Full transcript of “Murray Gold: Conversations With Composers”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:06 fortime ba nominated composer Murray gold is one of the UK's best known writers of Television music it's a genre that so often demands economy and instant originality and those are qualities that gold has displayed with great style over the last decade or so early on in his career gold seem to Glide with ease from one Landmark project to another dramas like que's folk Vanity Fair and Shameless featured offbeat quirky scores that revealed Gold's preference for the controversial and unusual but it was in 2005 when writer Russell T Davis rebooted the classic BBC Sci-Fi series Doctor Who for a new generation that Murray Gold's huge popular appeal was established writing a huge amount of music for each episode with the full might of the BBC National
0:53 Orchestra of Wales at his disposal Mari Gold's scores for the series have become his signature and the adventures of this Timeless Time Lord would simply not be the same without him gold has become the Soul at the center of the series here at the Roy AB Hall's Elgar room maray gold is talking to me about his career so far and about the art of writing music for television one of the things that I always used to do was I was always interested in recording so I would take um a tape recorder and do that thing that kids sometimes work out that you can do which is like you record yourself playing the piano and then you play it back and you take another recorder and you record everything you playing the the the playback of you playing the piano and then you doing something else on top with like bashing some spoons or
1:39 something so you got percussion and piano suddenly and and then I realized there was a thing called a for trat recorder which actually does that miraculously in one box so I uh I just nagged and nagged and saved until I could get one of those what's interesting is that it's actually a very common story for for people who've ended up writing for film and and tell television that they they really learn how to do it in the theater right uh because you're having to learn to usually write for small number of instruments and the function is it's often very specific theater is exactly like film in that you have you have one play is worth of of of entries to make your point and you then you go home you don't it's not like Doctor Who where Nine episodes later you suddenly realize
2:24 you could have done something really clever with that Melody it's like everyone left about 15 weeks ago by the way with theater you you you have to you know you you you've got to get the smell of what the thing is about go right to the heart of it play a bit of music which lasts about 10 seconds before the before the curtain goes up and it's got to tell you everything about where the thing is set what it's about what kind of tone it's got whether it's a comedy or you know and then you'll maybe have another bit of music in the entact you know and then and then one um at the at the interval so yeah you're right it's it's a very prec precise uh thing to do when I sit at a piano it's like that blank piece of paper you know for any composer um like in George Orwell in 1984 when he get you know he looks at
3:12 his blank creamy notebook and you think wow anything is possible here and um a lot of it is uh um sort of down to how you play the piano and I like to theater stuff got you know the
3:58 documentary director comes in and and then it turned out to be a guy called Mark mundan in fact i' tried to play him some stuff I'd gone around to his house with a tape and he'd really liked it and he said it's kind of got a style and it's really transparent he said I can't use you for this but maybe I'll use you for the next thing what happened which you can never guarantee with anything you just this one of those things where you know the next thing I knew he said oh and the BBC have just given me this Sunday night drama called you know we're doing a costume drama vanity fair and I was like great I'm so happy for you enjoy it um and then he said no no but I'd love you to do [Music]
4:53 it nearly there when it was delivered I got this memo cuz I don't think there were emails in those days it's like 98 um I got this memo and it just said is this a joke little roll AA there's so often a Temptation for composers to look for the exactly the right kind of music for the right kind of setting and the right kind of period and you've sort of done the opposite but it works perfectly because it gives it such energy it goes right to the heart of the of what the show is about it's
5:39 called Vanity Fair it's about the the you know the decline of middle classes and the elevation and then decline of of a woman um who uses every every you know all of her womanly tenacity um to rise to the top of society and collapse so it's theatrically it's it's about Decay and deprivation and you know the Bourgeois and sort of you know absence of values so so it just felt like it should be somewhat like you know Kurt V kind of Vima Republic kind of all these kind of whatever I mean I I try not to even ask questions about that because you get so literal about things you know it sounds a cliche but if it if it if you feel
6:25 like it works just do it Paul abber had been what watching it and Russell was looking for a composer for qu's folk and it was they were it was the exact same time I think probably December 98 or something like that and um Paul abber and Nicola Schindler and I you know worked a lot with both of them and they're both Geniuses of of their field they said who who's around who doesn't write this is one of those things who doesn't write TV music we don't we just don't want TV music and it's like I didn't have a clue what TV music even was anyway I don't even know what they mean by that I still don't really but um I think what you know they they what they mean is they don't want stuff that just feels in in the holes they want tunes and Melodies and things like that um and Paul Abbott said oh did
7:14 you see Vanity Fair and they said no and he said well it's really you know what about that so I'm in this hotel room with which I was sharing with my brother and suddenly this phone Wings he goes oh Murray um the that score for Vanity Fair was that outrageous and I said who is this he said it's Russell Davis I've done this thing it's called Queer as Folk I'm more proud of it than anything I've ever done in my life all of the shows that I did you know not Fantasy Fair but subsequently from this were Northern workingclass drama and it was you know it always fitted in with the philosophy of life that I had that you know life is just not a whole bed of roses but when it's romantic and you're you know deprived you know in economically or emotionally or in in any
8:00 form that that these stories like clocking off and Shameless and Queer as fault are set in you know a little bit of love goes a long way and it means a lot and so I would write these quite Ro romantic and offbeat scores to to stuff and I would make it triumphant and romantic and happy where you wouldn't expect it to be it just felt like oh what this is actually about is the birth of sexuality so it needed to have sort of like that Eddie Cochran rock and roll thing so that's where all the strumming came [Music]
8:50 from if I'm working on a show I will do 40 versions of something myself and then I will allow one out I just never put three if you don't like this one here's the other one i' just be like well this is it because I've just sat through I've done 40 and obviously you know sometimes people just go God that's ghastly what on Earth were you thinking about and then I resign do you I mean yeah cuz some compos say okay go back they go back to the drawing board and start again I'm terrible at doing stuff again unless it's on for something that I've seen because if somebody tells me that they've seen something and I haven't seen it I mean I can try and see it but I've tried my best to see what what is in in the material right at the beginning I mean I haven't sat and done 40 versions of something so that I can
9:37 you know someone can effectively tell me you're just not seeing what this is about I mean a little sit down and chat isn't going to help that because that's just q1 so you might as well bail but a lot of composers say that it's much harder to try and encapsulate the spirit of a series in 30 or seconds or a minute than it is to actually do a much more expansive film score that is true I mean sometimes it does take to get to the end before you know what the beginning should be um you know and I actually had this thing when I was working with Frank Oz who was like I did Death at a Funeral and I arrived in in New York I was staying with my brother and um where he'd asked everyone to come to work on the show and I had this back room bedroom it was super hot and there was
10:22 no air conditioning and Frank O came and said I'm presenting this show at Tribeca Grand tomorrow and I need need the end queue needs to be happy and I said I haven't even seen the film he said I don't care I need the NQ it needs to be happy just go and do it I mean what the hell do you do I mean you just play a C major and play it D you know and that's that's happy you want it happy that's Happy uh and was he happy no oh well look you mentioned uh Paul lebert earlier and uh we're mooving on to Shameless because that's another one like uh quer folk that really I mean it came straight out of the box immediately hit you uh with a style and a confidence it was the most incredible show I've ever seen the first two series and again
11:10 when it arrived on it arrived on video and it was shot as if it a home video I mean it just looked terrible but there was just something about when you got to the the end of the first episode which I think was James McAvoy punching out a bouncer and a couple of you know Manchester lasses just laughing and looking at him thinking like you're a hero and Frank and everything about it it just made me want to jump out the window in a good way I mean this is music you're like oh my God this is like rock and roll this is the most rock and roll television show I've ever seen now nobody's saying the chats withth state is the Garden of Eden well it's been a good home to us to me Frank Gallagher and me kids who I'm proud of cuz every
11:57 single one of them reminds me a little who me they can all think for themselves which the me to thankful when I do a show when I do anything in life at all um you know I try and milk it for all of the philosophical content I can get from it because you're working with people who are really bright who are passionate about stuff who got stuff to tell you and you're basically privileged to be spending time with them you know I grew up in Portsmouth a middle class family and I'm hanging out with real you know Northern workingclass writers who've got Amazing Stories from themselves of the like of which are as foreign to me as they would be to someone from [Music]
12:57 Mars [Music] I was up in West Yorkshire Playhouse and cuz I I'd written this play and it was being performed and Christopher Eon echon was starring in it and um and he kept on Vanishing um and not learning his lines because he was doing screen tests for this stupid thing and um obviously which nobody would watch and why isn't he doing my play properly and um and and then he he came he said to me oh yeah this it's amazing it's amazing muray it's proper stuff what and he like it's amazing stuff like one of the companions goes and sees their father die and it's proper drama and I was like
13:45 yeah yeah okay we just do my play please um and and all of the do hulot came up to see the play because they supporting Chris and then there was the announcement and then Chris sort of went into a sort of he had played Cat and Mouse with the Press so I was right there when all of that was happening but it was nothing at all to do with me cuz that was some you know it was about April or May 200 4 I just didn't think about doing do who at all really um and I got then I got an email and and I think I S subconsciously pretended that I didn't want to do it and told myself that as a kind of suck sucker for for it you know not happening and and then I got this email very close to the time when it had to be finished like it was
14:31 October and the dub was in November and it just said I'm doing this thing I don't know how it'll work out but um I should have asked you this months ago um do you want to do the music for do who and I was like I just wrote back yes that would be great thanks and [Applause] that so then I had to go down to set and see things happening and and and I I I made made this you know I made this tape and I studied everything and I made this incredibly electronic thing and then I went and played it to Russell and Julie and I think right at the end after about seven and a half minutes of electronic stuff there was this string cord and they goes oh we like
15:17 that and I was like okay I think what you're telling me is you want strings and they said yes and I said well we don't have any budget for any strings or anything like that and you need the music and that then they said what just what's that that sounds good that's nice I was say yeah okay well I'll do that then and and then I had to go and change my computer because I used I don't know I was using a computer program called qbase and I had to go and buy these fake strings and I had to plug them in using a software program I didn't know how to use and then I two weeks later I had to deliver the score and you know um and none of it got any Reverb on it or anything like that um cuz I didn't realize that you should put Reverb on string samples otherwise because they
16:03 don't sound very realistic um and um and that was [Music] Broadcasting [Applause] [Music] I have to ask you about the theme because of course that is the thing that everyone knew was going to be in place it had to be in place right so and you will have known essentially the responsibility of doing it so I didn't
16:50 you must have done you must have known the theme anyway I knew the theme I mean I I was I watched Doctor Who a lot I mean did they say we need a new arrangement that no what what happened was it came a bit later I think I'd done maybe one or two episodes and um because we had this big amount of time December to April before it was broadcast properly and I think they were increasingly finding that as they played it um the theme just didn't cut through I mean it cuts through it's like sonically nothing Cuts three more you can't tame that thing it's a very empty lonely sounding theme which is fantastic fantastic um and was fantastic it's a just incredible piece of music um and it it it sort of puts this fear you know
17:36 into inside you of of being left alone in the dark and with the visuals and everything obviously it's iconic but it was a very different tone you know the show was about love and affection and it was warm I mean it it was warm occasionally in previous incarnations of the sh but this was overflowing with War I mean it was the warmest thing on television and why why Doctor Who how did that happen you know and so you know you get to the end and it's incredible and this girl has been effectively seduced to go off in through space and time with the tour dark stranger and suddenly you just have lonely and and scary and it just didn't work so they
18:21 said we we don't want lonely and scary so can you just you know do something do something please I didn't even know there were 13 episodes I just got through episode one and then they said there's you know and then there's another one and then there's another one and then there's another one and there's another one it's like I I I don't think I ever asked any one single thing about what the show would entail or what you know beyond that initial meeting um with Russell and Julie um the rest of the direction that I I the advice I got was minimal um but that episode did have all of the themes in it that all all of the main themes were in that episode that finished up in the the 13th episode so they all stayed through it I just went about it in the exact
19:09 same way that I would any other drama as in treat these characters sincerely treat them like their hopes and expectations are the your hopes and expectations don't second guess them be transparent if you love them show you love them if you don't love them show you I mean no never never show you don't love a [Music] character it's going to eat us it's going to eat us it's going to eat us it's going e well maybe we're going to eat it but I don't like the O Let's see Tiny shot if I my screwdriver I could probably send a pulse and stun it well where's your screwdriver well concentrating on the
19:54 [Music] passes within reach you know there's a a real chance to way it's WT in the doorway is keeping it mouth open there is just agree with me cuz I've only got two goes and then it's your turn two goes two ARS right there okay open wide it's fantastic to have the orchestra I mean the the number of notes that I write and that Ben orchestrates well we I was going to mention Ben Foster because he he's your sort of right-hand man on this project isn't he he is yeah Ben orchestrates from my um MIDI files basically a midi file is uh I I will give a piece of music that sounds like that to Ben um and um he will notate it for the instruments of the
20:39 orchestra my versions come in varying degrees like sometimes if we're really pushed because like I did I had to write the music for not not the Christmas carol but actually the the one that followed that that Dr Widow and the Wardrobe because of various things to do with the schedule I had to write that in 10 days so and that was about an hour's worth of Music um and for orchestra so I would just just sit down and right first thing in the morning and just trying I mean trying to get through 10 minutes a day which actually for me is is not unusual but it's still spiritually draining one of the unusual things about the Christmas carol episode is that music is also part of the narrative in a sense you've got Katherine Jenkins as a guest star in the program and she sings
21:28 in it but she sings in it for a reason it's written into the script there's a song to be sung in it I hadn't read the script actually i' it had been sitting in my inbox well I don't have an inbox but you know what I mean and uh Beth um previous exact producer um had had said you've have you read the script maray and I said yeah yes great fantastic what a script um and she said so have you done the song and I said um there's a song and she said yes you you know that bit towards the end where somebody sings and saves the entire universe and because they've been let out of their prison for one day which the person who's been in love with them for all their life and it turned him
22:14 into a really miserable bastard um has been and he releases her for one day and she sings to him and it's going to be one of those kind of iconic moments on British television I was like oh that song no pressure whatsoever and she and then she said well Katherine Jenkins is flying in from Russia on Friday and I was like which Friday you know she said it as in now is Wednesday tomorrow is Thursday and the next day is Friday and I was like fantastic when you are here music is all
23:08 music is [Music] all don't hello my old [Music] [Applause] [Music] friend
23:56 the [Music] sh by this point the Christmas specials in particular are getting 11 12 million people watching them on Christmas Day a family experience one of the few I guess on television that we get these days do you ever even remotely think about that while you're doing it do you feel that pressure no not at all no I mean I just I I mean I think I probably feel I'm like the old guard on Doctor Who now you know I'm the one that's been there all the time and um I feel like if I respond
24:42 to something a certain way I think every to some extent people use me as an emotional gauge for you know what it's about I mean it has even been known that somebody has asked do I like it as if it mattered from within the you know from you know what does Murray think about it because normally that question is only put to well what did you know the people with the power think about it you have the power I don't have the power I just like occasionally someone listens to me when you associate a theme with a character you love of course it's going to get the emotional drive that the you know the Who theme is always going to be doct to who that's what it is but you
25:27 know when I am the doctor represents Matt Smith and he will it will always represent Matt Smith for people now that's just [Music] done you have to be able to support yourself somehow you have to have a roof over your head but you have to try and meet people who are either putting on plays or making stuff for the internet whatever it is you have to do stuff all
26:12 the time you have to churn out music because it's all very well spending five years you know waiting and do writing your Masterpiece but you've got to be able to write music very fast every single day because when that time comes you're not going to get any runup for it you've got to hit the ground running so hopefully that time will come but you have to just use every means possible you have to be a street fighter about it because if you're not in the privileged section of daughter son of somebody famous if you don't you know if you're not born and bred in La if you all of these things make it more difficult for people to attract attention but never attract attention by waving stuff in
26:58 people's face so that you really tick them off you know you want a you want a bit of pull towards you you want people to see your stuff and you just want people to feel that there's and don't try and do what everybody else does I just got so tired of hearing people doing imitations of H Zimmer you know because they're 21 22 years old and you're like why are you trying to do H Zimmer H Zimmer already does hansim what you want to do is come to the thing from a different angle and just Express Yourself constantly and if you I mean I know this sounds idealistic but if you are doing it because you love doing it then you're never GNA there no bad side to that is there it's no bad side you just you know I I sometimes make this joke like don't
27:44 tell anyone that I would do this even if I wasn't paid to because then they won't pay me the things I choose to do I I I have to have a way into them I have to love them because otherwise I don't know how I'm going to to work on them I just just allow myself to make myself upset while I'm watching this thing and sometimes it's ridiculous and it seems really narcissistic um if in one way but I will sit there imagining something and I will ball my eyes out you know and and in the end it's like it's really good to be able to trust that mechanism because that is ultimately any there's probably tons of you here that can write music and it's not really you know music is an art and and this is more of
28:30 a sort of craft thing and a sort of um just you can you can make somebody cry with one little piano cord it's just about where you're putting that stuff um and as as Richard Bellis a film critic wrote writing film music is not writing film scores you know it's where it goes and so I really trust my inner mechanism it's the one of the only things about myself I do trust is my own inner mechanism for for working out what is going on in a scene and what people will respond [Music]
29:26 to [Music]
