Serial: the podcast to rule all podcasts. Since its first episode was released on October 3rd, it's been downloaded or streamed over 5 million times. With about 1.5 million listeners per episode, Serial has outdone every other podcast and climbed to the number one spot on iTunes. Sarah Koenig reports the story of the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee and the highly contentious sentencing of 18-year-old Adnan Syed. What sets Serial apart from straight journalism are the elements used in television shows: the weekly release, a cult fan following, and chilling theme music that sends shivers up the listener's spine. The music has become iconic, used in parodies and the theme song itself has been played over 22 thousand times on Soundcloud. Composer Nick Thorburn (Islands/The Unicorns) talks about scoring the show and tells us how it ends (PSYCH!).
Pitchfork: How does composing a score work, creatively?
Nick Thorburn: I’m totally open to outside opinions and criticism, but I operate in such a vacuum. I write by myself, it’s a very solitary experience, and I’m not used to, I’ve never had a label or anyone to say, “We wanna hear a single, we gotta come back and retool some of these songs until they’re more catchy.” I’ve never had anyone give me any feedback like that, so this is very new for me, to come and work for hire and have a job. It’s been refreshing. It’s a good challenge. Melody is just my life. I eat sleep and breathe this stuff; I’ve always got songs ready to go. It’s not a challenge to conjure anything, it’s just whether the music I supply is desirable.
Pitchfork: The producers of Serial were just open to whatever you wanted to do?
NT: Thankfully, yeah! There were no revisions, I just spent a couple of days just chipping away at some stuff. I made 13 tracks that I sent them, and they liked it. The first song that I made was the theme song. They sent me the pilot episode, which runs narration, not the final version. I made this song that felt like it had legs, and I placed it at the end of the episode, and it felt significant. There were no revisions, there were no problems. I feel like I got lucky. I was just letting my intuition and taste guide the process.
Pitchfork: So, when you wrote the theme song it wasn’t the "theme song"?
NT: Yeah, I wasn’t sure if it would be that or something else, but I was just dicking around on my little OP1, this weird little Swedish synthesizer, and the song came out. I sent it to them thinking it would be a good piece for the show and they immediately agreed. I had an inkling that it should be more than just something that played in the background once or twice.
Pitchfork: What do you think about when you’re scoring?
NT: I am cleaning up the cobwebs for sure, I’m not thinking about much. I don’t want to over think anything because the second I do, I start to fail.
Pitchfork: Do you listen to the podcast?
NT: I do.
Pitchfork: Do you like it?
NT:
I do, yeah, it’s super interesting. Intense.
Pitchfork: Were you a big This American Life fan before?
NT:
I was. When they came to me they had the seal of approval, the This American Life affiliation, so I knew it was going to be of a certain caliber. That’s what made me care.
Pitchfork: Did anything in particular influence the music, or was it mostly just the content of the show and the mood you were trying to evoke?
NT: It was the content of the show. I really do just try to tune as much out as I can and make things that I think just sound good to me.
Pitchfork: Did you mostly improvise?
NT: It was maybe a riff here or there, maybe a chord progression, and then I would track it and build it from there, but I was definitely making it up as I was going along, there wasn’t a lot of foresight or planning, that’s usually how it goes.