S1: Hello, this is Chris Porter, creator of Solar. If you've
S1: listened through the show's credits, you might have noticed that
S1: I composed all of the music for the show as well.
S1: On the behind the scenes excerpt for This week, I
S1: spoke with Jenni Curtis, director and producer and voice of
S1: Allie and executive producer Bill Curtis to discuss the process
S1: behind scoring solar here. The three of us are discussing
S1: the four note main title theme and the significant hidden
S1: meaning behind it.
S2: The theme is incredibly powerful and it's four notes.
S1: I've said this before, but in the writing of it,
S1: in the conception of it, the sun is a force
S1: to be reckoned with, and it was definitely not to
S1: spoil anything. I made a ground rule from the get
S1: go that no one is ever allowed to control the sun.
S1: They can fight to use its power. That could be
S1: a thing. But no one gets to say, Oh, I'm
S1: just going to take the sun's core. Like, No, the
S1: sun is an entity that we have to cope with.
S1: So in the music, I wanted there to be that
S1: same sense of neither good nor bad, just something massive
S1: and unfathomable. So as a result, the main four notes
S1: are a EGF, which is not technically in major or minor.
S1: It's literally just four notes in a modal sentence. And
S1: I can make it sound major. Minor if I had
S1: it in the C or C-sharp. The theme itself is
S1: just those four notes, and it exists kind of outside
S1: of any sort of modal rationale that we would need
S1: to think about. And in the scoring of it, I
S1: just wanted it to keep repeating and just get bigger
S1: and bigger with the bass getting louder and louder until
S1: it just cut off and drifted out into space, which
S1: was as much as I thought about the composing. And
S1: a lot of that came through in the orchestration of
S1: it where I was like, Oh no, this is the
S1: sound that I'm hearing and this is the distortion that
S1: I'm hearing on it and this is the feeling of
S1: it spiralling out into nothingness. And that's where that came from.
S2: How long did the theme take you?
S1: Well, it's not like a continuous like I sat down
S1: and was like, We're going to do this today. I
S1: would go over to my piano to do something and
S1: I'd be like, I want this combination of notes. And
S1: I knew I wanted to be simple. I didn't know
S1: it's going to be four notes, but I was like,
S1: I just need something simple. And I would just try
S1: some stuff and I'd be like, I'm not really hearing that.
S1: And then I'd go shower and then I'd come back
S1: and try a couple more notes. So it wasn't like
S1: four days of intensive labour, but it definitely took about
S1: four days until I found that combination of notes. And
S1: then I was like, We're going to sit with that
S1: for a while. After a few days I came back
S1: and I was like, I think that's it. That feels
S1: really good to me. We're going to go with that.
S2: I want to talk about all of the various ways
S2: you think of these themes and how you come to them.
S2: But I especially my absolute favorite cue in the entire show,
S2: which we hear a couple of times, is the human theme, which.
S2: If you go back and listen to.
S1: We first hear it in three three with Jessa. Yeah,
S1: and then we hear it in five. I want to
S1: know what you're calling a human theme. I wasn't interested
S1: in writing like, Jamal's song or like Wren's theme.
S2: Can you explain what the theme is?
S1: Yeah. Like, a great example, obviously, is Star Wars, right?
S1: Where you hear the bum, bum, bum, bum bum. The
S1: da da da da da. That is the Luke Skywalker
S1: Jedi theme. It's called the Motif, oftentimes. And it's something
S1: that John Williams just mind blowing. He's the best at it.
S1: I just took the route of I don't want characters
S1: to have themes. I want my thematic material to have themes.
S1: So I wanted there to be like a distressed theme
S1: or programming a theme, different little tiny motifs. And they
S1: all had to be real simple and just spread out
S1: like Simsek did get kind of a theme with the bum, bum, bum, bum,
S1: bum bum that you hear a few times.
S2: So the human theme, which is my favorite piece of
S2: music in this show, and it's probably because I lean
S2: into the emotion of things. And to me that is
S2: the most emotionally gut wrenching piece that comes under some
S2: of the most emotionally gut wrenching moments. But this was
S2: not something Chris composed originally for this show. So I
S2: want to hear the story of where the song came from.
S1: So this is actually a video you can if you
S1: dig around on Facebook and if you can find this video.
S1: My parents had moved down to Solomon's in Maryland, and
S1: in their time of finding a place there to live,
S1: they had come across this beautiful art sculpture and garden
S1: park called Anne-Marie Gardens. It's just a gorgeous place to
S1: walk around because in the middle of the forest and
S1: the trees, they've just put artwork from different people. And
S1: sometimes it's massive sculptures and sometimes it's just little paintings
S1: that they've painted into the knots of the trees. And
S1: so it has this completely otherworldly feel of just walking
S1: into some kind of fairy wonderland where there's art everywhere.
S1: And like, sometimes it's an upside down astronaut on a rock,
S1: and sometimes it's like this gorgeous sculpture with these completely
S1: abstract figures. And at one point they had put a
S1: green upright piano in the middle of the forest, and
S1: it was not very well in tune because it was
S1: out in the woods for four months, but it was
S1: in tune enough that people could play it. And so
S1: I was there with my family and they were like,
S1: you know, you should sit down and play something, come
S1: up with something. So I was like, Well, give me
S1: a couple of minutes, because I'm not a very good improviser.
S1: I just kind of know the feel. And so I
S1: started just playing the one note over and over again,
S1: which again is both meant to be internally retrospective, but
S1: also the ticking of the clock in this particular moment,
S1: because like pianos are nothing but mechanical. To me, that's
S1: just the way that I feel about them. And I
S1: so I came up with this theme and I just
S1: played it and it's it's not very complicated, it's very simple,
S1: but it just had this nice, lilting quality. And at
S1: this point, this was very early on in the stages
S1: of even dreaming up somewhere. And my mom was like,
S1: That should be a theme. And so, like, it sounds
S1: like someone floating in space. And I was like, Well,
S1: we'll see, Mom. We'll see if that happens. Sure enough,
S1: when I started working on Jess's spiel about her other self,
S1: I was like, What was that video? What did I play?
S1: And I actually had to like, dig it up on
S1: Facebook because my father shared it to Anne Marie Garden's
S1: Facebook page and I transcribed it for myself and I
S1: was like, This actually would work really well here. But
S1: then I was like, What? What is the theme? What
S1: is the what is the theme representing? And it kind
S1: of became this thing of when someone. Finally breaks apart
S1: enough to show their inside self to someone else. It
S1: became that and what I called the human theme. But
S1: how do you get over it?
S3: I had to try. Really hard. I wish there was
S3: some words of wisdom or some catchy thing that inspired me.
S3: But there's not. There's only the simple decision that every
S3: time I wake up. I do the best I can.
S1: Look, I haven't been through any kind of trauma like
S1: you've experienced.
S3: So I hope not. Now, I hope you never will.
S3: But here's the thing to remember Every time your life changes,
S3: for better or worse, you lose the other version of yourself.
S3: There's always the other you. The one that said yes.
S3: The one that said no. The one that wasn't hit
S3: by a drunk driver.
S1: So you, like, create a voice for the music and
S1: then you just start attacking your keyboard to try to
S1: see what comes up the way that it works for me.
S1: Especially because I wrote it as I would have a
S1: vibe in mind where I'm like, This moment needs to
S1: sound tense and hollow, and I can't really explain to
S1: you what a hollow sounds like to me, but I
S1: know it when I hear it. Not this moment that
S1: I just played, but like there are some moments with
S1: Margaret where I was like, This needs to feel like
S1: something's ramping up, but it's unclear what I feel a
S1: hollow sound here. And so then I would figure out
S1: musically what's going on to get to that point, and
S1: then I would go back and re orchestrate it and
S1: try to find the sounds that captured the vibe that
S1: I have in my brain. That's only a short clip
S1: of all the things we discussed in the solar panel.
S1: In the extended interview, we discuss the technicalities of music creation,
S1: using music as sound design, and even more behind the
S1: scenes stories about the creation of solar. Check out our
S1: Apple Podcast Premium channel to hear more.