Composer Mikel Hurwitz knew from an early age that he wanted music to be a big part of his life. “I always loved music growing up; my parents were both musical and deeply supportive of me taking the piano, clarinet and guitar as far as I could,” he explains. “By the time I was 15, I had played in a few bands and orchestras, but it was when John Welsman, family friend and film composer, invited me to one of his film scoring sessions to watch from the booth that I was hooked.
Composer Mikel Hurwitz
He says there was something magical about watching an orchestral recording session perfectly synced to picture from the booth. “That got under my skin and made me think that this was what I wanted to do with my life. Since then, it’s been a long and indirect path to scoring films. I think, ultimately, I’m just deeply in love with music’s magical ability to tell a story, and I still find myself mystified by that deep connection between music and movement, be it in dance, ballet, opera or film.”
Hurwitz composed the soundtrack for the D.W. Thomas-directed Too Late, a satirical horror-comedy that takes place in the LA comedy scene. It focuses on Violet Fields as the assistant to Bob Devore, famed comedian and host of the live variety show Too Late, who is also a monster. It stars Mary Lynn Rajskub, Fred Armisen, Alyssa Limperis and Ron Lynch.
Let’s find out more …
Because it’s satirical, did you feel that opened the door to be more over-the-top and experimental with your score?
Absolutely. Because Too Late walks the line between horror and comedy, all in a brilliantly satirical and self-aware way, it allowed for comedic moments in the score to be sillier and horror moments to be almost absurdly scary. Usually I lean on being more subtle while scoring and intentionally never go too far into the cliché or over the top, but there were certainly moments in this score when subtle scoring was thrown right out the window and we could lean into the excess of it all.
You built organic synth patches from didgeridoo recordings for Too Late. Can you discuss?
About a decade ago, I was really into playing the digeridoo. I loved how it demands circular breathing and lends itself to exploring multiphonics, blending a drone tone with overtones and incorporating rhythmic pulsing or even beatboxing over the drone tone. I used to record hours of solo digeridoo and have all these old recordings on what I thought would be never-to-be-rediscovered hard drives.
When I was discussing the Too Late monster, Bob Devore, with the director and producer, they told me that Bob’s backstory was from a traditional Aboriginal Australian myth of the Yara-ma-yha-who, a vampire that eats its victims then regurgitates them after it’s done feasting. I thought it was a cool opportunity to dip into the old digeridoo recordings and craft something original, so I took the recordings, chopped them up in Native Instruments’ Kontakt and built pulsating rhythmic synth patches with Kontakt’s arpeggiator, added varying amounts of distortion, lo-fi and filter effect. I then built on that texture for some of the more intense horror scenes.
Can you talk about what plugins you are using? Are there any new ones that have caught your eye?
I use a ton of more conventional stuff, like Slate for its console emulation; Soundtoys for distortions, delays and oddities; Arturia for some of its audio processing and synth emulations; and FabFilter for EQs, reverbs and compression. But I’ve been getting into external 500 series stuff lately and am a big fan of some of the Neve and SSL stuff. The most fun, new, in-the-box stuff I’ve been playing with is AudioThing’s Springs, Speakers, Megaphone and Wires. There’s all sorts of weird stuff they put out that can give you some unique results.
How would you describe your signature sound as a composer?
That’s a tough one because my perception of my sound is that it changes from project to project. But if I step back and think about what I do that’s common to most projects, I’d say there are elements of more contemporary orchestral scoring techniques (extended techniques), fairly diatonic-to-late romantic chromatic harmony, a devotion to rhythm (be it string, woodwind or synth ostinato/pulsing), and fairly simple (and hopefully memorable) melodic content, unless the moment calls for a more elaborately through-composed, melodic-driven score. I’m a big fan of Bernard Herrmann, and I’m almost positive he is in my musical DNA in more than a few places.
Mikel Hurwitz in studio
What sort of instruments would we find in your studio? What are your favorites to write with?
Uff. Many. Currently I have a bass clarinet and a Bb clarinet, an accordion, a melodica, electric guitars, nylon and steel-string acoustic guitars, bass guitars, a ukulele, a banjo, plenty of percussion, a drum kit, a decent and growing Eurorack synth collection, and a fun guitar pedal board that I can send any audio through and mangle.
My favorite to write with currently has been the synth stuff – it’s a delightfully bottomless pit of sound exploration.
You worked as Danny Elfman’s assistant in the music departments of The Grinch, Dumbo, Justice League and The Girl on the Train. What are some essential lessons you learned during that time that you now apply to your own films?
I worked for Danny for about 5 years, and I think the biggest thing I learned from him is to be devoted to experimenting on every score. There’s something intrinsic to being an artist that you have to keep exploring. There’s always such a risk as a composer (or any creative with moderate success) to be typecast, and it seems to me that if you experiment on some level on every score, it’s a clear path to continue your artistic evolution.
Other than that, aside from so many granular lessons, I learned the benefit of sending multiple versions of a cue to the director/producers, especially earlier in a film, to home in on the heart of the score. Often, if you send three wildly different versions for the same scene (one more cliché, the second more unexpected and the third wildly out of left field), and they give you feedback on all three, then you can get a pretty good idea about the type of score they want from you.
Any favorite tricks and workflows tips that help when composing for film?
Many. The biggest thing is to get the filmmaking team involved in the scoring process: Share Dropbox folders (audio-only and video of each cue) and have everything correspond to an active database where anyone can see cue names and numbers, progress, different versions, etc.
More than that, in terms of actually writing the music, I like to write themes first and get the instrumentation of the film more or less set. Then, from the huge template, make a reduced version of the full template (or view filter, if it’s available). From there it’s easier to parse out to different cues as you need them while keeping the sonic integrity of the thematic material. (In the reduced template, you also save mix settings, plugin data, synth patches, etc.)
Additionally, I’m a huge fan of tempo-mapping a cue before I start writing a note. There is always a rhythm to a film edit, and like a drummer in a band, different editors have a different feel for rhythm. This way, you can really feel out an editor’s rhythm, and it’ll actually make writing and choosing tempi (and tempo changes) much more intuitive as you move through the score.
Aside from composer, you are also an album producer and engineer. As an engineer, what are some of your duties? What projects have you engineered?
The role of the engineer and producer are often separate but can overlap tremendously in album production. I’ve typically been more of a producer that can wear the engineer hat, meaning that I can choose a band and work on the arrangements, but I can also sit down at a mixing board and record a band, then mix the recording into something meaningful.
An engineer is typically more technical (“Let’s use this mic or this preamp.” “Cut the 400Hz by 2db to get the mud out of the vocals.”), while a producer is more creative (“Let’s get a rounder sound for the bass or fuller sound for the drums.” “Drop the guitars before the chorus.”). But truthfully, they are like the right/left brain of album production, really.
In terms of albums I’ve engineered, there is a nutty indie album called “In the Sane” by Virginia Rubino that I did a few years back that I still think about. It’s quite a ride!
