(Welcome to Notes on a Score, GVN’s interview series highlighting the composers and musicians behind some of the year’s most acclaimed films and television series.)
You may not know Matt Novack’s name, but you have definitely heard his work. In fact, he may have been one of the busiest composers in the back-half of 2022.
“[I worked on] Miracle Workers, the Murderville Christmas special, and then the Harley Quinn Valentine’s Day special, like, all in a row in the back half of last year. I was exhausted.
Novack says it with a laugh, but there’s no denying the man is busy. However, there’s no rest for the weary; he is already preparing to begin work on Harley Quinn Season 4, hot off of its Critics’ Choice Television Award win for Best Animated Series, and is anticipating work on the announced Kite Man spinoff series. “It’s still very early. I’ve only seen the animation for the first two episodes so far, so I don’t even know where the season’s going. Harley Quinn is a show that I would watch even if I wasn’t working on it, so I definitely watch it like a fan.”
In collaboration with lead composer Jefferson Friedman and additional composer Christopher French, Novack has been contributing music to the DC Animated series since its first season. “It’s a division of labor,” he says, describing the composition process. “I’ll take some of Jefferson’s themes and conform them to new scenes or I’ll write my own themes. Chris is in charge of the source music for all of the songs and some of the score. Most composers can do everything, but we all have our strengths. It’s pretty collaborative.”
Since getting his start in library music composition, Novack has gone on to compose for film, television, podcasts, and video games. From television staples like Childrens Hospital to hilarious romps like They Came Together and How To Be a Latin Lover, Novack’s work has run the gamut of musical comedy.
Murderville, an improvised comedy crime show on Netflix, saw him working with on-screen improv for the first time. “We discovered that you can’t really score improv. The trick became finding ways to score minimally in a way that wasn’t calling attention to itself and detracting from the improv. I started thinking of it like a video game, as though these guests are playing an improv game.”
He remembers a specific eureka moment when scoring the show’s first episode, featuring previous late night staple Conan O’Brien. He is taken to a restaurant and, after being fed very spicy hot sauce (“Real hot sauce, by the way”), struggles to maintain his composure during the scene. “If this was a video game, what would this be? It would just be a tension pulse, something simple. I wrote it as kind of a placeholder, and it just worked. Sometimes simple solutions are what work. Everyone wants to write great music, but you still have to support the scene.”
His next project is the newest season of Miracle Workers…hopefully. After a slated January 2023 release, the project was delayed by its home network, TBS, due to scheduling changes behind the scenes. However, Novack insists the show is ready to air and is still slated to premiere soon. “We’re all really proud of it,” says Novack. “Now I’m just patiently waiting.”
Season 4, entitled End Times, is set in a post-apocalyptic universe a la Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s the first season of the show with an original composer at the helm, so Novack approached the score using as much original music as he could. “I always want to replace temp music, and there were a few moments where they were planning to use it but I said, “I’m going to try my hand at this.” I won most of those battles.”
In an extensive and exclusive interview with Geek Vibes Nation, Matt Novack talks about working on all three of these shows, how to combat temp music, and some of his favorite scores from last year. Here is our conversation, edited for length and clarity.
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Larry Fried: Matt, you’re an incredibly busy guy and we’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s start with what is probably your most popular project, Harley Quinn. Are you excited for fans to check out A Very Problematic Valentine’s Day Special?
Matt Novack: I am, yeah. I think it’s pretty fantastic. It’s an hour long and there’s a lot of music. It’s basically a double episode.
Fried: What’s interesting about Harley Quinn is that, from my understanding, you started the show credited for “additional music,” but as the show has progressed, you’ve taken on more of a role. Can you define what the difference is between “additional music” versus “composer?”
Novack: It differs from project to project, composer to composer. Most composers write all the themes and then oversee their expansion, which is what the additional music composers do. On Harley Quinn, it’s a division of labor. I’ll take some of Jefferson [Friedman, the show’s lead composer]’s themes and conform it to new scenes or I’ll write my own themes. Chris French, our other composer, is in charge of the source music for all of the songs and some of the score. Most composers can do everything, but we all have our strengths. It’s pretty collaborative. I really enjoy team scoring because you’re all working together, you’re not doing everything by yourself. It’s good to have someone to bounce ideas off of, like, “Hey, check out this cue. What do you think? Did I accidentally knock something off?” Composing is always a team effort, whether it’s collaborating with other musicians and other composers or the showrunners or the directors.
[both laugh]
Fried: Harley Quinn Season 3 is the most musical season so far. There’s a lot of really fun musical numbers, including an inclusion of the Music Meister who is, in my opinion, the most underrated Batman villain of all time. What was your favorite musical moment from the season that you contributed to?
Novack: I really loved King Shark’s episode, “Another Sharkley Adventure.” I wrote a big action cue for him which was a lot of fun.
Fried: You also have a King Shark cue from Season 2 in “Bachelorette,” “The Legend of Nanaue the Shark Man.” Do you have an affinity for King Shark as a character? Is he fun to make music for?
Novack: He’s a lot of fun. Jefferson did a great parody of “Under the Sea” called…something like, “Everyone Poops Under the Sea.” [laughs] That was fantastic and hilarious. Then I got to know King Shark and his world, which became my go-to stuff.
Fried: Obviously, you can’t talk too much about Season 4, but what are you most excited for going in? Should we expect even more big, brash musical ideas?
Novack: I hope so. I’ve actually only seen the animation for the first two episodes so far, so I don’t even know where the season’s going. It’s still very early. Harley Quinn is a show that I would watch even if I wasn’t working on it, so I definitely watch it like a fan. I have some little insights of where it’s kind of going to go, but I don’t know where it’s going to end up.
Fried: Let’s move onto Miracle Workers: End Times, which sadly was supposed to come out earlier this year, but has since been delayed to a time to be determined. Fingers crossed we’ll get to see it soon.
Novack: Yes, fingers crossed.
Fried: It must feel weird to be in this limbo where you have a project that’s finished and you feel like it’s ready to go but it’s sort of floating…
Novack: Yeah, I know. It’s a bit of a bummer. We were all looking forward to this season. We’re all really proud of it and were looking forward to kicking off the new year with the show. Well, what do I do now? [laughs] So, yeah, now I’m just patiently waiting. I don’t know what kind of decisions are happening, but I think everything is going to be rescheduled on that network.
Fried: So much of your work is playing in these farcical, satirical worlds, and that is very much in the same vein as Miracle Workers. What was it like to work on it?
Novack: This new season was my first time working with the showrunners. They’d never had a composer before, which is very interesting.
Fried: Oh, wow. I didn’t know that.
Novack: It was mostly library [stock] music before I joined. [Dan Mirk and Robert Padnick, the showrunners] worked on the previous seasons and came on as showrunners for the third season, which was Western-themed. They came in and said “Well, previous seasons did all library music, so let’s just continue with that.” They could get library cues with a live orchestra on them, so I kind of see how that would help with a budget. However, they were a little frustrated in that they were very limited with the library of music. They really wanted to explore working with a composer so they could craft an original score, but also something that could be shaped to scenes more. I think they appreciated working with a composer. [For End Times,] they spent a lot of time getting to know how to work with a composer and we spent a lot of time developing the sound.
Each season’s an anthology, so it’s a completely different story. I did not have to worry about previous themes from previous seasons or previous library music. We tried some different ideas before we landed on something that we all liked. There are different ways to score comedy. [With] Miracle Workers, there was a discussion that was like, “Do we score this in an absurdist way?” For Childrens Hospital [which I also worked on] and all those other absurdist shows, you score like a drama because the comedy comes out of the characters really believing the absurdist things are happening. It ultimately became a blend of big absurdist moments, some parodies, and some short, sitcom-y cues. I think we found a good middle ground.
Fried: This new season looks to be poking fun at post-apocalyptic media. For example, it is immediately reminiscent of stuff like Mad Max: Fury Road. How do you balance both playing into and not playing into tropes when you’re given a genre that, ever since Fury Road, has exploded stylistically.
Novack: It is an interesting blend because those moments do come up. The first episode has a big action cue a la Mad Max: Fury Road and the season finale also ends that way. There are moments like that in the show, but it was about picking our moments. Like, “How serious do we need to go? Do we need to back off? Do we need to play this moment lighter? Do we need to be serious?” There was a lot of collaborating with the showrunners, Dan [Mirk] and Robert [Padnick]. Our season ended up being mostly synths with occasional orchestral samples. There is still some library music in the season. I always want to replace temp music, but it’s hard to beat something with a live orchestra. There were a few moments where there was temp and they were planning to use it, and I said, “I’m going to try my hand at this.” I won most of those battles.
Fried: I know that temp music is a source of frustration for some composers. Has it been an issue for you in the past? How do you convince a client to go with an original piece over temp?
Novack: Well, just to be transparent, I should mention that I started in library music.
Fried: Oh, really?
Novack: That was my first gig out of college––working for Steven Stern, who is a composer and one of the co-founders of Selectracks. I wrote for them for years. [When working with temp music,] I try to say, “Hey, I know we don’t have a budget for a live orchestra. I’ll try to get some live players on it.” A key member of my team, Greg Martin, is a fantastic guitar player, so that helps tremendously in getting live guitar. If you can get just one or a handful of live players, it really elevates it. I think with smaller budgets, it forces everyone to use budgets wisely. That’s why I’m glad the score for End Times ended up being a synth score. We could do it with all the gear that we have at our houses and home studios.
I co-scored Dog Days with Craig Wedren and also helped with orchestral stuff in How to Be a Latin Lover, and both of those were able to spend a little bit of money on a smaller orchestra. Latin Lover was a modified orchestra—strings, winds, brass—and then Dog Days was a small string ensemble that we blended with the samples. That was how we were able to get that live sound, but it’s not 100% live. You find these little strategies. I don’t usually do much budget discussion anymore––that’s the agent’s job––but I go, “Okay, this is what I can do with your budget. If you can give me a little bit more, we could hire live players, we can maybe contract an orchestra or a smaller ensemble.” Budgets are shrinking across the board, so you try to find ways to use that budget wisely instead of getting frustrated.
Fried: I’d love to hop into Murderville, which you’re also the lead composer on. Even though only one actor is improvising in the show, it feels like everybody on the show is improvising, including the music. Was there a relationship between the edit and the score?
Novack: Well, there was a little bit of a relationship in that I enjoy working with the editors.
[both laugh]
Novack: I consider all of them friends, including the showrunner, Krister [Johnson]. Murderville was interesting because it had a very tight deadline. We got fully locked cuts with temp that was all library music. They said, “Rescore as much as you can. If you can’t, we can use some of this library music.” For the first season, though, I don’t think we used any library music if I remember right. I think it was all score. We actually made a cohesive score, too. Every cue was the same palette so it all sounded of the same world. You mentioned improv before. Murderville is still, to this day, the only thing that I’ve worked on that had a heavy amount of improv in it. We discovered with the first season that you can’t really score improv. The comedy comes out from the awkwardness of it, especially because you see the guests breaking. The trick became finding ways to score minimally in a way that wasn’t calling attention to itself and detracting from the improv.
I started thinking of it like a video game, as though these guests are playing an improv game. They’re trying to solve this murder. The first cue I wrote was for the scene in Conan’s episode where he tried hot sauce, which was real hot sauce, by the way. He was not faking. If this was a video game, what would this be? It would just be a tension pulse, just kind of a loop that evolved a little bit. Something simple. I wrote it as kind of a placeholder, and it just worked. Sometimes simple solutions are what work. Everyone wants to write great music, but you still have to support the scene. You still have to play the vibe of what the whole show is doing, and you can see different guests play the game differently. Some of them, like Conan O’Brien and Annie Murphy, really wanted to solve the murder. They were very into it. Ken Jeong, he was just having fun. He was like, “I’m just going to play this game and have fun.” You had to play things differently based on how the different guests played it.
Fried: That’s really interesting. So, if the guest is more into it, does the music feel more driven?
Novack: I think so. It’s something, at the time, I internalized. I could watch the scene and tell how to play it by feeding off the guest’s energy. That’s only something I realized in retrospect.
Fried: Last question: has there been a film or TV show that you’ve been watching recently that has really inspired you or captured your attention? Maybe since we’re talking about scoring, is there one that has a particularly great score that sticks out to you?
Novack: That’s always a good question. I’m currently watching The Last of Us, like so many of us. I’m only halfway through [the third] episode. I had to stop.
Fried: It’s so devastating.
Novack: It’s so good. The score is great. I never played the game, but I probably should. In terms of films I loved: The Menu. I thought the score was fantastic.
Fried: That’s another very farcical, comedic piece, but I know that you also have experience working in horror, so I’m sure you could appreciate that film a lot.
Novack: I appreciated that it wasn’t an overt horror score. I watched it recently, and I have a thing where I don’t listen to scores before I see a movie. I want to go in as fresh as possible. I still haven’t listened to that score separate from the movie and I need to. I just remember really enjoying it. If I remember right, it was a string quartet?
Fried: There were definitely string elements to it. It felt like fancy restaurant music in a number of scenes.
Novack: Yeah, exactly. I knew it was a horror film going in, but it never really felt like horror stuff. Even when the horror stuff started happening, because the guests go through it thinking it’s a show, that’s the way that the composer played it.
Fried: Yeah, Colin Stetson is a great composer. His score for Hereditary is incredible.
Novack: That’s right. Oh, Hereditary. Man, that movie messed me up. I still haven’t seen Midsommar, and I may not. After Hereditary, I don’t know if I can handle it.
Fried: As somebody who also was messed up by Hereditary, Midsommar is worse.
Novack: Oh, really? [laughs] Okay, good to know. One movie I watched again that I loved the score on was Prey by Sarah Schachner. It’s incredible. She did all the string solos herself, which is incredible.
Fried: Well Matt, here’s to you reaping the fruits of your labor in 2023 with Miracle Workers and Harley Quinn. Thank you so much for your time.
Novack: Thanks, Larry. This was fantastic.
Harley Quinn: A Very Problematic Valentine’s Day Special is now streaming on HBOMax. Murderville is available now on Netflix.
Larry Fried is a filmmaker, writer, and podcaster based in New Jersey. He is the host and creator of the podcast “My Favorite Movie is…,” a podcast dedicated to helping filmmakers make somebody’s next favorite movie. He is also the Visual Content Manager for Special Olympics New Jersey, an organization dedicated to competition and training opportunities for athletes with intellectual disabilities across the Garden State.