How to Navigate Temp Music Without Losing Your Own Voice

Understand What the Temp Is Really Doing

Usually if a director says they love a certain Hans Zimmer track, I try not to just listen to the music itself but work out what they actually like about it. Is it the build, the pulse, the simplicity of the chords, or maybe just the confidence it gives the scene?

Thomas Newman once said:

“There’s a lot of temp music put in and that gives a clear indication of the director’s ideas—but then you mess around.”

I like the “mess around” part because that is really where the score starts. The temp gives you a direction, but you don’t necessarily want to end up in the exact same place. Thomas Newman, BFI interview

Build a Shared Musical Language

One thing I think is useful is making a playlist with the director early on. Put in music from composers you both like and use that as a kind of backbone for the project, not music to copy exactly but something you can both refer to when talking about tone.

Then start adding stranger things.

If the reference is a famous Hans Zimmer track from 20 years ago, maybe the question isn’t how do we reproduce that track, but what would Hans Zimmer be curious about now?

It could mean finding an obscure electronic artist, an experimental cellist, a style of music you haven’t explored before or even reaching out to somebody interesting and seeing if they want to collaborate. Sometimes one musician or unusual sound can completely change the direction.

Jonathan Glazer talked about this while developing Under the Skin with Mica Levi:

“We had a lot of discussions about what sounds might work and what wouldn’t.”

Eventually those experiments “became the language for the film.” I think that is exactly what you are looking for. Not just a good track, but a language that feels like it could only belong to that film. Jonathan Glazer and Mica Levi, Pitchfork

Get Your Music Into the Edit Early

This also relates to finding the sound of the film early.

If you can discover a few themes, textures or even just a strange musical atmosphere before the edit is locked, give them to the editor. They can start cutting with your music instead of building the whole film around another composer’s score.

It doesn’t need to be finished music either. It might be a ten-minute suite, a few versions of a melody, some pulses or just a folder of sounds. But now your musical DNA is starting to make its way into the film and the edit can begin to breathe around it.

Explore Without Losing Yourself

I think it is important to study great composers, but probably more important to study how their minds work.

The Beatles were famous for exploring avant-garde music, tape experiments, Indian music and all kinds of things far outside pop music. But they didn’t completely lose themselves in it. They brought those ideas back and somehow still made Beatles songs.

That is probably the balance.

Explore, but don’t get lost.

During this stage I like the idea of writing almost like a diary. Write a theme, write another one. Make a strange sound. Improvise for ten minutes, try the same melody on a different instrument and then maybe write something which goes completely against what you thought the score was supposed to be.

Some of it won’t work at all.

But somewhere in those experiments you might find a beautiful melody, or one useful sound, and that becomes the thing which holds the whole score together.

Know When to Stop Searching

Trent Reznor once said:

“You have to trust that this is it, because you can always go further.”

That is important too because you can research and experiment forever. At some point you have to trust what you have found and let it become music. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, The Talks

So I don’t think temp music is necessarily the enemy. It is more like a compass.

It shows you where the director thinks they might want to go, and your job is to understand why, then hopefully take everybody somewhere a little more interesting and specific.