SC: How did you come up with the diverse instrumentation and the sound palette that you used?

MA: One thing about Jordan’s scores is that he really doesn’t like electronic sounds—that is, sounds that sound deliberately like they’re electronic. He doesn’t mind sound design-style music, or things that are not traditional instruments, but he wants it to sound like it’s a naturalistic sound that was on some natural instrument. And that’s because everything that he has chosen to write about so far, no matter how terrifying, is something natural. It’s not a machine, and that becomes super important in Nope, actually, in a way I won’t reveal. Therefore, sounds that sound like they’re from the natural world are always what he leans toward.

Michael Abels Photo Credit: Todd Newell.

Sometimes I use virtual instruments that aren’t found in the world, especially when it comes to sound design, like a texture that could be some part string or some part rattling percussion, things like that. Those are virtual instruments for sound design. And then sometimes I use percussion instruments, which I think is what you’re hearing, which are things that sound like they could be marimbas or kalimbas or steel drums that got distorted in some digital accident. I purely choose them based on if they have the right vibe to them, and if they feel like they have the right of otherworldly, spooky quality that makes me want to lean in.

SC: How did you keep the different genres in your mind when scoring this film? Did you write for one section of the film at a time, or did you bounce around between acts and music styles?

MA: I don’t have too much trouble switching. I have experienced that, “What genre am I writing in again?” moment, but even as a kid, I was fascinated by why one genre sounds one way and another genre sounds another way, when underneath I believe that music is all built of the same DNA. So, if that’s true, how can there be all these different genres? I remember thinking that even as a child, and I thought, “I want to figure out why country music sounds country and why this other style sounds the way it does.” All the music I’ve listened to, I’ve essentially been analyzing it for its types of harmonies and types of instrumentation and types of production and all those things. And so, because that’s how I look at music, saying, “Okay, now I’m doing the Hollywood western,” to me that’s just a set of assumptions that I can put on like clothes. And I can change them pretty quickly.

SC: And you’ve now done your third film with Jordan, which are all considered horror films. How does scoring for a horror film differ than other types of scoring and music composition that you’ve done?

MA: Well, the thing is, I don’t actually regard Jordan’s films as horror movies. I think Us is the one that has the biggest claim to that genre; I could agree with that one. But I feel like Get Out is really a social thriller or a psychological thriller. And as for Nope, I don’t know what it is! (Laughs) I think it’s an adventure. I really think Nope is an adventure film. Now, I’m biased because there’s a lot of big music in the part that makes it an adventure film. But I strangely don’t feel like a master of the horror genre, even though some people sometimes address me that way.

I think that, with horror, it’s really important to think of the audience’s experience. It’s crucial. The horror really doesn’t take place on the screen—at least, not to me—it takes place in the mind of the audience. And therefore, we spent a lot of time talking about, “Are we foreshadowing? Is the music the thing saying that something’s not right when everything on the screen looks normal?” And therefore, we’re deliberately injecting a tense element that wasn’t there without music. Or, is this a jump-scare where the music is not telegraphing anything? So that we deliberately scare people in the moment of it happening.

Between those two extremes, everything in the middle is talked about—how much we preview and encourage people to feel afraid versus how much we startle them and don’t warn them that they’re going to feel afraid. It’s a lot of timing and thinking about how people are going to respond to what they see. Are they going to think, “That’s okay”? Or are they going to say, literally, like characters do, “Nope!”? (Laughs) And also, when I see the actor’s reactions and what’s happening on screen, I’m genuinely afraid. I come from a place of, “Oh my God, that’s really terrifying.” I’m trying to use my own genuine emotion to channel the emotion that the characters are experiencing on the screen. And I don’t know if that gives me an insight into the horror genre in general, but that’s certainly where I’m coming from.

SC: I noticed there is a lot of music in the film, as well as on the soundtrack. Was it challenging to write so much music, particularly when the film relies on it so much?

MA: Well, it was challenging, but also due to Jordan’s process I had longer than you would if you were coming in just in post-production and starting from scratch. It’s a long process, but it’s fun because of all the different hats that I get to wear and worlds I get to visit in the process of helping Jordan create a film. And also, even though a composer and a director will talk about the score being like another character in the film or providing the soul of the film, or whatever phrase might be used, the real job of a composer is to give the director choices and options in how to tell the auditory and sonic version of the story the best that he or she can. And sometimes, that means no score. Maybe the best choice is no score or very little score, but the best way for a director to make that choice is to be able to hear it with music and then decide, “All that music you wrote, I don’t need that.” (Laughs)