Introducing: Ludwig Göransson on Talk Easy

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey everyone, today we're featuring an episode of one of our favorite shows here on the Pushkin Network, Talk Easy, hosted by Sam Fragoso. An episode you're about to hear, Sam talks to the renowned music producer and composer Ludwig Gorenson. He's a Grammy and Academy Award winning producer and composer who scored Ryan Coogler's Black Panther and most recently scored Christopher Nolan's epic Oppenheimer. He's also produced records and written songs for him Rihanna Adele, and Donald Glover aka Childish Gambino. Here's Sam Fragoso's conversation with Ludwig Gorenson. This is Talk Easy. I'm standard for Goso. Welcome to the show today. I'm joined by renowned music producer and composer Ludwig Gorenson. Over the past decade, he's won three Grammys, two Emmys, and one Academy Award for Best Original Score for the film Black Panther, directed by Ryan Kugler. In fact, he's scored all of Kugler's films dating back to Fruitfale Station. When he's not working as a composer, he's producing records and writing hit songs for some of the most beloved musicians today Hiam Rhanna Adele and most consistently, Donald Glover aka Childish Gambino. But his latest collaboration might be his most ambitious to date, creating the score for Christopher Nolan's newest epic, Oppenheimer. The film tells the story of the complex and controversial American scientist Jay Robert Oppenheimer as he races against the clock to develop the atomic bomb. While each of the performances from a cast that includes Killian Murphy and Robert Downey Junior are electric, it's ludwig singular composition that I think both pushes the film forward and holds it all together. Nolan himself has called the work deeply personal and historically expansive, drawing the audience into the emotional dilemmas of the characters while they each grapple with the vast geopolitical issues at play. Having seen the film twice now, it's Ludwig's score that has most stayed with me. It's powerful but not overpowering, tender but not saccharine. If you haven't seen the film, you'll hear some of what I'm talking about. In this episode, we also discuss his musical childhood in Sweden, coming to America in his early twenties, the building blocks of his decade long collaborations with Kugler and Glover, respectively, and how his work on Oppenheimer marks a new chapter in the composer's varied, illustrious career. This is my conversation with Ludwig Corrensen. Ludwig, A pleasure to have you here. Thank you, Sam, It's great to be here. You know, we rarely have someone on the show whose hair is longer than mine. And how do you feel about that? Profoundly insecure. I've been thinking a lot about it lately, say cut it off, we should keep it. But now I've passed the stage where I'm like, I don't know too much of my personality in it and my identity. Are you afraid of like the new person you would become if you cut your hair. I'm not afraid of that. I'm more afraid of like everyone losing interest in me. That's it. Ryan Coogler, Donald Glover, Christopher Nolan. They're just in it for the hair they don't have. That's the secret. How has your summer been back home in Sweden. 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 specifically because of my kids. I have it almost four year old and a two year old, and you just want them to have the Swedish identity and want them to be able to speak the language fluently. And so it's it's important being back home as it forced you to kind of like reflect on the last fifteen years of working in America. 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 had a professional career in Sweden. I's was a student or you know, the kid, So me coming back as someone that has some kind of work experience and trying to just trying to kind of navigate life here. And I feel like a lot of things in Sweden changed too the last fifteen years. So I'm still trying to find the balance and trying to find myself here. But it's it's an exciting time to do that. 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 publications have reported you made in five days. How does someone make something like this in five days? Well, I think, start off, some of that publication is not correct. Beautiful to go back, you can't. This is not possible due in five days. It was published it that I 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 had the whole orchestra together in the same room that mum 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 works store playing the score, that's that's like the climax of the whole process, when you can kind of take a step back and just listen to the music, almost like seeing the birth of your child or something. Well, if that's the climax, why don't we just go back to Act one? You get a call from Christopher Nolan, he says one. He says, I finished a script and I would love for you to read it, and can you can buy read it tomorrow or in two days. Chris is kind of in the way where he doesn't really talk about what he's working on, even though we spend time together and we talk and bidas. Then we're 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, I go out to the studio, I go into the room, close the door, and sit with the script for as much time as I need. And this is a pretty heavy script and 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 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 coupletely taken by surprise to read something like that, and I was completely floored after the script, and I immediately also thought that that music needs to kind of do the same thing and the same experience I had when reading it. Then music needs to get the audience to feel like they're in his eyes and feeling everything is feeling. 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? 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 I 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 and that's when he kind of mentioned that I don't really have any ideas other than trying to use an experiment with the sound of Isoland. And Chris also knows Serena my wife, so he knows that's she's a violinist, and we kind of have the advantage to being in the studio with her and experiment and try out some different techniques and spend time on just sounds. Was definitely in luxury, 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. I remember we've been recording the whole day, just giffering kind of glosandos, just one note, little vibratos and long notes and doing glzanos up and down and changing the pitch and changing the speed of the vibrato, going from something somber and beautiful to something horrific within seconds. And then I think, after a whole day recording that we're kind of both I was like, okay, this is this is not that fun, like sitting there for hours recording noises and we're 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 that I wrote? And she played the melody in one take, and it was beautiful and haunting and intimate and kind of sad and fragile. And it 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 this is the team. 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, Let's do it not bad? Thank you? What were you thinking about hearing that just now? 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 a project. I always try to do a different way. I always want to feel like I'm doing something for the first time. But it was it was just so interesting that 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. And then your wife recorded the song that you wrote. You know, I wrote it as we were kind of packing up the backing up from the studo to go home and we're kind of going to rush, and I started with that bassline, do do they form a bassline? And then we have the melody on top of it, and the other melody that here is is counter melody to the original melody. 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 found that that typically happens, like when when you're not expecting it, it kind of finds 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 it's going to start sounding bad. It's like your head gets tired and you start to criticize yourself when you like there's all this noise coming into your mind, your brain, and like this voice is telling you that you know, telling you what telling me? Telling you like you are like, oh, this is not good. This is you know, it's time to go home, attend for rep up. But a lot of those times that's also when the magic can happen. 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 florist and a pianist. Even your sister was musical, she played the violin. You, of course, began playing music at the age of seven. I think it was 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, and instead of a gaming council, you received a small portable four channel cassette tape. Is that how this all began? 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 don'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, and I was so excited. I was finally it's going to be a Nintendo 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 musical that replaced those my urges of video game consoles. Was there a particular day and a particular song by an American metal band that kind of fortified your desire to make music? 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 his 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 home and he wanted to be a good teacher. So I was like, Okay, I'm gonna learn this so I could teach them 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 open the door and I see my dad like headbang, Metallica play interseammin And like my mind is exploded. It's like, what is this sound? Is? What is this music? How can I play it? Had you ever seen him headbang before? 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 riffs 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 would see him live. We started playing the songs together. I started a band. I was all in from that moment. Were your parents like excited that this was your obsession, that you would like stay in the basement and just like stay in it? Yeah, they were. There were my biggest fans and supporters. 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 that time. I just now, I just at that time took for granted like that's what you know parents do. But now thinking back at it, just every weekend, how much you kind of spend his time and energy on that. It's pretty remarkable. 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. I think a big part of that was like Napster, and it was a program called DC plus plus. I don't remember that one. 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 users like sound libraries or music libraries, and I could just pull that users or her whole library to my computer and find music that like I'd 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, and some of it was also film scores, and that was really fun for me, like listening over and over to like the My Giver theme song on the Turtles theme songs. And I think in 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 program in my computer called like Impulse Tracker. It was like the first type of sequencer where you don't have like an arrange window. You have is everything's just zeroes and ones and numbers. So basically when you 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 on the computer. And then obviously I went to qbas and logic and all that stuff, but being part of the thing the excited me was also how the production of it and using technology. Have you listened back to any of those? No, And I don't want. I don't feel like. 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, 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 factor like sitting and writing orchestral scores. We had 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 good education, I already knew how to write it, you know, by hand, and write down the sheet music by hand. And I was sitting by the piano in our living room and just writing that the whole summer. It was very inspired by Star Wars and Nightmare before Christmas, and had like Slabels in it and kind of a Darth Vader a team in it. Not that great, but you could clearly hear what the inspiration was. And then yeah, I 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 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 as a job After the break More from Lidvig Correnson coming back, we were talking about the five Minutes before Christmas orchestral piece that you put together. You then studied jazz improvisation at the Royal College School of Music before eventually moving to the US at the age of twenty two in pursuit of your master's at USC here in Los Angeles. 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, just crying every night and missing my life that I had in Sweden and like very lonely. That is the opening of Oppenheimer. Yeah, it is, it is. I had those times and then if the fun of things that I had that already happened once in my life, like when I was fifteen, I moved to Stockholm, and I lived in a smaller city and I moved Stockholm. I started it like a music high school. And then at that time, but I I meant 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 little bit. I didn't wanted the same thing twice. You couldn't give up again. I couldn't do that. I knew how much I would regretted afterwards. I feel like la is probably like one of the loneliest cities 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 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 fee feeling like this? I couldn't navigate it and not being in control of that, and that was very scary. What do you mean scary? Just not just it's almost something like like a jealousy, you know, jealousy. It's like a feeling you can control, at least for me. I remember the times when I have those feelings, are extremely jealous or something that it's just eats that you or it comes like a big hole in your stomach, and that's what it was like. One night. It can be can had the best time of life, and then like all of a sudden and thirty minutes later, it can be just completely crushing and not knowing why. When do you think you started to get some control over that? You're like never still here, No, But but it's not until recently where I'm like kind of starting to understand how those feelings 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 going to go through that. 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. Yeah. Definitely want to try to understand myself as good as I can for my kid's sake. In that period when you're in your mid twenties, did meeting and beginning to work with Ryan Coogler and then Donald Glover? Did that help you understand yourself in that moment? I think that was maybe one of the things. I don't 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 for far away from our families and having a hard time. He's from Oakland, Yeah, he's from And I was like, well, you just two hours from from home. It was like five hours from home, like you can just But that's not what he 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 we could talk about that special and then yeah, and then to go back to our teacher, Kenny Hall. Kenny Hall was 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 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, 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 had 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. Because we're all students, we're like, oh, this is music is the most important part of the film, and 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 kind of how he approached it from the beginning. Was that your policy back then, no notes? No, I was, I was, I was pretty open, but I definitely remember before I started usc that I 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 to the orchestra and getting performed. Then magically it's in the movie. You had to settle for lost fillies 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. He did, like dozens of scores for students at usc What stood out about Ryan and his work, 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, it was although it was this student film, it was a student film called Locks, or his first project, and at that time the student film, he didn't have any dialogue, so it was just music and sound effects, 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 hand handcuffed by the police. He goes through the neighborhood is he's like other kind of rough things and you and you're like, what's going on? Where is this story going to go? 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 the bedroom door and you see his little sister sitting there who has cancer, and it doesn't have any hair. And that's a short film. And I wrote some music for it. And at that time, I was living in a I was living on twenty eight Street, which in a lace like fraternity street. I didn't know what fraternity for stories was before I moved, and I wasn't part of the fraternity, like they had gone thrown out, so it was only from 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 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 it's like, oh my god, is this guitar? Oh it was this instrument and he was just so excited and having that reaction and like learning about the instruments. And we talked about the you know, the techniques that we played and the take and that was the that was the beginning of our working relationships. And that's still how still feels like that. Why don't we take 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. What do you think seeing that? 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 of a sudden, I was like, 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 like melancholy and happiness. You Seemon was skeptical to say the word yeah, yeah, it's not the word you wanted 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. 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 No, 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. While 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 talking to them or jamming with them and learn what they do and like being interested and you know, wanted to discover and have a musical exchange with people that came from completely different backgrounds or cultures or playing different genres and see if we can do things together. And looking back at it now, I think that was kind of what really shaped me to become who I am. When you started working with Donald Glover, this was 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. 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 a confidence that you don't really demonstrate like that in Sweden. So when he was like yeah, he wrote me an email like I'm also rapper and musician and I don't know a lot of people in LA, so maybe you can take listen to the song and recommend or help me with the mixing of the track. And then he sent me a song and have him so surprised. I've run back, this is incredible. But what if we just add some drums or add some you know, live drums, or we work a little bit on their 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? Any Way? I can just help in any way. I would love to be part of it and those early collaborations. First I'm col de sac than Camp. Then because the internet did it feel like it was uncharted territory for you, 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 of 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 the and like me and I culture, it's like over and over and over again. I didn't have that deep knowledge of hip hop at the time, and I wasn't and I had never really done it beat. But that's also what's so exciting that he was kind of introducing it to me and showing me like all these incredible songs I didn't know, and it was like to me, like learning a new instrument, And it was the most exciting thing for me. You know. Around the time you two started really getting going, you Donald and a bunch of your friends started in a short film directed by Hiro Murray called Clapping for the Wrong Reasons. Now, this is a movie I personally obsessed over with my friends as a soon to be freshman in college back in twenty thirteen. Why don't we take a look at one scene in particular where you are playing on the guitar a little bit. Yeah, yeah, I haven't seen that in ten years. And what do you think. 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 jo joy of moments where we were in the studio and 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. That was both stressful but also kind of exciting. And because Donald had a lot of that time, I was like it was he had a lot of things on his mind, so if something was going to stick, we had a very short amount of time in the studio 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 a kind of a moment of joy and I was and and when that little moment of joy happened, it was like, how you know I had sustained that, you know, Okay, five minutes, ten minutes, okay, fifteen minutes, Oh, this is turning to the 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, worries taking it and don't know where we're going. We just start off like driving blindness. At least me on that album, I thought we took it to some really interesting places. 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 mystery to you. It was a mystery because I was also in a situation where it didn't 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 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 but a lot of it comes back to maybe sitting there being a kid and being feeling lonely and sitting in your room and trying to figure out what life's about. Back in the basement. Yeah, it sounds to me like it was like a self soothing sound, like you're feeling all of this anxiety and yet that track we just heard is extremely calming and kind of self soothing. 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. Some you know, some kids jam out to Metallica's because jam out to Metallica makes sad, melancholic songs that are also happy. 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 kid. You know, my parents also they also worked a lot, and my sister was six years older, so I spent a lot of time just by myself too. You've clearly used that loneliness and channeled it into the work. And I wanted to pinpoint those two moments with Kugler 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 which 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 and farther 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 artists are extremists. 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? 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 work, the pattern of obsession, and for me, 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 you're starting to see priorities in a different way. But and I'm not saying that I'm doing that 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 to extremists, and they're also extremely different too. It was 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. What toll has it taken? I think more now for me, it's more important to kind of take the time after you finished 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 a self 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 Oppenheimer, now I've had some time to engage with everything else in my life, and that's kind of a very exciting chapter for me. 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 of the big existential fears 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 and Congress, 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 responsibilities for scientists developing new technologies that may have 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? I'm very interested in these type of questions and in the technology, and it's not even at their DOORSIP has 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. I'm many million views it has, but it's quite a lot. I still haven't heard it yet, So you can't deny that it's going to change music forever. You can have anyone sitting in their room and just like, oh, I want to have a beat that sounds like Michael Jackson from the seventies, and I want Bruno Morris to sing a happy birthday message to my wife because she loves it. 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 know that it's here. I think it's going to be a big shift in music about You're 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. Do you think people will be able to distinguish between the two. Yeah? Absolutely. I think maybe there'll be a different service like AI music will be cheaper, and music that people will put their own minds and hearts and brains too. 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 do you want to shut your own creativity off? And I think there's going to be some important decisions you're gonna have to make. Have you been thinking about that for yourself? Like what you're willing to use and not use? Shortcuts? Taken? Not taken? No, I want to 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 think people are using. No, I want to see what it's all about. You sound completely unafraid about this future. You're kind of one of the first people I've talked to that seems only optimistic. I'm just talking about the music aspect of it. There's other problems, obviously, think it's gonna other consequences, but the music aspect of it, 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, someone's going to be great. It just it just kind of depends on who's who's making it well before technology changes, how this job is fundamentally done. Why don't we celebrate a human feet 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, Yeah, we should probably play the can you hear the music? Track? And for me that was one that was like a breakthrough moment I had on this project, but also in a way I've 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, faster and faster, but after a while, after a couple of bars, you don't even the listener and the audience doesn't even feel it, and started to 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, it's literally like twenty one tempo changes. It goes faster, slower, faster, slower, And if you just see it with on the page, you're like, if this is not you're not going to get four 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 bang our heads against the walls, like how can we get this performance right? In the ends like Serenos, she was like, well, these musicians are incredible. She's been playing with them for fifteen years. They're like the Hollywood 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, it just this magic happened. So that's a 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 it all in one take, an organic way gives us so much life and makes it timeless and makes it feel like it's human. I guespe 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 have ever imagine that that young, lonely kid playing music in the basement would one day create something like that? No, I don't, I don't. I don't see that in the courts. My dreams was become a member of Metallica. That never happened. 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 dreaming about playing my instrument, being on stage and playing big crowds and and and we've done that, you know, we did that with Childish and and then I was dreaming of being a pop producer and being producing music and that happened too. And then I was dreaming about being a film composer, and and then that happened too. And musically, all all those goals and milestones and stones, just I guess I was. I was lucky. I kind of bring up that basement once more as relief, because I've heard that this past summer you went back down into 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. He was kind of magical, you know it, you're kind of stepping into that. At that time was just all the reality and now it's it's a memory, but it was my safe space. It's it was my soothing place, you know, where I where I felt calm, and that's where I felt most like myself. It was a beautiful moment going back there, and everything obviously felt super small. It's like I feel like I was a giant now and the lipit 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 worse, you know, what am we gonna do with all this when I get old and I'm like kids going to do the same thing like what he had. It's a lot of also a lot of questions. Did you find a high school report or something like that? Yeah? Yeah, I found it a high school report, right, I guess you talked to you talked to my mom? Yeah, I called her up. I called her up right before this. No, I didn't talk to her. So how do you know you said it in an interview? Oh okay, Yeah, I really appreciate that. You think I called your mother before the podcast. It means we've done our job. Yeah. Yeah, I was like, yeah, you really do. 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 I don't know why. I like I see it laying there and like I know that I I want to read it, but at the same time, I don't want to go back to that kid that I 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. I was like, write the report of biologic this is how you make music. I can, but now I can. I know now that I didn't know. You know, I didn't have to figure it out. You've been really putting it off. I've been really putting that off. Maybe I knows 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. Well, whatever 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 yet to come. But time is also something I think you've long been preoccupied by, well before you began working with Nolan on Tenet, 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 how you wanted your career to go. Yeah. I feel like I've always had like I always had the five year plan, attain your 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 it's some kind of magic right, you create your own future, 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. They all termed reality, I guess, but yeah, that's interesting. Well, now that you're back home and you're sitting with this past year and thinking about what's to come, what do you want down the line? I think right now, 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 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 do trying to like going back into those times and understanding it now, and I realize how important that is from like a musical clarity of it. I'm probably more excited than I ever been 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 it up that'd space again. 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 had 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. It feels like it's already happening right now. Yeah, oh, thank you. Yeah, I'll keep it. If not for me, then for Ryan Coogler. 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 high school college years, without which I don't think I would be the strange other long haired person. And sitting in this zoom call. Well, I appreciate that and we should meet up the time of your life and be that's too strange. White guys are long hair sitting in the back of a coffee shop. I look forward to Ludvig enjoy the rest of the summer. You two, Sam. It was a great time talking to you and I really appreciate this conversation. Thank you until next time, and that's our show. If you enjoyed today's episode, for sure to leave us five stars on Spotify, Apple, wherever you like to listen. I want to give us special thanks this week to the team at Online Voices in Stockholm, the Academy Library, I DPR Universal and of course Ludwig Gorenson. To learn more about all of the music discussed in today's episode, be sure to visit our show notes at talk easypod dot com for more conversations. I'd recommend our talks with Pedro Pascal hero On, Mrai, Tessa Thompson, Alana him dev Hinz and Ruth E. Carter to hear those in more Pushkin podcasts. Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. You can also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram at talk Easypod. If you want to purchase one of our mugs, they come in cream or navy or our vinyl record with writer fran Lebowitz, you can do so at talk easypod dot com slash shop. That's talk easypod dot com slash shop. Talk easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is janicks A Bravo. Our associate producer is Caitlin Dryden. Our research and production assistant is Paulina Suarez. Today's talk was edited by Caitlin Dryden and mixed by Andrew Vastola. Our assistant editors are Claris Gavara and c Jay Mitchell. Our music is by Dylan Peck. Our illustrations are by Christians Chenoy. Video and graphics by Ian Chang, Derek Gaberzak, Ian Jones and Ethan Seneca. I also want to thank our team at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond, Julia Barton, John Snars, Karrie Brodie, David Glover, Heather Fane, Eric Sandler, Jorda McMillan, Isabella Narbaeas, Kira Pozy, Tera Machado, Maya Kanning, Jason Gambrel, Justine Lang, Lee, Tom Malad, Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob Weisberg. I'm San Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next week with another episode. Until then, stay safe and solo