Ludwig Göransson

00:00:15Speaker 1: Pushkin. Ludwig Gornsen is, without a doubt, one of the most accomplished and distinctive film composers of the twenty first century. In twenty twenty, after having worked on Tenet together, acclaimed director Christopher Nolan hired Gornson again to score what has become one of the biggest movies of twenty twenty three. Oppenheimer. Ludwig, who emigrated to Los Angeles from his native Sweden in two thousand and seven, has racked up dozens of writing, producing and scoring credits. He started out working in TV and oversaw music on hit shows like Community, New Girl, and The Mandalorian. He eventually started scoring films with his old college friend Ryan Kugler. Ludwig composed music for all of Ryan's hit movies, including Fruitville Station, the Creed series, and both Black Panther films, the first of which won him the Academy Award for Best Original Score in twenty nineteen. On today's episode, I talked to Ludvig Gorenson about his incredible body of work as a composer and producer. He explains how his rigorous musical training in Sweden prepared him to write the complex sections of Oppenheimer's score. Ludwig also plays some of the more moving sections of the score for us in an effort to show us how he came up with one of the best soundtracks of the year. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Mitchman. Here's my conversation with Ludwig Gorensen. Congratulations, I should say on the success of Oppenheimer, and also like just the reception to the music has been. It's been incredible. I'll say I always go into movies trying to know nothing. So if I hear you know, Christopher Nolan's been on a movie about Robert Oppenheimer and Robert Downey juniors in Slen Murphy, I'm like, great, that's as much as I want to know. And as it's going through it this music is incredible. So as soon as I got out, I went to pull it up so I could listen to it on the drive home. I had no idea it was you was doing the music. Yeah, it was so good man, Thank you. When did the project come to you? It came to me about right as Chris had finished writing the script. And we have done a movie before called Tenant Yeah, and that was an incredible experience. Obviously, I've been well aware of Chris movies and Chris films and the music, the way he uses music in his storytelling and incredible scores by Hans Zimmer and David Julien and the things that they did on Batman, and he had a huge influence and I think every film composer's life. And it also transcendent just film Goble was it was, It became kind of a it changed films I think, and the sound of film. What did you notice about it before you started working with them? What had you noticed about it? Well, how much front center the music is in his films and how much they're driving the story and how important it is to the energy into the tempo and the feel of his films. And it's like its own character. And that's something you know when you're getting started in this career trying to write music for a film. You know, you go to the theater and it's not every time you go see a movie and you really and you can really hear the music. Yeah, you know, and I think for with Chris films, that's you go to see his films and it's it's a real experience. Yeah, it's interesting, you know, It's like, it's not often you go to the movies and you feel like the score is so prominent. Like if the music is prominent, it's often a needle drop, and that feels like the song, you know, the NWA song or the one Stone song that you're hearing that you already have an emotional attachment to that becomes a character in the movie. But it's it is very rare in modern cinema to feel so attached to film music as much as you do when you go to see a Christopher Nolan movie. How conscious are you of that while you're writing the score for Christopher Nolan movie, I'm not thinking about when I'm in the moment and writing the music, I am thinking about the vision of the director. What is she or she imagining? What's the things that I can't see in the script? What are the things that I can't see when I see the film for the first time? And sometimes I even want the director to talk to me like I'm like I'm an actor, or tell me as much as possible about this film, having as many conversations about the script and as much input as I can get about what their vision is the more helpful it's going to be for me to create the world of music and the sound world for the film. So when Christopher Nolan reached out with the Oppenheimer script, you know what was a message to you? Well, first I he didn't say anything, so I didn't even know what it was about when I sat down to read it. Just gave it to you. No, No, I go to his office and read it, because they don't give out the scripts, no clue at all. No, So I go there. I'm obviously super excited, and I sit down in the room and I'm in it for a three hour, three and a half hour journey. It was extremely exhilarating. I remember reading the script for the first time. It was so capturing just just being in his life, like seeing the world through his eyes and feeling what he was feeling in those moments. Like everything was written from the first person perspective. So it was an incredible emotional experience reading it for the first time. Well, at what point do you start allowing yourself to think about music in relation to the script as you're reading that. Well, I'm starting immediately thinking about the possibilities and where to go and I also know that obviously, this is my second film with Chris, so I know that he's open for any ideas. And then shortly after I'd read the script, we have a conversation and the only direction he gave me was that he was interested in He was very interested in seeing how we kid have the violin portray the personality of Oppenheimer interesting, so what do you do with that? So and also Chris knows that my wife's Serena Gornson, is an very accomplished violinist, and we're fortunate that he wanted to take that route because that comes very handy would have a wife that's also violinists. And we were able to experiment long hours in the studio with things that kind of, after a while, drive me, drive both of us a little crazy, just kind of try to make the violent sound in ways that I haven't heard before, and trying to manipulate it with audio and sound effects and turning it around. And but a lot of the experimentation also came from the conversations I had with Chris in terms of how we can go from You know, Oppenheimer's is very neurotic, but there's also scenes where he's probably you know, confident, and we wanted to go for something at times very beautiful and confident to something completely neurotic and horrifying. And how can we go between those feelings with the split of a second on the violin, with with just the performance of a vibrato or doing a microtonal glissando up and down. You know. On first viewing, one of the things that struck me was the decision that I loved for essentially the climax of the movie, which is the testing and trinity for just to go silent? Yeah blank, Yeah, was that in the script from the beginning? Yeah, No, that's that's what's you know, so many things or in the script, Like I felt when I watched when we finished a movie, and it was like it was almost like reading the script again, and it's it's the footstumps are in the script, the pause of silence in the script. Everything. I feel like he has probably tempo and music in his mind while he's while he's writing these movies. So there was a island the first explorations. Yeah, so the violin, I was we were recording long hours here in my studio and I was doing half like very long kind of glissandos trying to make sounds like almost like air raid sirens. But after a while I knew that the most important thing to get right from the beginning was the emotional core of the story. And it gets easy sometimes when you start working on a project and you start just messing around with production and sounds, and like you're trying to you can hide things behind cool sounds or a bit behind effects and sounds. And I feel like you tend to do a lot of that when you write on the computer, because you use technology and and the way you see music on the computer is very horizontal and vertically. So for me it was important to get the emotional core right, and lately it's mostly the last couple of years, I feel like stepping away from the computers is helping me with feeling more creative. Will you ever just sit down with some staff paper? Yeah, I mean sitting by the piano writing with staff paper, or sitting by the roads, or picking up the guitar or whatever. I mean. I'm not an expert in all instruments, but I can cheat on a few. So a lot of these themes were actually wrote on the piano, and I remember the specific Openheimer theme came about after we recorded eight like hours of like a Raid Sirens and we were kind of going crazy and I just sat down the piano and just played this bass melody, super simple bassline, doude doo do do you mind showing me? Yeah, that's Mike, Yes, yes, sir like this. M m mm hm m h. I put that in like low cellos, low base and cellos in a slow temple m m added this melody mm hmmm, mm hm m hm m m m m m m hm, m mm hmmm m m m m m m hmmm. Account it's really stunning. And then right after I wrote that on the piano, I asked Herina to play it, and the way she performed it was just like it's incredible, beautiful, intimate performance with its almost no vibrato, like very fragile, was was perfect. And I sent that to Chris and then he called me back like twenty minutes later, and it's like, this is it, you know, this open Emerus theme? Wow? And did you think of it as a theme or you just think of it as Yeah? I thought I knew it. It was kind of special, you know, that's amazing. Yeah, And did you at this point, again, you don't have that you've read the script? Did you have it yet? I read the script and I had in my head, but no at home, nothing to reference how they get back and they hadn't shot the film. But something that's really cool that that Crystalan does is he brings people in very early. He brings me in very early in the process. So while he's having tests, you know, with visual effects and with also costume tests, and he invites me in to see the screenings of those tests at Imax Theater, and I'm sitting there and I mixed theater, you know, watching these incredible visual effects spot that he worked on with Andrew Jackson and some incredible experiments that I remember at the time, I felt almost like I was dreaming when I was sitting in that room. It's black, dark theater and seeing these kind of fluorescent lights like swirling around you, spinning faster and faster and faster, and then it's cutting into icy fire coming out and it's like just feel very lucky to like, you know, go on on a Monday morning is like watch this in the theater and then then come out of there as like a tremendous inspiration to like, some of the things that I saw really inspired me to help me to realize what I wanted the music to sound like, Like that sense of energy that I saw on screen. It's incredible that he had essentially already had the theme locked in before shooting. Like that gives it almost like I mean, as you say, it's all there in the script, but music does add an extra emotional element. I must I'm sure that must have helped to some degree the emotional contents of what was on Yeah on camera, Yeah, no, I it maybe it wasn't as black and white where like it was like this is his theme. But like I think we both I think we both knew that it was special because we don't want to jinx anything you don't want to like because you know, you never really know if it's gonna work until you actually sit down with and laid in with the edit, and that's when you really can. But but I feel like, I mean, I've done two films with Chris and and so far we've been pretty good at trajectoring the sound and the feeling of the of the music before do you think about it thematically? I mean, because there's two things happening here. There's like there's really kind of quiet personal story and then it's almost like the second the co star is nuclear bomb, you know, or a top bomb, which is insane, Like how do you balance those two things? Yeah, no, it was It was very Uh, it was a really tough movie to to write the music for, especially because it is as such a personal journey the feelings that you need to put the audience inside of him, Like the audience shouldn't sit in the theater judging him. There should be there on his journey, feel what he feels. And that's so that's what that's what the music needs to do. And the only way to do that is kind of to put I need to put myself into shoes too. And some of it is some of those feeling like sadness and loneliness and emptiness and like kind of have the searching for something how to kind of how the movie stars and how the music starts. That was a little easier for me to kind of navigate through and being able to I've been in some of those emotional states before. But yeah, and then there's the there's that scene of like inspiration when he's going through he sees a picauso painting on the wall and you see that, you see because of painting on imax screen insane. It really had a big effect on me. And then he sees in bed and he sees this atom swirling around and around, like it moves faster and faster, and like writing that kind of exhilarating music is so fun and also at times mathematically challenging for me. And it was really interesting how I had to like combine the emotional but also with the theory, which is also kind of part of my background and education, and how how you can use theory and what is the theory only takes it so far, But then there's also these more complicated emotions and feelings, like when when he's done the first trinity test and he's about to have his congratulatory speech to his team and to his you know, to all the scientists, and he's having a panic attack. One of the most striking things I've seen in a long time. Yeah, And that was just that it's so complex, and it's so that visceral and cathartic that experience. I mean, they had that even reading the script, and that was so hard to imagine. So that that That was the last piece of the puzzle that I that we did on the movie. That score you left it for the end or you know, we're trying over and over and over again. It wasn't until the last day of the dub when resolved that piece of music. How did it change? I tied it into another an earlier feeling and earlier emotion and earlier scene in the movie, which is the scene when he goes to those almost for the first time, and then he's he's watching these stars. He's watching these stars getting swallowed of a black hole, and he's talking about what if I could, you know, be here lost almost and do things all the most and work, you know, work at combine my passion with science. And this first time I'm kind of using these synthesizers that it kind of feels like the impending doom and the synthesizers just kind of pulling you downwards in like a downward spiral. And I don't know how I could have thought about it. I was like, what if we take that feeling and that emotion and put it in this scene again and it worked. You were trying something completely new, something that just had like horror elements, like something I was just I was going with that feeling of like horror and shocking, but it wasn't until it got that kind of emotional depth to it that it started really started to feel real. I also don't want to make it seem like the music had a big part of that scene, but you don't want to. But like the job you have that is very hard is you don't want to put too much of a mark on it, but you also don't want to fuck up what's on the screen, and you can undercut the moments. Yeah, absolutely, it's it's like it's one of the best I think moments of cinema of all time, that scene. Yeah, and that emotion. How may I never felt like that before seeing a film. We have to take a quick break, then we'll come back with more of a conversation with Ludwig Gorensen. We're back with more from Ludwig Gornsen. Earlier, you said mathematically I think the phrase you use is mathematically complex or what did you mean by that? The score was there's some parts in the score where I've was able to get ideas out with music that I haven't been able to achieve before. With that, I'm describing those scenes where you feel like there's a constant temple change, like everything's getting faster and faster and faster, And I was trying to channel the feelings of the energy of constantly pushing the boundaries of energy forward, like the spinning atoms. And the way that I achieved that was through math, with having constant temple changes in a way where it didn't make musically sense. So in a way you can kind of only do it on the computer. It's twenty one temple changes and this piece of music. But what made it human was we had it did it all with the live string ensemble recorded that all those temple changes live in one continuous performance. But that was a lot thanks to anthem to the computer that I was able to do this kind of interesting tempo changes with this hexotonic string pattern. That's a six note scale that I was working with at the time, and that six out scale is something that I had in my two books from from college. Did you mind showing us what a hexotonic maybe? Yeah, what a hexatonic scale is, and maybe how that translated to some degree to work. Yeah, So basically, hexatonic scale is a six note scale, and you can make a six note scale from two courts that doesn't have any similar notes with each other. So two courts that doesn't have any of the same notes with each other, is like a B minor and a C major. Yeah, so that that makes this scale so and so and out of these six notes you can make patterns. Right. So that's just that's just a basic and that's that's combining a B minor scale with the C major scale B minor chord, the B minor chord is and then the C major cord is. That's that's six notes. So are patiating both of those. Yeah, So I'm starting with the B minor major and then I'm doing the B minor again. By starting by starting the third on the on the minor third and then the major third of the C major, you can make a thousand different different patterns within within these six mills, you know, like you know. So one of the patterns that ended up making for this movie is this. That's that's the extonic. Why do you think the hexatonic scale came to you as a as a tool for for for this? I think a lot of music ideas come to me, and I think to creative people I think I think you get a lot of ideas in general to anyone from from like your childhood, or from like the times when he felt like sense of inspiration, or and I think maybe seeing the scene when he's he is, I feel like he's in he's in college somewhere studying, and he sees things for the first time. It's because of painting. He sees he's thrown grass at the wall, a glass at the wall, he's listening to right a spring, He's he's like discovering all these things for the first time, those early scenes in the film. Yeah, And and I was maybe that made me think about when I discovered things for the first time where and when I was in college and I was playing these types of skills, and I was, you know, playing with my starting a band for the first time, my first jazz quintet. And I mean, I honestly can't remember exactly what it is, but I think a lot of times you look at yourself and you draw from those moments that that had such an impact on those first time memories. You know, your you know, your first kid. You know you don't you don't remember how it feels, but it's it's deeply rooted inside of you somewhere, an emotional memory or necessity, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, And there is something about that that is a little fractured sounding, you know, yeah, yeah, and it sounds it's yeah, it almost sounds like you scale you're practicing on something and then and then but then I maybe I wanted to make it feel like you're like really mastering it, and you know how he then drilling it mastering it. Yeah. I love It's so funny. It's really like feels like three different films in a weird way to me. You know, I could really enjoy any of the acts on their own, isolated, you know, the first acts a great movie. Yeah, second act. I mean just that the Trinity stuff is out of out of how did you start processing the Trinity stuff from a composition standpoint versus the early stuff with the Trinity stuff is up until that point when the when they start preparing for the Trinity Test, everything's been scribbles on the note pad or you know, or theories or you know, conversations, and when you see the bomb for the first time, the actual bomb, the physical thing, it's like I wanted the music to change character there, so I kind of threw all the organic elements on the side and just changed the tone of the music a little bit and had focused more on sound design and used like three elements, which is one of them being like this throbbing bass, this stumping bass which almost sounds like a heartbeat, and then you have a little tacking sound like like a Geiger counter like and then these crackling sound effects that sounds kind of like a nuclear reaction or something. And that's just those three elements, and that's it's a big shift of the music in the film to that point. I mean, you know, it's already kind of like that shit moment, but like you're literally there at that moment. You're like, they could blow up the whole world, you know, they could kill all of us. They still yeah, and then I and then I would say one of the other important parts the puzzle was to find the right theme for for the for Kitty and which is kind of the love theme. And you know, she's the person that that really holds him down, you know, and and angers him as a person. And and you can tell that she's making a lot of the big decisions too, I think. And she's such an interesting character and I think the relationship they had, I think was was was very special and beautiful and important to him. So I wanted her theme to feel completely like almost like the yinto yang, and it certainly seem like he needed her. Yeah, but in the end, like the way that they're working together, and then especially the last thing, which is testifying you know how important that God? Yeah, right, And so I wanted her. You know, her theme has this the richness of of the piano and and it's also a wallz and it starts with these cores that are just have these long pauses in between them to kind of highlight the tension because the scenes where she is in like there's so much tension. Like her performance is incredible, especially you know when when she said that the deposition is witnessing and you having these cours and like you don't know where it's gonna go. Is she gonna make it or break it? You know? But they just I feel like the end of the way it grows just kind of makes you feel like how strong of a character she is. And then you have the cello melody playing her theme and then the violent melody whose open hammer's instrument kind of joins in in the middle and it becomes the walls and the two cellos and the violin are playing against each other, and it's almost like they're dancing together in mind place where it's warm chords. I always love to hear the kind of what you're h m M. We're gonna pause briefly, then come back with more from Ludvig Golorensen. We're back with the rest of my conversation with Ludvig Gorensen. Jazz was sort of early on where you're interests laid musically, right, Yeah, that's kind that's where it went in high school and college. When did classical music enter your life? If ever, it was right before I got into jazz. Actually it was like around the same time I got into jazz a little a little earlier, and first I was into heavy metal and rock and instrumental rock and guitar shredding and heavy dark metal. Then I get into pop music and try to I wanted to be part of the Shay Run studio in Stockholm, like like working on Britney Spears and Vester Boys and like that. That was the factory. Part of that was in that was in high school being part of mix Marna Studio, and I think that was that kind of went hand in hand with me being very interested in technology at an early age. Like I loved being able to record myself. I had like a four track portal recorder that was experimenting with at home, and if you're trying to cassette tape on the other side, like some half of the tracks went backwards. And and then I got an eight track eight at recorder and just messing around with that and and drum machines, and it was there was something about technology that the kind of spruced my interest in in in recording myself. And and I mean I was always playing, you know, recording myself and playing it for my parents and listening to it obviously over and over by myself. I guess it became a way where you could hear, you could really hear yourself how you were playing, and you could get better, and you could like hear like, Okay, we really need to practice on this, practice on that. And then I had a program on my computer called like Impulse Tracker where I was able to program like one zeros and ones and make music that way. That was before I had cubas, and that stuff pre cubas yeah, pre cubased, pre pre daw yeah, and then getting a synthesizer and being able to just play around with that and hearing those like creating weird sounds. And I also went to music elementary school, so all my friends were all in music, and I was able to start a band and we had a very very cool band together called Thromosis in sixth grade, like a hardcore band. Did you record the group? Yeah, yeah I did. I was the recording engineer in the mixer, and we made a little tape and we sold it at the local record store for two dollars, and then we got a review in our local newspaper two out of five. Exhilarating, no heartbreaking. Really we were so depressed. That's your first go you know, to even get picked up something about in our man's this was the best music ever created. Of course, of course, do you remember anything that they said in the review. I think they were trying maybe a little to make it so nice, like where these guys go in sixth grade or starting out, but it was kind of like there was was it felt like belittling? Yeah, yeah, yeah, because we were like we thought we were like competing with the real gang, so the real boys dogs, Yeah, the big dogs. It's very unique, I guess to have grown up so far away from you know, like New York lam and to have had like a Max Martin making music round you know. Yeah, and that this was before that I was into that mix morning pop music. This was in This was when like our town where we were from was was all in like hardcore scene, Like we had Melancholin in Sweden, and then we had some other they were not from my hometown, but we had other hardcore bands from my town called one was called nine and one was called Outlast, and there was a It was a very pretty cool time. And then and I remember seeing when I saw My Sugar for the first time in like seventh grade or sixth grade, and that was a cool experience. Does that stuff still resonate with you? Yeah? Absolutely, they're They are like my probably the only metal band I still listened to. Yeah, yeah, one of my favorite live bands. Did you guys view American hardcore and metal as being a little watered down? It was hard to have access to that music for me at least. I guess Metallica though would have been like that was something right, of course that was that was like the dream right, that was I mean least my that was at least my dream band my and I think also in our culture in Sweden a Scannavia, it's like you always look up to you always look up to America, and I think that it's in every kind of fields. Yeah. Is it true that you discovered USC just on the internet that you had no idea what USC was, you had never heard of it. Yeah. It was very complicated to try to find colleges and try to find schools. And I had to do it, you know, all by myself, no counseling, no, all that was so foreign, Like this was two thousand and six, so the websites were still kind of ugly looking and very Yeah. And I had never been to the States. I didn't know anyone in the States. It is very very, very very very far. The closest laceship at the States was probably like the Brett Easton Ellis books that I was reading at the time. Oh yeah, that's a great view of America. You must have gotten Jesus surprised he came why la over New York? Or was I knew that I wanted to do film? Scoring got it. I had gone really into film scoring. I'd gotten to work with an orchestra in high school and having them perform my music for the first time, like having written music for orchestra seventy people that was playing my music in a concert hall, was that feeling was transcending everything else. So it's like trying to think about how I can do that again. And also the mus that I wrote was very much like John Williams and If Star Wars was in Nightmare Pro Christmas, and I knew that after that that I wanted to become better on my instrument. And also in Sweden, like the only kind of route you can take is through education and the most one of the most difficult schools to get into was the Royal College of Music in Jazz and Guitar, which you did and after I didn't get in the first time, so I had to take a year off and like practice more, and I went to another school called the People School, where you just in the middle of nowhere just play on your instruments and you just play around, you know, the countryside by high country side, and there's everyone in your class is just there to play and it's it's amazing. Uh, And then I got in. What did you have to audition? Yeah? Yeah, what do you have to do to get in? It was nerve wracking because it was I think, I don't know one hundred people applying for two spots, you know, and these are one hundred more like I would say half of those hundred are really good at their instrument. And it's a first day of edition. You play, I think you play a song, you play standard and any standard you want, and leaves maybe whatever. Yeah, I think I played. Uh. I think my first edition I played a Pat Metheni song that's on his trio album. It was a song called never Too Far Away from Pemine's album Questions and Answers. And so you played the first day, you play one song, and then you stay at school the whole day and you're just nerve wracking, just waiting that list to get put on the wall. Who makes the next cut and you know, and there's twenty I think twenty people go to the next round, and then day two. If you're lucky enough to be able to make a day too, then there's I think a site reading test. There's I think just improvisation tests where they put some cores in front of you and just improvise, and then the band is playing like five different tempos and all different time signatures, and then you have to After that, you have to wait. And then there's also like a theater test, a piano test, and then they have to wait for three months or something like that. Crazy yeah, and there and so you do that test in like Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malma, which is the three cities that has the College of Music. Goddamn was it gutting to not get in? Yeah? Ah, because I was most of I mean most most of the times. I always kind of most of my life. I had kind of like a in music. I always kind of got I set up goals for myself that I always made most about some confidence in yourself. You're showing up playing some ATHENI figured me. I definitely had confidence because of like my band is in high school and got to write the music for the orchestra and then but I was very important part of my career to go to finally get into the College of Music and then not being the best of my instrument, being like feeling like shit. I had to practice for two years every day three four hours a day. Do you think you really got much better? Oh? Yeah, that's how I spent the first two years. And then the last year I started my own band and we want a bunch of competitions, and it was kind of like, oh, look I was able to You didn't think that was going to do this. Yeah, so you did that, and then you felt like just moving to la without some sort of structure felt maybe a little do you put yourself out too far out on a limb and that's why you decided to try out USC. Yeah, I don't. I don't think you can even move to la as a as a tourist. I mean you could, you could live it for three months. It's if I had to have a job. How would you get a job? If you and you can't get here without the job, that would have been impossible. So I had won a couple of film music competitions in one of them was in Netherlands, and the first prize of when I won that competition was to score a commercial. So I got a job for like a music commercial house in Netherlands and I was still in Stockholm. This was right before I finished college, and but that was like a very to me. Winning that competition and and talking and doing like a film scoring job was like pretty cool, and I knew that maybe I had potential in this. And I also scored a couple of student features in Stockholm. So I applied to you see, I found you know, I found the website. I think it was I found the school in New York. I found a school in LA, maybe one in England and one in Australia. And I only applied to the one in LA because I wanted us to film the type of films that I wanted to work on. And I got a phone call from the professor, Brian King, and he was he was ahead of my program at the time, and he was like, hey, man, this is Brian calling it from LA. It's sunshine every day. You have to move here. You're gonna love it, bro. It's I was like, okay, sounds amazing, this sounds great, great California. That's with that like super positive voice. He's gonna love it, bro. And I was like, hell, yeah, I'm totally doing this. My parents were a little hesitant, but yeah, I made the move. Didn't know anyone in LA. First couple of first year was very difficult. It's hard when you don't know people, and you don't know the lay of the land. It's yeah, it's not very forgiving if you just no. It was like I was crying every night for like at least the first three months I can own on the bus back back from UC on Venice Boulevard back to Kover City. Wow. And so I found I moved closer to UC, and I moved into a it was a fraternity house that that then they had thrown out the fraternity so it was only open for grad students. And and then it literally felt like I was walking into American pie. I didn't know that culture, but everyone on my street was partying every night and it was great. I mean I was. It is a strong error for USC. Got it's falling on hard times right now, but that two thousand and six or seven USC, Yeah, it's a strong era. It was amazing. I was just I was in my little room working with headphones every night and just like opening up the blinds and seeing like these dudes and no shirt and drinking alcohol from those red cups and having the life. And that's so that's also where I met Ryan in the in that housing. Like pretty quickly, it seems like you started getting war, you know. Within a couple of years, I got Marley and Me. You know, yeah, I was I was the assistant for Theodore Shapiro, who scored Marlon Me and he was working on he was scoring Tropic Thunder at the time. So I just finished college and that was my first job and it was amazing. Must have been incredible. Yeah, Marlon was a huge movie, you know, Yeah, it was. It was like Marlon Me and and yeah, and Trump Costilla was in the room when we were recording. That was just obviously a fly on the wall sitting in the back, you know. But like I had to pinch myself a couple of times, like see that I had really gotten this job. And then I was also teddy. I was working with Shapiro. He was also an incredible guy. Like I had a lot of my friends in my class got jobs for other composers that were not nice, you know, and my but the Eddy that I was working for, it was incredible. He seemed to just really take a liking to you. Mentored me, you know, taught me so much about, you know, the crafts of film scoring, because it's it's writing musical film is there's definitely a craft to writing music, especially when I mean timing is everything. How long did it take you to figure out the just the process, the various processes that are involved. I think I worked for I was head as assistant for about two or three years, and I was just looking at the craft and looking at how you craft the scene and our craft, where the music ends, where it starts, how you build it up. And also I had and also you see, I had some great and some great professors, and the reason why I wanted to go there was that all of the professors are kind of working in the business too. Yeah. But after I think it was about twenty and ten or two thousand and nine, two thousand and nine, I think I got my first job, which was a community and there was an incredible chance for me to get that TV show and it was a big chance for me, and the Russ brothers hired me and Dan Harmon. How did you meet How did you meet? Them? Big on Teddy's recommendation because they had worked with him before and he didn't have time to do the show and he was he said, like, my assistant's great, and that show was I put, you know, all my time twelve hours in a day in making music for that show. And it was the greatest training because you know, there was her brothers really cared about the music. Dan Harmon really cared about the music. We scored it with live orchestra a couple episodes and one episode was Lord of the ringspoof one episode was like a Star Wars fool. Like I got to do all these styles of music. Yeah, so I got really kind of trained my chops and the music had a huge part in this show. And then after that I got because the music supervisors on that show referred me to it was a bit Meriweather who did New Girl, and she hired me for that show. And then that would have been like twenty twelve eleven or something, and then Happy Endings. It was another show that I did, and I was really into, like the sitcom show. I had like three shows on network on air every week. It's huge. Yeah, that must be it must be a grind. Yeah. And I was like twenty seven maybe where you still feeling like, dang, I want to get a movie. Yeah, I was like I was starting to get a little bit not nervous, but I was I definitely felt like, oh I can I can do this furtherest through my life, I can see how you can, really just because it's so hard to say no. Like someone's asking for another TV show, Hey, do you want to do this TV show? Yeah? Okay, okay, yeah, Like I'm going to meet new people, going to get another good paycheck, and I can like make my team bigger, and and there's you know, I could easily taken on ten TV shows a week and like kind of made myself, you know, an incredible life. That's another version of an incredible Ludwig gorens In life. You know. Yeah, But creatively, maybe I wouldn't have been as content as I am now. Maybe I'm sure. I'm sure. I just pride to degree. Is there anything that to this day that if you think about, makes you WinCE a little wins just an experience like you fucked something up or where you just sort of feel like I wish I'd done that different even or I wish I wish I had Just maybe I can look back and it's like, Okay, well I didn't need to do that project. But it's when you started, When you get started, and like it's you know, you do. You're also learning when say no and but I think probably, I mean definitely the most challenging projects I worked on was definitely like the last two years, going from Wakana straight into Open amer Like it's just the weight of both projects and like them being so a huge movie, two huge movies, two back to back. Yeah, and that had both of them had I have a weight to it. We're talking before I got a five and a seven year old. So Troll's World towards big in my in my house, I got to say, that soundtrack is banging. How how was working on that with, like with Justin Timberlake and Anderson Pack And Yeah, that was a lot of fun. I was, man, I was, I'd done Awaken My Love, I was about to do Mandalorian or I was starting I had started out with Menlorian. I think I'd gotten an oscar for Panther one, and I was doing Troll's World Tour right for Tenant and but I didn't do the school. I was doing the songs, and I thought, I just thought it was so fun because it's that obviously the whole story was driven by music. Yeah, so we get we get the chance to do all these covers and to do all these original songs and were you able to help in the selection of some of the songs. Yeah, no, no, I was that was that was very very much part of everything. Like me, like Justin and me worked close together on the selection of songs, and then also in terms of like how we made the originals. You know, we got Anderson Pack on this on one or two songs. I had originals on there. So good, they're really good. Yeah. Yeah. And then I got to work with next Morning on this song Sizza James James Follinroyd did a song with him, good group People, fun people. Your ranges, your range. As you're listening that off and it's a black panther tenant and controls world. Toward that, I was like, oh my god, the range is just out of control. Behime song too with the rock and roll rules. It was like the rock rock rock and roll rules. Yeah, that's right, it's so good. Yeah. What So you're trying to kind of thin out your schedule a bit, I guess what's kind of gonna How do you you're guiding sort of light or principle going forward? How are you going to know what to say yes to and what to say no to? I mean I feel like I have I have a pretty good sense of my next five years, from my next ten years, that the type of partists that I want to do, I constantly want to challenge myself. And I also feel very I'm very fortunate to be working with the collaborators and people that I think are really pushing the format and film forward and pushing the music forward. And so yeah, I'm right now. I'm just I'm like, I'm just taking a little like a breather and waiting for the craziness to start up again maybe and maybe middle next year. I actually don't know. Are you committed to a couple of projects? Ready? I know, I'm just I'm just working on my own music right now, my own album. Yeah great, Yeah, how far into that are I started twenty eighteen and then Black Panther one came along, so I got like fifty percent done, and then I started again to twenty nineteen and I got like eight percent done, and then another movie came along, so it's like, I'm just like, Okay, I need to finish this now before the next thing starts. Yeah, and what's it? What's its sound? What's the It's kind of like second Ellly quirky, uh proggy, all organic elements and I'm trying to sing too cool man. Well, thanks so much, man, Congratulations on all the success, man, all the thanks for all the incredible music. Man from more stuff that I just enjoy putting on myself to this, you know, give him my kids something to put on that won't make me want to jump out the car. It's like, just, yeah, I appreciate you having you out in the musical universe. No, thank you for having me on this podcast. And it's so nice to talk to you. And yeah, I really appreciate your time. Yeah, thank you man. Thanks to Ludvig Gornson for having me to a studio to break down his approach to film scoring and composition. You can hear his work on the Oppenheimer's soundtrack, along with his sample of his other music on a playlist app Broken record podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tolliney. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's back an the Beats. I'm justin Richmond.