. But
I don't have any tools yet, so I don't I
haven't worked with any AI software or things yet. But
I think that's just a matter of like probably months
or weeks, or it's already things out there that I
(45:27):
think people are using. No, I want to see what
it's all about.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
You sound completely unafraid about this future. You're kind of
one of the first people I've talked to that seems
only optimistic.
Speaker 4 (45:38):
I'm just talking about the music aspect of it. There's
other problems obviously, think it's going to other consequences, but
the music aspect of it, I I don't think, at
least for me, I don't see any threats in computers
making music. Some people are going to listen to it.
Something's going to be great. It just it just kind
(45:59):
of depends on who's who's making it.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
Well before technology changes, how this job is fundamentally done.
Why don't we celebrate a human fear? Is there a
track from Oppenheimer that you are most proud of, like
one that you want people to hear as we leave
this conversation.
Speaker 4 (46:19):
Yeah, we should probably play the can you hear the music?
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Track?
Speaker 4 (46:23):
And for me that was one that was like a
breakthrough moment I had on this project. But also in
a way I have made music in kind of in
a technical level, but also but also it was like
kind of like a Eureka moment for me, like on
a technical level writing a composition that goes faster and
(46:45):
faster and faster, but after a while, after a couple
of hours, you don't even the listener and the audience
doesn't even feel it, and sort think about it. It's
just it all, it's just an emotion. And then one
of the important parts of the process was to figure
out a way how we can get the orchestra to
perform this in one take, because if you see the charts,
(47:07):
it's literally like twenty one to ten changes. It goes faster, slower, faster, slower,
and if you just see it on the page, you're like,
this is not You're not going to get fort to
string players who play this in a way where it's
going to sound good in one take. But we worked
on this for three days and kind of banging their
heads against the walls, like how can we get this
performance right? In the ends, like Sereno, she was like, well,
(47:31):
these musicians are incredible. She's been playing with them for
fifteen years. Their like the Hollwood Studio Symphony and they
this is their job. They sit in the studio and
played seven hours a day to click to a metronome.
And we figured out a way to give the musicians
a click in their head, the temple change, the time
change in their mind and their heads before it happens
on the page. And when we gave them that track,
(47:54):
it just this magic happened. So that's really interesting how
you combine technology and computers, because this music, you couldn't
have really written it without computers. But then putting that
organic element into it with the live string players playing
an all in one taken organic way gives it so
much life and makes it timeless and makes it feel
(48:15):
like it's human.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
I guess we should listen to how that all turned out.
All right, this is Can you hear the music from
the film Oppenheimer when you're listening to that? Could you
(49:51):
have ever imagine that that young, lonely kid playing music
in the basement would one day create something like that?
Speaker 4 (50:01):
No, I don't, I don't. I don't see that in
the courts. My dream, sup was to become a member
of Metallica. That's never there's still time. It's still time. No,
but it's like it's like my dream was, you know,
I was. I was streaming about playing my instrument, being
on stage and playing big crowds, and we've done that,
you know, we did that with Childish and and then
(50:23):
I was streaming of being a pop producer and being
producing music and that happened too. And then I was
dreaming about being a film composer, and then that happened too.
And musically, all all those goals and milestones and stones,
just I guess I was.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
I was lucky.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
I kind of bring up that basement once more as
we leave, because I've heard that this past summer you
went back down and to that basement with your mother
where you were looking for toys for your kids. What
was that like to go back to that place, not
for you but for your children.
Speaker 4 (51:02):
It was kind of magical, you know, kind of stepping
into that at that time was just all the reality
and now it's a memory. But it was my safe space.
It was my soothing place, you know, where where I
felt calm, and that's where I felt most like myself.
It was a beautiful moment going back there, and everything
(51:24):
obviously felt super small, So I feel like I was
a giant now and the limpid land. See all those
guitars still hanging on the wall, seeing those old tape machines,
old tape records that I used to use, and how
they're all still there. And yeah, just thinking about like
where it's you know, what am we gonna do with
all this when I get old and I'm my kids
(51:45):
are gonna do the same thing?
Speaker 1 (51:46):
Like what it?
Speaker 4 (51:48):
It's a lot of also a lot of questions.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
Did you find the high school report or something like that?
Speaker 3 (51:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (51:53):
Yeah, I found a high school report, right, I guess
you talked. Did you talk to my mom?
Speaker 5 (51:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (51:58):
I called her up. I called her up right before
this and now I hadn't doctor. So how do you
know you said it in an interview? Oh okay, Yeah,
I really appreciate that you'd think I called your mother
before this podcast. It means we've done our job.
Speaker 4 (52:11):
Yeah yeah, I was like, yeah, you really don uh no?
But I yeah, I found the high school report of
my five Minutes of Christmas when I wrote about the
process how I created it, and it's still in my
in my backpack, Like I don't know why. I like
I see it laying there, like I know that I
want to read it, but at the same time, I
don't want to go back to that kid that I
(52:32):
was and the way I was thinking about music then,
because it's it's uh, I feel like it's because like
I thought I had it all figured out, you know,
I was like, rite the report about it, this is
how you make music, And but now I can I
know now that I didn't know. You know, I didn't
have it figure it out.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
You've been really putting it off.
Speaker 4 (52:54):
I've been really putting that off. Maybe I know it's
who's going to bring back like a lot of memories
and emotions, and I just need to find the right
space to do that.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
Well, whenever that is, I'm excited for you to revisit
that past self. But until then, I want to look
ahead a little bit because one of the other main
components of a Nolan movie is time, how we use it,
how we try to bend it to our will, how
we regard time that has passed or time that has
(53:25):
yet to come. But time is also something I think
you've long been preoccupied by, well before you began working
with Nolan on Tenant, Because isn't it true that when
you left for America at age twenty two, landing here
in Los Angeles, enrolled at USC Did you map out
(53:46):
how you wanted your career to go?
Speaker 4 (53:48):
Yeah, I feel like I've always had like I always
had the five year plan, a tenure plan, and like
I always know where I'm going to be the next
you know, I don't know how that's where that comes from,
but it's always been kind of milestones in my mind
about where I want to be and what I want
to do. And I guess is some kind of magic.
(54:09):
You create your own future.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
Your mother said when you moved here, here were the
big three things. Get a job as an assistant one
year after graduation, score your own projects after three years,
win an Academy award within twelve years. Sometimes, she said,
he's much faster than what he planned the all times reality,
I guess, but yeah, that's interesting. Well, now that you're
(54:34):
back home and you're sitting with this past year and
thinking about what's to come, what do you want down
the line?
Speaker 4 (54:43):
I think right now, I'm just I know how I work.
I know what makes me happy. I know what type
of process makes me happy, what kind of collaborators makes
me happy. And if I can get that and have
the time to enjoy with my family as well. I
think that's the only thing that I mean, I'm asking
(55:04):
for a lot, but I'm not sure how I'm going
to do it, but I think I know a way,
and I feel like every day I'm I'm getting closer
to the answers of all those questions you have and
also all those questions I had and feelings that I
didn't even think about as a kid. And it's like
I'm trying to trying to like going back into those
times and understanding it now. And I realized how important
(55:27):
that is from like a musical clarity of it. I'm
probably more excited than I ever been to to kind
of step back into it and discover new paths and
new ways and new worlds. And that's also why I
wanted to take a little time off and to really
get back into the that space again.
Speaker 1 (55:47):
Well, the first thing you said when we sat down
was I'm afraid to cut my long hair because it
may make me a different person. I may be someone new.
And I have to say, after having sat here with
you for this last hour, I kind of think you
don't need to cut your hair to become a different person.
(56:11):
Feel like it's already happening. Right now.
Speaker 4 (56:14):
Yeah, oh, thank you. Yeah, I'll keep it.
Speaker 1 (56:17):
If not for me, then then for Ryan Coogler. Yeah,
thank you, and whatever person you end up becoming and
whatever you make because of it, I am so looking
forward to it, and I just want to thank you
on a personal level for making so much of the
music that was kind of a soundtrack to my formative
(56:39):
high school college years, without which I don't think I
would be the strange other long haired person sitting in
this zoom call.
Speaker 4 (56:49):
Well, I appreciate that, and we should meet up some
time in real life and be that's too strange white
guys with long hair sitting in the back of the
coffee shop.
Speaker 1 (57:00):
I look forward to Ludwig enjoy the rest of the summer.
Speaker 4 (57:03):
You too, Sam. It was a great time talking to you,
and I really appreciate this conversation. Thank you.
Speaker 5 (57:08):
Until next time, and that's our show.
Speaker 1 (57:44):
If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to leave us
five stars on Spotify and Apple wherever you do your listening.
I want to give us special thanks to the teams
at Online Voices in Stockholm, the Academy Library here in
Los Angeles, IDPR Universal, and of course our guest today
Ludvig Gorenson. To learn more about the works discussed in
(58:06):
this episode, visit our show notes at talk easypod dot
com for more conversations. I'd recommend our episodes with Lily Gladstone,
Wesley Morris, Hero, Maria sd Him and Willin Dafone to
hear those and more Pushkin podcasts. Listen on Apple, Spotify,
or wherever you.
Speaker 2 (58:25):
Like to listen.
Speaker 1 (58:26):
You can also follow us on social media at talk easypod.
If you want to purchase one of our mugs they
come on Cream or Navy, or our vinyl record with
the inimitable friend Leibowitz, you can do so at talk
easypod dot com slash shop. I also want to give
a special thanks to our team. Talk easy is produced
by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Genick Sabravo. Our
(58:48):
associate producer is Caitlin Dryden. Today's talk was edited by
Caitlin Dryden and mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our music is
by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Tricia Chenoy. Our
graphics are by Ethan Seneca. I also want to give
a special thanks to our team at Pushkin Industries, justin Richmond,
Julia Barton, Johnsnars, Kerrie Brody, Eric Sandler, Kira Posey, Chornament Millan,
Tara Machado, Justin Lang's, Sarah Nix, Malcolm Gladwell, Gretacon, and
(59:11):
Jacob Weisberd. I'm San Fragoso. Thank you for listening to
Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next week with
a new episode. Until then, stay safe and so long.
Pushkin, this is talk easy. I'm studd forgo soo.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Today in honor of Oscar Sunday, my conversation with music
producer and composer Ludwig Gorenson. We sat back in early
August of last year upon the release of Oppenheimer. Since then,
the film has made over a billion dollars around the world,
been nominated for thirteen a cat Me Awards, and is
poised to become one of the biggest winners in the
(01:12):
history of the Oscars later today. That includes Gorenson, by
the way, who was nominated for a Best Original Score,
his third nomination in the category, which he first won
in twenty nineteen for Ryan Coogler's Black Panther. By now,
I have to imagine, if you're listening to this, you've
seen the film Oppenheimer, directed by Christopher Nolan, either in
(01:35):
theaters or at home, or on your iPhone or on
an airplane, and regardless of your feelings about the film,
I personally love it. Ludwig's composition is pretty remarkable. It
manages to both push the film forward while somehow holding
it all together. It's powerful, but not overpowering. Throughout the
(01:56):
episode we play some of my favorite tracks and talk
through how they came to be. We also discuss his
musical childhood in Sweden, coming to America in his early twenties,
his decade long collaboration with artists like Donald Glover and Hiam,
and how his work in Oppenheimer marks a new chapter
in his already storied career. Two things before we jump
(02:19):
in here. The first is if you haven't heard our
episode from last Sunday, it was with doctor Sima Jelani.
She is a pediatrician that was recently working in Central
Gaza to provide aid for Palestinians. If you haven't heard
that episode, I would encourage you to check it out,
either today or later this week, whenever you have the time.
(02:41):
It is one of my favorite episodes that we've ever
made on this show. And to all of you that
have listened and have written either on social media or
over email, over text, I don't say this enough, but
I really thank you for listening and thank you for
reaching out. It is a special episode, is a difficult episode,
(03:05):
and to all of you spreading it and sharing the
conversation that I had with doctor Jelani, I just want
to thank you again. For doing that and for showing
up and supporting the work we do here each and
every Sunday. And so that is an episode with doctor
Sima Jelani. You can find that wherever you are listening
to this right now. And the second thing is that
(03:28):
this is the third year in a row that we
have rerun an episode with an Oscar nominee on Oscar Sunday.
In twenty twenty two, it was Questlove for Summer of Soul.
Last year it was actor ki Wee Kwon for Everything Everywhere,
all at once. Both of those people took home an
Academy Award that night, and so we are hoping to
(03:50):
keep this tradition alive later today. And so with that,
I want to wish our guest some good luck tonight.
His work in the film is truly incredible. If you've
listened to this episode before, or if you're listening to
it for the first time, thank you for being here.
I hope you like it. And with that, this is
(04:13):
Ludwig Gorenson.
Speaker 3 (04:16):
Enjoy Ludwig A pleasure to have here.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
Thank you, Sam. It's great to be here.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
You know, we rarely have someone on the show whose
hair is longer than mine.
Speaker 4 (04:39):
And how do you feel about that?
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Profoundly insecure.
Speaker 4 (04:43):
I've been thinking a lot about it lately. Should I
cut it off or should I keep it? But now
I've passed the stage where I'm like, I don't know
so much of my personality in it and my identity.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Are you afraid of like the new person you would
become if you cut your hair?
Speaker 4 (04:57):
I'm not afraid of that. I'm more afraid of like
everyone losing interest in me.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
That's it, Ryan Coogler, Donald Glover, Christopher Nolan. They're just
in it for the hair they don't have.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
That's the secret.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
How has your summer been back home in Sweden?
Speaker 4 (05:18):
It's been incredible. This is the first time and I
moved to America about fifteen years ago, and this is
the first time when I'm in Sweden, my home country,
for more than like a week at a time. I've
been here for three months now. It's great. I mean,
the biggest reason why I want to spend more time
here now it specifically because my kids. I have an
almost four year old and a two year old, and
(05:39):
I just want them to have the Swedish identity and
want them to be able to speak the language. Fluently,
and so it's important.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Being back home. Has it forced you to kind of
like reflect on the last fifteen years of working in America.
Speaker 4 (05:54):
Yeah, I don't know who I am here yet a
little bit. I feel like everything around me here has changed,
and I'm a different person. I never I never had
a professional career in Sweden. It's always a student or
you know, the kid. Coming back is as someone that
has some kind of work experience and just trying to
kind of navigate life here. And I feel like a
(06:16):
lot of things in Sweden changed too in the last
fifteen years. So I'm still trying to find the balance
and trying to find myself here. But it's an exciting
time to do that.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Well, it's been an especially exciting summer for you because
I don't know if you've been reading, but people seem
to be liking Oppenheimer. It's brought them back to the movies,
the Barbenheimer phenomenon. I don't know how it happened, but
I'm glad it did. In the film, there is roughly
two and a half hours of original music, which some
(06:48):
publications have reported you made in five days. How does
someone make something like this in five days?
Speaker 4 (06:56):
Well, I think start off some of that publication, isn't
that correct? Beautiful to go back? You can't this is
not possible during five days. It was published that recorded
the music in five days, which is also not true
because I recorded this for about six months with different
musicians like string quartet, string octet, soloists. But when I
(07:18):
had the whole orchestra together in the same room, that
amount was five days. The recording process, when you record
the full orchestra together, that's kind of the last piece
of the puzzle. So that's the last final stage of
putting together a film score. The hard work is often
way before that. So normally when you hear the orcst
are playing the score, that's like the climax of the
(07:41):
whole process, when you can kind of take a step
back and just listen to the music, almost like seeing
your birth of your child or something.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Well, if that's the climax, why don't we just go
back to act one? Mm hm. You get a call
from Christopher Nolan, He says one.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
He says, I finished a script and I'd love for
you to read it, and can you combuy and read
it tomorrow or in two days. Chris is kind of
in a way where he doesn't really talk about what
he's working on, even though we spend time together and
talk and by stim were like, oh, think about writing this,
and this is about this. So it's always kind of
a call out of the blue. So I get the call,
(08:17):
I go out to the studio, I go into a room,
close the door, and sit with the script for as
much time as I need. And this was a pretty
heavy script. I had no idea what it was going
to be about, and so I immediately get just sucked
into the story and it's like into Oppenheimer and the character,
(08:37):
and the way that the script is written is from
Oppenheimer's point of view. Everything you're living the world through
his eyes. So that was something that I was quickly
taken by surprise to read something like that. And I
was completely floored after the script, and I immediately also
thought that the music needs to kind of do the
same thing and the same experience I had when reading it.
(08:59):
Then music needs to get the audience to feel like
they're in his eyes and feeling everything he's feeling.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
The first step, or the only specific instrument he wanted
was the violin, which, as I understand that you don't
play the violin, but your your wife does when you
drive back home, what's the pitch you make to her?
Speaker 4 (09:25):
Well, it was kind it was kind of after I
read the script and secrets. Actually it was not until
a few days later when he went to his house
and we talked about it, and it was also we
talked about the script, we listened to music, we talked
about movies, and that's when he kind of mentioned that
I don't really have any ideas other than trying to
(09:46):
use an experiment with the sound of violin. And Chris
also knows Serena and my wife, so he knows that
he's a violinist, and we kind of have that advantage
to being in the studio with her and an experiment
and try out some different techniques and spend time on
just sounds. Was definitely a luxury.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
You two working on it before you bring in this
big orchestra that you're talking about. Do you remember a
moment where it kind of started to click.
Speaker 4 (10:15):
I remember, we've been recording the whole day, just different
kind of glissandos, just one note, little vibratos and long
notes and doing glazanos up and down and changing the
pitch and changing the speed of the vibrato, going from
something somber and beautiful something horrific within seconds. And then
I think, after a whole day of recording that we're
kind of both like, okay, this is this is not
(10:36):
that fun, like sitting there for hours wearing noises, and
we were like, okay, well, we had to go home
see the kids. I remember I was like putting down
something on the piano really quick. It took me like
five minutes, and I was like, why don't we just
record this idea over this bassline thatever? And she played
the melody in one take and it was beautiful and
(11:00):
haunting and intimate and kind of sad and fragile. And
we recorded that within ten minutes, and I sent it
immediately over to Chris, and then he called me later
that night and he was like, this is an open
Emer's theme. I think that's the theme.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Well, since we're telling this story not exactly in chronological order,
which is kind of fitting I think for Christopher Nolan work,
why don't we play the titular track from the film
Oppenheimer not bad?
Speaker 4 (12:42):
Thank you?
Speaker 1 (12:43):
What were you thinking about hearing that just now?
Speaker 4 (12:46):
It brings back a lot of memories because you know,
we're trying to find a tone of the of the movie,
and I remember that the way I want I wanted
to try to find it was to really find emotional
core of the music instead of focusing on kind of
like the sounds and production. And I always try to
have a different way to go about how to start
(13:07):
a project. I always try to do it different way.
I always want I feel like I'm doing something for
the first time. But it was it was just so
interesting that probably like after writing two three hours of
music and trying really different type of compositions, and this
piece that was just kind of one more simple was
the one that really stuck.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
And then your wife recorded the song that you wrote.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
You know, I wrote it as we were kind of
packing up the packing up from the pseudo to go home,
and we're kind of in a rush, and I started
with that baseline due they form a baseline, and then
we have the melody on top of it, and the
other melody that hears is a counter melody to the
original melody.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
When you're in the process of creating this elaborate score,
it's fascinating that the thing that landed most the emotional
core that you were looking at. It came about when
the two of you were rushed anxious to get back home,
thinking about your kids, probably more than you were thinking
about putting down this track. In that process, have you
(14:12):
found that that typically happens like when you're not expecting it,
it kind of finds.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
You absolutely, especially when you've done you know, you've been
doing something for a long time. In a day, you've
been writing, or you've been recording with your band, you've
done it for ten hours, like the last two or
three hours, everything is going to start sounding bad. It's
like your head gets tired and you start to criticize yourself.
I like, there's all this noise coming into your minds,
(14:38):
your brain, and like this voice is telling you that
you know, telling you what telling telling it? Like you like, oh,
this is not good, this is not you know, it's
time to go home with ten trap up. But a
lot of those times that's also when when the magic
can happen.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Well, I want to pinpoint when this like magic started
happening for you, because, like we said at the top,
you're back home in Sweden, which is where you came
of age and a pretty musical household. Your father was
a guitar teacher, your mother a flo a pianist. Even
your sister was musical, she played the violin. You, of course,
(15:14):
began playing music at the age of seven. I think
it was yeah, you wrote once. I've been making music
every day since then and tomorrow. But my understanding is
that the only reason you started playing the guitar was
because your parents refused to buy you video games, which
is what you kind of wanted like every young kid,
(15:36):
and instead of a gaming console, you received a small, portable,
four channel cassette tape. Is that how this all began?
Speaker 4 (15:44):
Yeah, that's how my music production and songwriting came about.
When I was about six or seven, I started sitting
down with my dad ten fifteen minutes every day, just
some alone time and just playing some very simple songs
on guitar. And I didn't have any opinion really about
it was nice to spend some alone time with my dad.
But then two years later, I think it was my birthday,
(16:06):
and I was like so excited. I was finally it's
going to be aintendo in the car waiting for me
like a secret package, and then I got it four
track tape recorder. Instead, we put it up in the basement,
and I never left. And then every birthday it was
just another thing, like a drum machine or eight track
digital recorder or a new guitar, and there's always something
(16:29):
musical that replaced those urges of video game consoles.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Was there a particular day and a particular song by
an American metal band that kind of fortified your desire
to make music?
Speaker 4 (16:43):
It was. Actually the way it came about was that
my dad, he's a guitar teacher. So when he started
out as a classical guitar teacher, and then you start
playing blues and they love blues and soul. And then
one day he's guitar students gave him a Metallica album
and asked him if you could teach them how to
play these songs, and he was like, no way, like
I hate this music. And then but he took it
(17:04):
home and he wanted to be a good teacher. So
I was like, Okay, I'm going to learn this so
I could teach him how to play this. I remember
being a kid and just hearing like a crazy noise
from the basement where the studio was, and I go
downstairs and I open the door and I see my dad,
like head bang. Me'sall like a play inner semin and
like my mind is explodeds, like what is this sound?
(17:26):
What is what is this music? How can I play it?
Speaker 1 (17:28):
Had you ever seen him headbang before?
Speaker 4 (17:30):
No? I never seen him like that, like unleashed. And
since I already knew how to play a little guitar,
I could pretty quickly like pick it up and start
playing the rifts and stuff and then the solos. Obviously
I had to practice a lot, but then it became
a thing, like we got me and my dad went
to see him live. We started playing the songs together.
I started a band. I was all in from that moment.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Were your parents like excited that this was your obsession
that you would like stay in the basement and just
like stay in it?
Speaker 4 (17:58):
Yeah, there were my there were my biggest fans and supporders.
Like I'm thinking back at it now, like I started
a band, and my dad was He arranged for us
to play on the on the square of our hometown.
He set up our instruments, he drove us around, he
opened up the rehearsal space. You know all the time
just now, I just at that time took for granted,
like that's what you know parents do, but now thinking
(18:20):
back at it, just every weekend, how much he kind
of spend his time and energy on that. It's pretty remarkable.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
When you're in high school and fall in love with
like American rock and roll, when did you discover the
possibilities of film scoring.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
I think a big part of that was like Napster,
and it was a program called DC plus plus.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
I don't remember that one.
Speaker 4 (18:43):
Okay, Yeah, he allowed me to if I found a
song that I liked on Napster, I could click on
the user and then I could go into that user's
like sound libraries or music libraries, and I could just
pull that user his rehearsal library to my computer and
find music that, like I had never heard of. Some
of that music was like like Boston and music, some
of it was Turkish music from different parts of the world,
(19:06):
and some of it was also film scores, and that
was really fun for me, like listening over and over
to like the mccayvory theme song on the Turtles theme songs.
And I think a big part of it also was
like technology, Like I liked being on the computer and
finding this type of music. And I also had a
program in my computer call like impulse tracker. It was
(19:26):
like the first type of sequencer where you don't have
like an range window. You have is everything's just zeros
and ones and numbers. So basically when we play the song,
it just looks like a like a crazy like screen
of just numbers up and down. And that's how I
made my first kind of songs in the computer. And
then obviously I went into qbas and logic and all
(19:47):
that stuff, but being part of the thing that excited
me was also how the production of it and using technology.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Have you listened back to any of those.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
No, and I don't want, I don't feel like what.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
Your debut as an orchestral composer came at the age
of seventeen. It was called five Minutes to Christmas. The
night that that was performed. What happened.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
It was kind of out of body experience because you
were seventeen years old. The only time you've had your
music performed is with your band with three or four people.
And then the fact that like sitting and writing orchestral scores,
we had an opportunity. We had a great school, so
I had an opportunity to write for a symphony orchestra
and I was one of the few chosen from the
class to do it, and since we had such a
(20:36):
good education, I already knew I how to write it,
you know, by hand, and write down the sheet music
by hand. And I was sitting in by the piano
in our living room and just writing that the whole summer.
It was very inspired by Star Wars and Night before
Christmas and had like slabels in it and kind of
a Darth Vader theme in it. Not that great, but
you could clearly hear what the inspiration was. And then yeah,
(20:58):
it was opening. We opened it during a school concert
and there was the whole concert hall was full of
people and they played my music and it was really
wild because everyone loved it so much, and like they
played it on the Swedish radio and it really made
me feel special. But the big takeout and that was
to hearing your music being performed by seventy people in
(21:22):
a concert hall, to live audience, and just the feeling
of that. It was like how I just asked myself
over and over again, how can I do this for
the rest of my life, and how can I be
able to do this in as a.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Job After the break More from Ludwig Gorensen coming back.
(22:04):
We were talking about the five Minutes before Christmas orchestral
piece that you put together. You then studied jazz and
provisation at the Royal College School of Music before eventually
moving to the US at the age of twenty two
in pursuit of your masters at USC here in Los Angeles.
(22:25):
This I think was in the fall of two thousand
and seven, a period that you once described as a
very difficult time in my life. What did that look like?
Speaker 4 (22:38):
Just crying every night and missing my life that I
had in Sweden and feeling very lonely.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
That is the opening of Oppenheimer.
Speaker 4 (22:49):
Yeah, it is, it is. I had those times. And
the funny thing is that I had that already happened
once in my life, Like when I was fifteen, I
moved to Stockholm. I lived in a smaller city, and
I moved to Stockholm. I started like a music high school,
and then at that time I moved home again. So
I gave up and like I moved back home and
then I always kind of like regretted that decision a
(23:09):
little bit. I didn't want to do the same thing twice.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
You couldn't give up again.
Speaker 4 (23:13):
I couldn't do that. I knew how much I would
regret it afterwards. I feel like la is probably like
one of the loneliest city in the world. Everything is
just so difficult to know where to go. You have
to plan everything if you don't have a car. But
the school, I mean, the school was great and it
was competitive. The professors and that's why I wanted to
go there. The professors are all professional, and I think
(23:35):
one of the things that was difficult was that the homesickness,
like I didn't understand what that was either, Like I
didn't know why I was having all those feelings. I
was just confused, why am I feeling like this? I
couldn't navigate it and not being in control of that,
and that was very scary.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
What do you mean scary?
Speaker 4 (23:52):
Just not just it's almost something like a jealousy, if
you know. Jealousy is like a feeling you can't control.
At least for me, I remember the times when I
had those feelings that are extremely jealousy something like that.
It's just eats that you or it comes like a
big hole in your stomach, and that's what it was
like at one night. It can be that can have
the best time of life, and then like all of
(24:13):
a sudden and thirty minutes later it can be just
completely crushing and not knowing why.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
When do you think you started to get some control
over that? You're like never still.
Speaker 4 (24:25):
Here, No, But it's not until recently where I'm like
kind of starting to understand how those films came to
be and what that was all about, and how I
can try to give my kids some kind of stability
that so they don't have to kind of go through that.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
It does sound like, i'd say, you, really, of all
the things we've talked about, it does seem like the
thing that's most on your mind right now. Oh of course.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
Yeah, definitely want to try to understand myself as good
as I can for my kid's sake.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
In that period when you're in your mid twenties, did
meeting and beginning to work with Ryan Coogler and that
Donald Glover did that help you understand yourself in that moment?
Speaker 4 (25:14):
I think that was maybe one of the things. I
don't know if we had that in common, but like
one of the things that Ryan and I had a
common was definitely like feeling like we're far away from
our families, and having a hard time.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
He's from Oakland.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
Yeah, he's from Oakland. And I was like, well, you're
just two hours from home. It was like five hours
from home, like you can just but that's not what
it was about. It was like your community. It was
everything that's familiar to you and leaving that for something
new and how difficult that is, and that we could
talk about that special and then yeah, and then to
go back to our teacher, Kenny Hall. Kenny Hall was
(25:48):
an incredible teacher professor at UC He was a music
editor who worked with John Williams on et and Jerry
Goldsmith and a bunch of best movies. And he was
the only teacher at school that had a class for
both composers and directors in the same class, which is unusual,
Which is very unusual, but should be obvious because music is,
(26:10):
I mean, music is one of the most important parts
of film. And to get some direction from a professor
for the directors to how to talk about music and
how to approach that, how to talk to the composers,
I think was incredibly helpful. And to have a class
where we can discuss so we can also understand how
the directors talk about music. And how they think about music,
(26:32):
because we're all students, We're like, oh, this is you know,
music is the most important part of the film, Like
it should be the loudest, you know, the part of
the whole student film you're doing, and take out the
sound effects and the dialogue and like and don't give
me any notes. That's kind of how you approach it
from the beginning.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Was that your policy back then? No notes?
Speaker 4 (26:51):
No? I was was? I was pretty open, But I
definitely remember before I started USC that had like this
romantic image of the film composer getting getting the film,
having several months to himself at some kind of lodge
up in the mountains and just being able to write
the whole film score by himself, and then taking the
orchestra and getting performed and magically it's in the movie.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
You had to settle for Los Phillies and Silver, like
I guess, you know, as your romantic hopes were kind
of slowly dashed by the real process of making and
creating these scores. You did like dozens of scores for
students at USC. What stood out about Ryan and his work.
Speaker 4 (27:37):
First of all, I was friends a little bit with
Ryan before he did a student film, so we had
we already had a little bit of a relationship before
he asked me to score his film, but also like
his way of you know, although it was this student film,
it was a student film called Locks for his first project.
And at that time, the student film he did didn't
have any dialogue, so it was just music and sound effects.
(27:58):
And the movie is beautiful. You see this this guy
in Oakland with long locks, like long dreads, wandering around
the streets. You see some some gang members getting a
handcuffed by the police. He goes through the neighborhood is
hees like other kind of rough things, and you're like,
what's going on? Where is this story going to go?
(28:19):
And then he goes into the barbershop and he gets
his hair cut off. They sweep it up and they
put it in a plastic bag, and then he walks
on his way home. And then he enters his apartment
and he opens a bedroom door and you see his
little sister sitting there who has cancer, and it doesn't
have any hair. And that's the short film. And I
(28:40):
wrote some music for it. And at that time I
was living in a I was living on twenty eighth Street,
which in La is like fraternity street. I didn't know
what fraternity, so Storties was before I moved, and I
wasn't part of the fraternity, like they had gone thrown out,
so it was only for grad students. But I was
sitting there in that little little room trying to write
music and it was like crazy parties going on every
(29:01):
night on the street. You know, all the dudes look
the same and drinking from the red cups. And I really,
I literally felt like I was in an American pie movie.
And then Ryan comes in and we sit down and
I have headphones and I give it to him and
he's like, oh my god, is this guitar? Oh what's
this instrument? And he was just so excited and having
that reaction and like learning about the instruments and we
talk about the you know, the techniques that we played
(29:24):
and the take in and that was the That was
the beginning of our working relationships. And that's still how
it still feels like that.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Why don't we take a look at that first collaboration
for a moment so people can get a sense of
what it sounded like. This is Locks directed by Ryan Coogler.
H What do you think seeing that.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
It sounds so very early in my career, you know,
like all your teacher at the time, like us, you know,
you have to find your own sound and all this
what are you talking like? What are you talking about?
How do you find your own sound? What is that?
And I'm not saying that that was my own sound,
but you can definitely hear some an interesting balance between
(30:43):
like melancholy and happiness.
Speaker 1 (30:46):
You seem almost skeptical to say the word.
Speaker 4 (30:51):
Yeah, yeah, it's not the word you want to describe
your music. Maybe, but maybe maybe it is. Of course
it should make people happy, but it can be melancholic
and make you happy in that way.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
I think it's it's an amalgamation of both. But the
idea of finding your own voice that is something we
all have to try to find. Was that a challenge
for you now?
Speaker 4 (31:13):
I mean I think for a lot of people, the
way that you think about when you have to find
your own voice is like, Okay, I need to spend
a lot of time by myself in a room and
find my own voice. Well, at least for me, the
way that I did it was the complete opposite. It
was opening doors to other rooms with other people and
(31:34):
talking to them. Or jamming with them and learn what
they do, and like being interested and you know, wanting
to discover and have a musical exchange with people that
came from completely different backgrounds or cultures or play different
genres and to see if we can do things together.
And looking back at it now, I think that was
(31:55):
kind of what really shaped me to become who I am.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
When you started working with Donald Glover, this is like
before he became Childish Gambino. You were scoring community at
the time. Was it around then that you developed this
approach where you would say, what we're making can be cool,
it's just not cool yet.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
Well, well, to me, when I first heard his music,
I was hesitant before he even sent me into music
because I knew him as being an actor and I
was like this in my mind, I was like, well, okay,
a lot of actors probably think they can do music too.
And also in America, like people have the confidence that
you don't really demonstrate like that in Sweden. So when
(32:42):
he was like yeah, he wrote me an email like
I'm also a rapper and musician and I don't know
a lot of people in LA so maybe you can
take a listen to the song and recommend or help
me with the mixing of the track, and then he
sent me a song and I was so surprised. I've
run back, this is incredible. But what if we just
add some drums or add some live drums, or we
(33:03):
work a little bit on the arrangement. And he was
really receptive to that, and we met up and we
started to just work together for fifteen years. But I
thought his music was cool from the jump, and I
just I was like, is there any way we can
make this better? If there any way I can just
help in any way, I would love to be part
of it.
Speaker 1 (33:20):
In those early collaborations, first on Cul de Sac, then
Camp then because of the Internet, did it feel like
it was uncharted territory for you?
Speaker 4 (33:31):
Absolutely? I mean I listened to rap music, not like
the standard ones. Like the record I had listened to
the most was a fox A Brown album because I
just thought it was so cool how she had like
Egyptian music on there, and like how they use those samples,
and I was listening to that and like midnight culture
is like over and over and over again. I didn't
have that deep knowledge of hip hop at the time,
(33:51):
and I wasn't and I had never really done a beat.
But that's also what's so exciting. He was kind of
introducing it to me and showing me like all these
incredible songs that didn't know and it was like to me, like, yeah,
learning and a new instrument, and it was the most
exciting thing for me.
Speaker 3 (34:08):
You know.
Speaker 1 (34:08):
Around the time you too started really getting going, you,
Donald and a bunch of your friends starred in a
short film directed by Hiro Maria called Clapping for the
Wrong Reasons. Now, this is a movie I personally obsessed
over with my friends as as soon to be freshman
in college back in twenty thirteen. Why don't we take
(34:30):
a look at one scene in particular where you are
playing on the guitar a little bit.
Speaker 4 (35:24):
Yeah, I haven't seen that in ten years.
Speaker 1 (35:26):
And what do you think.
Speaker 4 (35:28):
I think we're all like searching. I think Donald was
definitely searching. And I didn't know, you know, how big
part of I was going to have on the record,
or if I was going to be part of it.
It was a very kind of uncertain time for me
at least. And then there was those there was those
jump joy of moments where we were in the studio
(35:48):
in that it was like one of the libraries and
we were in the studio there and I think it
was Chris bosh Old House, just out of nowhere. Like
I was, I was always kind of on the spot
to come up with something in the moment, really really quick.
I was both stressful but also kind of exciting. And
because Donald had a lot of that time, I was like,
because I had a lot of things on his mind,
(36:10):
so if something was going to stick, we had a
very short amount of time in a suit of where
where he could just kind of get into the music.
And even though we spent a lot of time in
the studio, but I feel like when I was there,
like we had to do something quick, and it was
a little it was stressful, and then something great came
out of it and it was like it was like
kind of a moment of joy and I was and
and when that little moment of joy happened, it's like,
(36:32):
how you know I had sustained that, you know, Okay,
five minutes, ten minutes, okay, fifteen minutes, Oh this is
turning through song twenty you know. So it was like
it was a strange time. And also like with all
the albums that he's done, like I don't know where
he's taking it, and don't know where we're going. We
just start off like driving blindless. At least me on
(36:54):
that album, I thought we took it to some really
interesting places.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
The way you're describing it, like that period of searching.
Even now a decade removed, it still sounds as if
it's kind of a miss to you.
Speaker 4 (37:10):
It was a mystery because I was also in a
situation where I didn't like, I didn't understand those feelings
that I had. It was all about like trying to
get these music out, and I guess I think like
the feelings came out in the music. I mean, I
know that the feelings came out of music, and that's
why it's so interesting to hear that now, you know,
I can hear that anxiety and stress, but the magic
(37:31):
in that and just those little few guitar chords that
I heard, and it's like a calming thing, especially that
song like the Flight of the Navigator. They all kind
of feel like you're a kid or you know, and
playing that in your room. And I think a lot
of it comes back to maybe sitting there being a
kid and being feeling lonely and sitting in your room
(37:52):
and trying to figure out what life's about.
Speaker 1 (37:55):
Back in the basement. Yeah, it sounds to me like
it was like a self soothing sound, like you're feeling
all this anxiety and yet that track we just heard
is extreme calming and kind of self soothing.
Speaker 4 (38:13):
Yeah, no, it's it's I don't know if you have kids,
but it's definitely a thing you see when you start
to understand a little thing a little bit with the
self soothing thing and how everyone finds their own ways
to self soothe. Some kids suck on her thumbs, some
kids like touch their face in a different way.
Speaker 1 (38:31):
Some you know, some kids jam out to Metallica.
Speaker 4 (38:33):
Some kids jam out to Metallica. Makes sad, melancholic.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Songs that are also happy.
Speaker 4 (38:40):
Also happens in them because you have great support from
your parents. But yeah, there was I was definitely, I
think when I think back at it too, I was
lonely also a lot as a as a kid. You know,
my parents they also they also worked a lot, and
my sister was six years older, so spent a lot
of time just by myself too.
Speaker 1 (39:02):
You've clearly used that loneliness and channeled it into the work.
And I wanted to pinpoint those two moments with Coogler
and Glover, because at least to me, they seem like
the foundational building blocks of what would become a decade
long collaboration, going from Black Panther with Ryan for What
(39:23):
You Want an Oscar to producing This Is America with
Donald for Which You Want a Grammy, which, of course
through this decade brings us back to Oppenheimer. And part
of this film is about a man obsessed with his work,
a man who moves further and further into this project
(39:44):
and farther and farther away from his family. And as
I was rewatching it last night, I was reminded of
this quote you had where you said, when I go
into the studio, regardless of whether I write the music,
produce an album, or write a film score, you just
immerse yourself into this other world. You become obsessed. Most
(40:07):
artists are extremely You close yourself off and the work
becomes your world. That obsession that's central to Oppenheimer. Did
you feel that kinship and making the score for it.
Speaker 4 (40:22):
I think that's very true, but I don't consciously. I
don't think about any of that when I'm in the process.
It's more afterwards, like the conversation we have now where
I see that being a pattern in the way I.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Work, with the pattern of obsession, and for me.
Speaker 4 (40:38):
That's the only way I can do it, really, And
I think also with age comes, you know, you get
a little bit of different. You're having your starting family,
You're starting to see your priorities in a different way.
But I'm not saying that I'm doing having the wrong priorities.
But I've definitely been the last fifteen years just non
stop doing that, you know, without breaks, like extremist world
(41:02):
to extremist and they're also extremely different too. It's also
why I think it works for me, because it's so
I'm like a different person, different world every time, and
it's so exciting to discover these places. But it also
takes a toll.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
What toll has it taken?
Speaker 4 (41:19):
I think more now for me it's more important to
kind of take the time after you finish something like
this and think about how it affected you and think
about how what happened, you know, how it happened, how
it came together, and where the places you went and
reflecting more. I guess I'm just more interested in that now,
where before that I was just on a train, on
(41:39):
stuff train, and I realized now how all these experiences
had such a deep impact in me, both on music
levels but personal levels. And I'm excited because after I
finished Appathheimer, now I've had I've had some time to
engage with everything else in my life, and that's kind
(42:00):
of a very exciting chapter for me.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
We've spent a lot of time talking about, you know,
the personal side of making music and the process, your process.
But when we take a step back, this film is
like coming out at a very fascinating time, especially in Hollywood,
because of course there's this strike that's happening, and one
(42:26):
of the big existential fears and issues at play is
the use of artificial intelligence, which throughout the film's release,
Nolan has explicitly made the comparison between Oppenheimer developing the
A bomb in the early forties and the theoretical physicists
that faced backlash an uncertainty from the US military in Congress,
(42:50):
much like the tech industry is facing today in its
race to make AI more powerful. He said, quote when
I talk to leading researchers in the field of AI
right now, they literally refer to this as their Oppenheimer moment,
they're looking to a story to say, Okay, what are
the responsibility for scientists developing new technologies that may have
(43:12):
unintended consequences when it comes to making music? Where are
you at on what AI can do, will do? How
will change the job itself.
Speaker 4 (43:26):
I'm very interested in these type of questions and in
the technology. And it's not even at their doorshep's already
entered our houses, enter our living rooms and our listening experiences. Especially,
you know, with that Drake Weekend song that everyone you know,
I don't know how many million views it has, but
it's quite a lot.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
I still haven't heard it yet.
Speaker 4 (43:47):
So you can't like deny that it's going to change
music forever. You can. You can have anyone sitting in
the room and just like, oh, I want to have
a beat that sounds like Michael Jackson from the seventies,
and I want Brunan Morris to sing a happy birthday
message to my wife because he loves him. You know,
I don't think there's a way to stop that from happening.
I think we all just need to embrace it and
(44:10):
know that it's here. I think it's going to be
a big shift in music about you going to be
able to hear the difference, you know, I think people
are really going to be able to hear the difference
in what's made with computers and what's not made with computers,
and how much computer was a part of this and
how much what computer wasn't a part of it.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
Do you think people will be able to distinguish between
the two? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (44:34):
Absolutely. I think maybe there'd be a different service like
AI music will be cheaper and music that people put
their own minds and hearts and brains to would be
more expensive. And I think everyone's going to start using
these tools that are going to come to place, and
it's just like what shortcuts do you want to take?
Like how much you want to shut your own creativity off?
(44:56):
And I think that's going to be some important decisions
you're going to have to make.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
Have you been thinking about that for yourself? Like what
you're willing to use and not use? Shortcuts?
Speaker 4 (45:05):
Taken?
Speaker 1 (45:05):
Not taken?
Speaker 4 (45:06):
No, I want tot try it all, give it all
to me and see what I can how I can
customize it as much as possible and make it. But
I don't have any tools yet, so I don't I
haven't worked with any AI software or things yet. But
I think that's just a matter of like probably months
or weeks, or it's already things out there that I
(45:27):
think people are using. No, I want to see what
it's all about.
Speaker 1 (45:30):
You sound completely unafraid about this future. You're kind of
one of the first people I've talked to that seems
only optimistic.
Speaker 4 (45:38):
I'm just talking about the music aspect of it. There's
other problems obviously, think it's going to other consequences, but
the music aspect of it, I I don't think, at
least for me, I don't see any threats in computers
making music. Some people are going to listen to it.
Something's going to be great. It just it just kind
(45:59):
of depends on who's who's making it.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
Well before technology changes, how this job is fundamentally done.
Why don't we celebrate a human fear? Is there a
track from Oppenheimer that you are most proud of, like
one that you want people to hear as we leave
this conversation.
Speaker 4 (46:19):
Yeah, we should probably play the can you hear the music?
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Track?
Speaker 4 (46:23):
And for me that was one that was like a
breakthrough moment I had on this project. But also in
a way I have made music in kind of in
a technical level, but also but also it was like
kind of like a Eureka moment for me, like on
a technical level writing a composition that goes faster and
(46:45):
faster and faster, but after a while, after a couple
of hours, you don't even the listener and the audience
doesn't even feel it, and sort think about it. It's
just it all, it's just an emotion. And then one
of the important parts of the process was to figure
out a way how we can get the orchestra to
perform this in one take, because if you see the charts,
(47:07):
it's literally like twenty one to ten changes. It goes faster, slower, faster, slower,
and if you just see it on the page, you're like,
this is not You're not going to get fort to
string players who play this in a way where it's
going to sound good in one take. But we worked
on this for three days and kind of banging their
heads against the walls, like how can we get this
performance right? In the ends, like Sereno, she was like, well,
(47:31):
these musicians are incredible. She's been playing with them for
fifteen years. Their like the Hollwood Studio Symphony and they
this is their job. They sit in the studio and
played seven hours a day to click to a metronome.
And we figured out a way to give the musicians
a click in their head, the temple change, the time
change in their mind and their heads before it happens
on the page. And when we gave them that track,
(47:54):
it just this magic happened. So that's really interesting how
you combine technology and computers, because this music, you couldn't
have really written it without computers. But then putting that
organic element into it with the live string players playing
an all in one taken organic way gives it so
much life and makes it timeless and makes it feel
(48:15):
like it's human.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
I guess we should listen to how that all turned out.
All right, this is Can you hear the music from
the film Oppenheimer when you're listening to that? Could you
(49:51):
have ever imagine that that young, lonely kid playing music
in the basement would one day create something like that?
Speaker 4 (50:01):
No, I don't, I don't. I don't see that in
the courts. My dream, sup was to become a member
of Metallica. That's never there's still time. It's still time. No,
but it's like it's like my dream was, you know,
I was. I was streaming about playing my instrument, being
on stage and playing big crowds, and we've done that,
you know, we did that with Childish and and then
(50:23):
I was streaming of being a pop producer and being
producing music and that happened too. And then I was
dreaming about being a film composer, and then that happened too.
And musically, all all those goals and milestones and stones,
just I guess I was.
Speaker 2 (50:40):
I was lucky.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
I kind of bring up that basement once more as
we leave, because I've heard that this past summer you
went back down and to that basement with your mother
where you were looking for toys for your kids. What
was that like to go back to that place, not
for you but for your children.
Speaker 4 (51:02):
It was kind of magical, you know, kind of stepping
into that at that time was just all the reality
and now it's a memory. But it was my safe space.
It was my soothing place, you know, where where I
felt calm, and that's where I felt most like myself.
It was a beautiful moment going back there, and everything
(51:24):
obviously felt super small, So I feel like I was
a giant now and the limpid land. See all those
guitars still hanging on the wall, seeing those old tape machines,
old tape records that I used to use, and how
they're all still there. And yeah, just thinking about like
where it's you know, what am we gonna do with
all this when I get old and I'm my kids
(51:45):
are gonna do the same thing?
Speaker 1 (51:46):
Like what it?
Speaker 4 (51:48):
It's a lot of also a lot of questions.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
Did you find the high school report or something like that?
Speaker 3 (51:53):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (51:53):
Yeah, I found a high school report, right, I guess
you talked. Did you talk to my mom?
Speaker 5 (51:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (51:58):
I called her up. I called her up right before
this and now I hadn't doctor. So how do you
know you said it in an interview? Oh okay, Yeah,
I really appreciate that you'd think I called your mother
before this podcast. It means we've done our job.
Speaker 4 (52:11):
Yeah yeah, I was like, yeah, you really don uh no?
But I yeah, I found the high school report of
my five Minutes of Christmas when I wrote about the
process how I created it, and it's still in my
in my backpack, Like I don't know why. I like
I see it laying there, like I know that I
want to read it, but at the same time, I
don't want to go back to that kid that I
(52:32):
was and the way I was thinking about music then,
because it's it's uh, I feel like it's because like
I thought I had it all figured out, you know,
I was like, rite the report about it, this is
how you make music, And but now I can I
know now that I didn't know. You know, I didn't
have it figure it out.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
You've been really putting it off.
Speaker 4 (52:54):
I've been really putting that off. Maybe I know it's
who's going to bring back like a lot of memories
and emotions, and I just need to find the right
space to do that.
Speaker 1 (53:03):
Well, whenever that is, I'm excited for you to revisit
that past self. But until then, I want to look
ahead a little bit because one of the other main
components of a Nolan movie is time, how we use it,
how we try to bend it to our will, how
we regard time that has passed or time that has
(53:25):
yet to come. But time is also something I think
you've long been preoccupied by, well before you began working
with Nolan on Tenant, Because isn't it true that when
you left for America at age twenty two, landing here
in Los Angeles, enrolled at USC Did you map out
(53:46):
how you wanted your career to go?
Speaker 4 (53:48):
Yeah, I feel like I've always had like I always
had the five year plan, a tenure plan, and like
I always know where I'm going to be the next
you know, I don't know how that's where that comes from,
but it's always been kind of milestones in my mind
about where I want to be and what I want
to do. And I guess is some kind of magic.
(54:09):
You create your own future.
Speaker 1 (54:11):
Your mother said when you moved here, here were the
big three things. Get a job as an assistant one
year after graduation, score your own projects after three years,
win an Academy award within twelve years. Sometimes, she said,
he's much faster than what he planned the all times reality,
I guess, but yeah, that's interesting. Well, now that you're
(54:34):
back home and you're sitting with this past year and
thinking about what's to come, what do you want down
the line?
Speaker 4 (54:43):
I think right now, I'm just I know how I work.
I know what makes me happy. I know what type
of process makes me happy, what kind of collaborators makes
me happy. And if I can get that and have
the time to enjoy with my family as well. I
think that's the only thing that I mean, I'm asking
(55:04):
for a lot, but I'm not sure how I'm going
to do it, but I think I know a way,
and I feel like every day I'm I'm getting closer
to the answers of all those questions you have and
also all those questions I had and feelings that I
didn't even think about as a kid. And it's like
I'm trying to trying to like going back into those
times and understanding it now. And I realized how important
(55:27):
that is from like a musical clarity of it. I'm
probably more excited than I ever been to to kind
of step back into it and discover new paths and
new ways and new worlds. And that's also why I
wanted to take a little time off and to really
get back into the that space again.
Speaker 1 (55:47):
Well, the first thing you said when we sat down
was I'm afraid to cut my long hair because it
may make me a different person. I may be someone new.
And I have to say, after having sat here with
you for this last hour, I kind of think you
don't need to cut your hair to become a different person.
(56:11):
Feel like it's already happening. Right now.
Speaker 4 (56:14):
Yeah, oh, thank you. Yeah, I'll keep it.
Speaker 1 (56:17):
If not for me, then then for Ryan Coogler. Yeah,
thank you, and whatever person you end up becoming and
whatever you make because of it, I am so looking
forward to it, and I just want to thank you
on a personal level for making so much of the
music that was kind of a soundtrack to my formative
(56:39):
high school college years, without which I don't think I
would be the strange other long haired person sitting in
this zoom call.
Speaker 4 (56:49):
Well, I appreciate that, and we should meet up some
time in real life and be that's too strange white
guys with long hair sitting in the back of the
coffee shop.
Speaker 1 (57:00):
I look forward to Ludwig enjoy the rest of the summer.
Speaker 4 (57:03):
You too, Sam. It was a great time talking to you,
and I really appreciate this conversation. Thank you.
Speaker 5 (57:08):
Until next time, and that's our show.
Speaker 1 (57:44):
If you enjoyed today's episode, be sure to leave us
five stars on Spotify and Apple wherever you do your listening.
I want to give us special thanks to the teams
at Online Voices in Stockholm, the Academy Library here in
Los Angeles, IDPR Universal, and of course our guest today
Ludvig Gorenson. To learn more about the works discussed in
(58:06):
this episode, visit our show notes at talk easypod dot
com for more conversations. I'd recommend our episodes with Lily Gladstone,
Wesley Morris, Hero, Maria sd Him and Willin Dafone to
hear those and more Pushkin podcasts. Listen on Apple, Spotify,
or wherever you.
Speaker 2 (58:25):
Like to listen.
Speaker 1 (58:26):
You can also follow us on social media at talk easypod.
If you want to purchase one of our mugs they
come on Cream or Navy, or our vinyl record with
the inimitable friend Leibowitz, you can do so at talk
easypod dot com slash shop. I also want to give
a special thanks to our team. Talk easy is produced
by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Genick Sabravo. Our
(58:48):
associate producer is Caitlin Dryden. Today's talk was edited by
Caitlin Dryden and mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our music is
by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Tricia Chenoy. Our
graphics are by Ethan Seneca. I also want to give
a special thanks to our team at Pushkin Industries, justin Richmond,
Julia Barton, Johnsnars, Kerrie Brody, Eric Sandler, Kira Posey, Chornament Millan,
Tara Machado, Justin Lang's, Sarah Nix, Malcolm Gladwell, Gretacon, and
(59:11):
Jacob Weisberd. I'm San Fragoso. Thank you for listening to
Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next week with
a new episode. Until then, stay safe and so long.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.