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Breaking Bad is as addictive as Walter White's blue meth, even to people who work on the show.
Before the pilot aired, composer Dave Porter saw it at a colleague's house and knew he was going to need more than one fix of AMC's nervy drama that stars Bryan Cranston as a chemistry teacher who makes a fascinating descent into the drug trade.
"I was absolutely hooked," Porter told Wired in an e-mail. "After that, I was as persistent as I could be until I was hired."
Since then, Porter has scored every episode of the show, including the creepy opening title sequence. The fact that the show wavers between drama, suspense, black humor and mild insanity gives Porter a lot to work with – and presents huge challenges.
In advance of the show's midseason finale, which airs Sunday, Wired asked Porter what the secret is to scoring one of the most complicated shows on television. What we got was an earful (metaphorically speaking) on what vintage synthesizers make the best soundtracks, which instrument is used for the Walter White "Heisenberg" hat, and exactly how Porter scored what will (presumably) be the show's pre-break cliffhanger.
Wired: What's your process when you score an episode? There are some freaky-sounding instruments in there.
Dave Porter: My goal right from the beginning of Breaking Bad was to create a soundtrack that captured the unique world of the series. I decided to avoid traditional Western orchestral instruments, but most anything else has been fair game. I employ a lot of ethnic instruments, found sounds and recordings, vintage and modern synthesizers, and a fair bit of electric guitar. All of these sounds get recorded into Pro Tools and then usually processed by plug-in programs or external processors to morph them into something new.
A few of the more interesting world instruments I've recorded for the show include a Japanese koto (sometimes used when Walt dons his black "Heisenberg" hat), reproductions of traditional Aztec war whistles (for the Mexican assassins) and an Andean flute called a quena (for Gus Fring).
I have a large collection of vintage synthesizers that have all seen action to some degree. A few that I used this past season include my Oberheim Matrix-12 and OB-Mx, Roland Jupiter-8, Octave-Plateau Voyetra-8, Sequential Prophet VS and ARP 2600. I also incorporate snippets of recordings that I've made, and even sounds that appear in the show itself.
(Spoiler alert: Major and minor plot points follow.)
Wired: Breaking Bad has a lot of different emotional tones. How do you manage to get all of them right and still retain some consistency?
Porter: One of the most important roles of score, particularly on a television series, is to be a unifying presence – and I think one way to accomplish that is by maintaining a specific palette of sounds and composition techniques. On Breaking Bad, for example, we rarely use music to make something more humorous, and if we do, it is most likely a licensed song. Likewise in scenes that have intense dialog, there is rarely a need to add anything musically because the writing and acting performances are so strong. This leaves me free to concentrate the power of the score on the moments of greatest intensity, whether it is action, intense suspense or powerful emotion.
"There aren't any 'good' or 'bad' guys in the world of Breaking Bad, so the score, just like these characters, exists within many shades of grey." Wired: Are there any particular characters or kinds of scenes that present unique challenges?
Porter: Writing the music for Breaking Bad is always a challenge because it's a moving target: Situations and characters' perspectives are constantly changing, and the score needs to reflect that. There aren't any "good" or "bad" guys in the world of Breaking Bad, so the score, just like these characters, exists within many shades of gray.
Wired: Since Season 2, the end credits of each episode are some kind of variation on the main theme. How do you go about making those songs? Do you try to keep it within the realm of the same tone and theme that the episode ended on?
Porter: During our music spotting session (the meeting where we decide where music should be used in an episode and what it should try to accomplish), we treat the end credits like any other scene. Vince Gilligan (creator/executive producer) and I discuss what sort of emotion we would like to leave the audience with that week. Sometimes I incorporate a sound that played an important role in that episode – such as Tio's bell, the infamous box cutters, hospital respirators and most recently the playground swing that Mike's granddaughter played.
The theme motif itself might be performed by the resonator guitar of the original, but more often than not I'll introduce an entirely different instrument. Sometimes they work to build the intensity toward the next episode; other times they are meant as a moment for the audience to reflect on what it just witnessed. Since the end credit score is generally preempted by promos when the show airs on television, they exist as a little extra bonus for people who purchased the show on DVD or from iTunes. With so many new viewers watching Breaking Bad in marathon sessions, I think that little moment between episodes has become even more important.
>"Vince Gilligan and I discuss what sort of emotion we would like to leave the audience with that week."
Wired: A lot of the music has an almost Wild West quality. Are you trying to invoke that mood?
Porter: Although the instrumentation isn't Western – aside from the resonator guitar used in the show's main title theme – there is definitely a shared aesthetic with many classic Western scores. Particularly early on in the series, Vince Gilligan would occasionally reference the use of sound in films like Once Upon a Time in the West. Elements found in those soundtracks such as sparseness in orchestration, short solo motifs and very deliberate tempos just seem to work well in conjunction with the desert landscape.
Wired: What's been your favorite scene to score? Why was it your favorite?
Porter: It's hard to choose, but most recently I loved creating the score for the cold open of Episode 506, "Buyout," during which Walt, Mike and Todd disassemble the dirt bike. In addition to being a very moving and intense scene, I was afforded the luxury of having the music be the only sound in that scene. For a film/TV composer, it's a very rare occurrence for your work to be in the spotlight like that, and I was determined to make the most of it! Some of my other favorite moments include Jane's unfortunate demise, the arrival of the Mexican assassins in the Season 3 premiere, Walt and Jesse getting stuck out in the desert in Season 2, and the infamous scene with Walt falling apart in the crawl space of his house last season.
"The secret to great cliffhanger music on Breaking Bad is to not use music at all. A shocking revelation will play out powerfully enough without the need to overemphasize it." Wired: This week's episode is the last before the midseason break. What can you tell us about what you worked on for the episode?
Porter: Music and sound are the last steps in completing an episode, and we are often cutting it close to air dates, but thankfully we were able to wrap our season last week. I can't tell you too much about our final episode this year except to say that I got to write music for some very emotional moments that will definitely influence the final episodes next year.
Wired: Presumably there will be something of a cliffhanger before the midseason break. What are the secrets to making great cliffhanger music?
Porter: The secret to great cliffhanger music on Breaking Bad is to not use music at all. A shocking revelation will play out powerfully enough without the need to overemphasize it. On Breaking Bad, we try to avoid using music in those moments that might have historically been accompanied by the "dun-dun-dun!" at a big reveal. So if there were to be a cliffhanger in *Breaking Bad'*s final episode of 2012 – and I'm not saying that there is or that there isn't – that ending would probably come without music.
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*Breaking Bad'*s midseason finale airs Sunday at 10 p.m./9 p.m. Central on AMC. Porter's score for all five seasons of the show can be purchased on iTunes or Amazon.
