SC: So, when you start to write a cue, how does that work? I see a piano behind you. Do you just sit down at the piano and start composing?

MA: Yeah, I’m a little old school in that I like to play my piano as my primary way of getting my inspiration. But there’s a bunch of technology sitting right on the other side of the camera here, and my chair swivels. So, I start in the 19th century and the minute I have an idea I swivel around to the 21st century (laughs). It also depends on what style of music it is. I like to write in different genres, so I usually use the compositional technique that works best for the genre. If the music is mostly based in sound design and might not even sound like music, then I write purely with the sound and I’m structuring and sculpting the sound.

But if it’s an orchestral cue, I’m going to start at the piano and I’ll maybe even notate that music to figure some things about it. I might need to look at the notation before I actually mock it up digitally, because there are technical things that sometimes are much easier to see than hear, if there’s a problem. Like, “Why does that countermelody not work?” If I see it, I’ll say, “Oh, I see what the problem is.” It sounds crazy about music that there are parts of it that are visual, and when you read music, there are some things that you can learn from that. If I can avoid writing it down, I do, because that’s a secondary step, but I’m not afraid to if I need to get it right.

If the music is mostly based in sound design and might not even sound like music, then I write purely with the sound...

SC: You write in a lot of different genres and styles for this film. Where was your starting point for the score? Was it with a specific theme that you then expanded on?

MA: There were different starting points, because Jordan comes at his stories from so many angles, so you have to jump in the pool and start swimming and then figure out where you are. One starting point was a concert orchestral piece I had written called “Urban Legends.” Jordan listened to that when he was writing the script. He wanted to try temping with it for a place, and it ended up working. It worked so well that we recorded an excerpt of that piece as part of the score. The scene where we see that big shot of OJ riding through the valley from above uses an excerpt—edited and made to work to the picture—from the original concert piece. So, that was one starting point. Another starting point was the western music, which always plays as source music. It plays as if it’s part of the scene.

SC: Yeah, I heard that! I wasn’t sure if it was your music or if it was something that he had found and placed in the film.

MA: Yeah. That’s a fun thing I get to do for him, which is write a lot of different source music, but it’s all still part of the score. For example, there are a couple different cues that are supposed to remind you of an old-school western. They’re very orchestral—one is a hoedown and one has whistling and guitar and people shouting, “ho” and “hey”; it’s very spaghetti western-style music.

On the one hand, it’s a bit satirical, because the amusement park in Nope is a western-themed park. But the music is done absolutely legit. I’m a huge fan—as Jordan is—of that western vibe and that music, so we wanted it to be as if it really could have been something from one of those old films. And at the end of the movie, the whistling cue finally comes to life. Sonically, it comes out of the onscreen speakers and then becomes part of the score, so we understand that it really is part of the score.

SC: The third act is more of an action-adventure than the first two, which are more horror focused. How did you go about scoring that final act?

MA: In the first two thirds of the film there’s some music that’s really horror. It’s very aleatoric—which means quasi-random—in some ways, and dissonant; it’s not something you’d find in a western at all. So, that was another starting point. But at the end, the film really does turn into an action-adventure. At least, that’s how I saw it, and it was really important that the music be exemplary of that.

One of the reasons that Jordan is able to mix genres so successfully is because each one of them is as authentic as it can be. When it came to the action-adventure genre, yes, the audience is supposed to feel like they’re in an action-adventure movie and become surprised and delighted by that. That meant, for the first time ever in a Jordan Peele movie, a big brass section, as well as the kind of percussion you would get in an action-adventure movie. There’s also a wordless choir. And we’ve always used voices, because Jordan really likes voices in his films, but this time, we used that wordless choir of, “A, E, I, O, U,” in the background, which you get in action movies a lot. But at least in my choir, the vowel they use morphs and goes from “ah” to “oh,” to “ee” to “eh,” and everybody’s shifting at different times so that it has a little bit of an otherworldly quality to it.