Music Credits: Title theme from “Breaking Bad” composed by Dave Porter. Used courtesy of Sony Pictures Music Group. Closing credit theme from Flesh and Bone, composed by Dave Porter. Used courtesy of Starz. Jo Reed: That's the iconic theme from the series Breaking Bad-- it was composed by Dave Porter. And this is Art Works, the weekly podcast produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed. When people talk about the series Breaking Bad, inevitably, they'll point to the music as an essential part of the story-telling. And for that, we can thank Dave Porter, who scored all 62 episodes as well as the instantly-recognizable theme we heard at the top of the show. His scoring has had such an impact that in 2013, Dave Porter received the inaugural ASCAP Composer's Choice Award as Best Television Composer. After Breaking Bad, Dave became one of the most sought-after television composers. He went on to score Breaking Bad’s prequel-- the massive hit Better Call Saul-- and that’s just one of his many projects. He also currently scores the NBC series The Blacklist starring James Spader as well as the limited series Flesh and Bone, which takes a hard look at the life of professional ballet dancers… so you can imagine the primacy of music in that show. Although Dave Porter studied both classical and electronic music composition at Sarah Lawrence College, his career in music actually began much, much earlier. Dave Porter: I started piano very young at five, and my parents-- both musical people-- although not professionally. My father was a good pianist, and he really wanted to get me started early, so I did that and was very involved in the kids learning classical piano scene there in the DC area, competing and running around performing as a kid and enjoyed that. So, yeah, that was the foundation of my classical music background, although it had very little to do with writing music. Of course it was much more about performing. And what sparked my interest in creating my own music had very little to do with any of that. It was actually electronics and synthesizers, which I discovered completely separately as a teenager. And it wasn’t until I got to college that I melded the two worlds and started writing music not only of electronic basis but with classical acoustic instrument components to it as well. Jo Reed: Yeah, I was going to ask you if those years of performing really helped you when you moved to composing. Dave Porter: It’s interesting. I think they do very much in my facility at the keyboard because I feel very comfortable there and my hands do their thing in a way that I don’t have to consciously think about too much. But on the performing side of things, to be honest, I did so much of it when I was younger that it doesn’t hold as much interest to me now as an adult. I’m much more interested in other people performing my music or my music being wed to some other art form that allows it to be performed in another way. Jo Reed: You left Sarah Lawrence, you graduated, and you came to New York. I’m always curious how musicians, how artists support themselves as they’re trying to get started in the business. Dave Porter: I hopped around on a lot of couches. <laughter> Friends’ couches, folks who had graduated ahead of me maybe or friends that were supportive of that tough first year. But actually I didn’t struggle entirely for too long. I was fortunate, I think, to have been able to do some internships in the summer when I wasn’t in school in some of the bigger recording studios around Manhattan during the summertime, and through a friend I’d made there who was a studio manager that I had worked for-- I took him out to lunch actually just to completely out of nowhere try to pick his brain about any ideas for some paying work. And we happened to sit down next to his neighbor who I had never met who turned out to be the gentleman who oversaw Philip Glass’s publishing, and his office was in Philip Glass’s studio and he happened to know that they were just then looking for an assistant. And by magic and good fortune and <laughs> being at the right place at the right time, that got me in the door there and to at least a steady job even if it was not one that was going to make anyone a lot of money. <laughs> Jo Reed: But still that must’ve been a great experience. Dave Porter: It was. It really was. And it was a lot of long hours, and as anybody who’s worked in studios knows, it’s a very tough gig. But just to be around it and to witness some of the things that were going on there really not only sparked my interest in it and confirmed my interest in it, but also, of course, yes, I picked up so much in the years that I was there. Jo Reed: And I’m sure there was a way-- I mean I’m assuming, I could be dead wrong-- but there was a way in which it kind of opened your ears as well because Glass is so interesting. You never quite know what’s coming. Dave Porter:  It’s true, and there’s nothing like seeing it firsthand in seeing the nuts and bolts of how something like that is built and created, which is very different from studying it in school, which I certainly had done. I mean I was blessed because the New York minimalists-- if you want to call them that-- Steve Reich and Phil Glass and all that were people that I spent a lot of time studying in school and was very interested in already. But, yes, no doubt. To see it in action was really cool. And the thing--and I always say this but-- I really admire always about Phil Glass is that he has an incredibly open mind about music and collaborative in so many ways, and he’s one of the very few people I think who has successfully straddled many, many different worlds: academia, classical music and compositions for which he’s been requested to write, film scores, working with popular artists. It would be not unusual for me to be working on an opera of his in one room and David Bowie is in the other room. Really neat, yeah. Jo Reed: Yeah, he got an opera honor actually from us, from the National Endowment for the Arts. He was so moved at the ceremony. He was in tears-- Dave Porter: Wow. Jo Reed: --that he was being honored for opera, and I was so moved that he was so moved. <laughs> It was really lovely. Dave Porter: <laughs> Yeah, I mean I think his operas should not be overlooked. Jo Reed: So how did you begin to move into scoring? Was that something you had wanted to do? Did you fall into doing it? Dave Porter: I always had my eye on doing it, but obviously when I was young I was much more of an engineer, and that’s sort of what got me around the studios is just my knowledge of helping to record things and just being an assistant and being current on what was then very fledgling computer recording technology and things like that was my entre to be around this world, but I did know that for me personally and creatively I wanted to be eventually writing music, and that happened just over time. I met enough people, both at Phil Glass’s studio-- which he used of course a lot but other people did come in and work on projects there-- and other studios that I worked in, met enough people and enough composers that I was able to segue into being an assistant at first to a composer who did primarily advertising work and then later on another New York composer named Peter Fish who took me on, and he’s big also commercial but promo and sports and news composer, and that’s a lot of the work that’s in New York for composers. And it was great for me, and those experiences were fantastic because it allowed me to get my feet wet slowly over time. And also that kind of work teaches you something that became very vital to my success later but I would’ve never known how important it was, which was to be fast and how to be decisive and how to be quick because when you’re obviously writing music for television or film or anything where there’s another medium and lots of bosses involved there’s always a ticking clock. Jo Reed: Right, and that is so important.  Dave Porter: But at the same time it has to be done well and it has to be done to your satisfaction, or you don’t have a job and you can't sleep at night, so it definitely is a huge factor in creativity, but one that you just learn over time. Nothing like practice, I think, to make that possible. Jo Reed: Now you have been involved in writing scores for extraordinary television shows-- Breaking Bad the most famous probably-- and the music was so integral to that show. Can you just forgive my ignorance and talk a little bit about the differences and perhaps similarities between what you did as a composer for every episode of Breaking Bad and what the music supervisor or music director brought on their end-- Dave Porter: Oh, sure. Yeah, no, this is a-- Jo Reed: --and how you worked together. Dave Porter: Yeah. No, absolutely. This is something that’s commonly misunderstood and frankly the nomenclature that we go by further confuses things. But basically for the most part-- and there are some exceptions, of course-- but for the most part a music supervisor’s role is to be involved in all things related to preexisting music that gets used in a television show or a film, so any kind of licensed music or a pop song you might hear that’s featured all the way down to background Muzak, music in a coffee shop or an elevator. All those things have to be chosen, and on a very creative show actually a lot of thought is put into all of those choices of course, because they have a dramatic impact on how we feel and how you feel about the characters. And so it is that, that’s the creative end of it. And then the other side of the music supervisor’s position is a financial one. All those pieces of music cost money to production, to license and use, so there’s a lot of negotiating that goes on there between the rights holders of those pieces of music and the production company. So that’s kind of that side. My side is much more strictly the music that is composed specifically for the show. And that varies, but on Breaking Bad, for example, that included the opening theme and all the original underscore that was created for the show and the end title themes. Jo Reed: How is it decided, for example, when original music would be used and when previously composed music would be used, and who would decide that? Would it be the director? Would it be Vince Gilligan, the producer? Dave Porter: That’s a great question. We have what’s called a spotting session, which is essentially a big meeting where we talk about all things music and sound for each episode. These meetings on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul can easily last five hours. And we will go through every scene of the show and talk about whether there should be music in the scene, whether there should not be music in the scene-- which is equally important. If so, what that music should be and what it should try to achieve, and then once we get to that point you generally get to put on my plate as the composer over the music supervisor’s plate. In some cases the folks in charge will want to hear options from both of us and want to decide later. That’s possible, too. Who makes those decisions varies very much from television show to television show. On the Breaking Bad shows we’re working with Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, for example, on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. It’s very much a collaborative discussion. Vince Gilligan always has the final say on Breaking Bad, and Vince and Peter together the final say on Better Call Saul. But it’s a very open discussion and lots of people weigh in and we get to the right choice. One of the great things about those shows, too-- and most good cable shows-- is that the writer of the episode is generally present, and I find that very helpful because the writer has obviously been through their episode from soup to nuts, from its creation and hopefully was there when it was shot and hopefully was there all the way to the end. And then you can use them as a great resource to understand the motivation behind things that were going on, which helps me better understand, for example, what to write. Jo Reed: I loved the Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul podcasts. That was created by one of the editors of the series. They were just fascinating. I was addicted, and I really came away thinking, "If everybody is really lucky and really good in this life they will get to work for Vince Gilligan once." <laughter> Dave Porter: I wouldn’t disagree. I have firsthand knowledge, and I can say that he’s a genuinely wonderful human being and also a very, very smart cookie. <music> Jo Reed: How do you go about creating a score? Do you do it at the piano? How long do you have for each episode? Let’s stick with Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, and then we can move to the one that’s really just started on Starz, Flesh and Bone, which is a little bit different. Dave Porter: Yeah, sure. Well, yeah, the model for Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul in terms of timing is technically, essentially we’re turning around episodes as quickly as they air. So for me I have a week from this spotting session to be done with it on my end. So I’ll get an episode-- to make up a fictional week-- on a Wednesday night. I’ll watch it. It’s hopefully and almost always with that team the picture is finished. It’s locked, so I don’t have to worry about future changes to it. And so I’ll take notes on it. We’ll have our spotting session on Thursday. I’ll come home and start writing. I’ll write Thursday through Monday, probably turn things in to Vince-- or Vince and Peter in the case of Better Call Saul-- on Monday, await their feedback, make any changes on Tuesday. And then I mix it and finish it, put the final polish on it, and it’s out the door. And then that Wednesday I get the next. Jo Reed: That’s definitely rolling them out. Dave Porter: <laughs> It's... you know, it’s TV. You know, it’s not that there isn’t more time in essence, but the reality is that I’m one part of a very large machine that’s moving forward at a very deliberate pace and a very deliberate budget, and it’s got to get there. And it’s the nature of particularly television, yes. Jo Reed: Believe it or not, like that singular episode of Breaking Bad that centers on a fly, there is a fly buzzing around my room even now. <laughter> So I need to ask you about how ambient sound figured so prominently into the scores you created for that series. It can't have been an accident.  Dave Porter:  No, certainly not, and I’ve always been a big believer in that the musical scores should be part of the whole experience. It shouldn’t hopefully be something that sticks itself out and announces itself but is actually part and parcel of the whole package creatively. And one of the ways that I do that is I like to work very closely with our sound team. And we have a fantastic sound team on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, and they’re in that meeting with us talking about all these things, so at the same time we’re talking about music for every scene we’re also talking about footsteps and what the machinery might sound like and what the dogs in the background may be sounding like, and what does this neighborhood sound like, and all these questions that are important to building up a very realistic view and how big we hope immerse our viewers into what we’re creating. And to that end I take a lot of cues from that, whether it’s in a very abstract way using instruments that I’m already working with to emulate what’s going on or in a very, very obvious way I often call up the sound folks and say, “Hey, you know, that hospital respirator... Can I get the sound you’re gonna use for that ‘cause I want to incorporate it in the score.” Or when Aaron Paul or Jesse is slowly squeaking around on the roundabout, “Could I get that squeak because I want to put it in with the-- with the score?” Those are things I like to do just because I think it has a fun melding effect to the entire aural experience. Jo Reed: It’s not that you have a theme for each character, but there has to be music that you compose that, I don’t know, maybe tells you a little something about a character, something. But these characters evolve so much over the course of a series-- Dave Porter: That’s right. Jo Reed: --I’m just impressed by that. <laughs> That seems really kind of a formidable task. Dave Porter: It is. I think it’s one of the hardest things and one of the special challenges of working on the great TV dramas that have come about in the past five or ten years, I think, is that for us as composers-- and this is a great challenge but it is a challenge-- I think you have to be thinking micro all the time and the episode and the moment you’re in, but you do also have to have a longer view. You have to have an understanding of where the story is headed, where your characters are headed and how they’re developing and changing, which is something that’s possible in TV to a degree that isn’t possible, say, in film, which is two hours, say, for example. Over 62 hours of Breaking Bad you saw a development in the character of Walter White that was unprecedented, certainly for a film. I mean you just couldn’t do that. You just don’t have the time. But in TV you have that luxury, and so I think as composers it behooves us to try to take advantage of that. And that’s one reason I’m actually a little leery of using themes for characters because on a good show-- Walter White, for example, is very, very different from week to week, and so if you try to pin him down with something like that you’re going to be doing a lot of gymnastics to try to make it sound different and include that change all the time. So in most cases I avoided that, but a way I sort of circumvent that is to start at least with palettes of instruments for each character, which have some overlap, for sure, because I want them to be in the same world but have some identifying features about them, and that gives me something that has a uniqueness to each character when that’s appropriate, but it doesn’t bind me in too much. Jo Reed: The instruments were also really interesting because you seem to have picked a really international palette from the instruments that you chose from. At least that’s what it sounded like to me. Is that true? Dave Porter: It is true. Part of that certainly was by design. One of the things I knew right out of the box when I saw the pilot for the first time was that the traditional orchestral instruments to me seemed very limiting to this story. For me, I just didn’t feel like I could express the things that I needed to with orchestral instruments, and so I ruled them out entirely. And so that left me with a different palette, obviously, and part of that palette is synthesizers and electronics, which plays a role and I think has a connection to his science and his chemistry background and connection. But the world instruments is very, very important to him, too, and to actually many of the characters but especially Walter White. And my thinking there was twofold. First, I wanted the story to not be locked into southwest United States because I really felt from the get-go that there was a connection that we could all have to this person that was universal, and I didn’t want the music to pigeonhole it too much. But also mixing world instruments-- Asian instruments with African instruments, for example-- that you might not normally hear together helped me try to place him as a fish out of water. Even in the early days when he’s such a milk toast guy I wanted to give the impression that there was more to him and that there was more to come on a larger scale and also that he was out of sorts. Jo Reed:It’s interesting to think about the connection between Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. With Better Call Saul we all know where the character ended up. Dave Porter: True. Jo Reed: It’s just how he got there <laughs> that that series reveals. So it’s a different kind of project for you, I would think. <laughs> Dave Porter: It is a bit like the Titanic, isn’t it? <laughter> We know the end of the story. Jo Reed: And it’s not a good one, but-- <laughs> Dave Porter: No, no, although-- Jo Reed: --but we all love Saul. <laughs> Dave Porter: Yes, we do love him, and he at least survives it. He is the cockroach of Breaking Bad. <laughs> But it was an impressive feat for those guys-- Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould-- to take this character that we had such an affinity for, but it was a very one-sided view of, and make us be passionately interested in how he goes on that journey even though we know how it ends. Jo Reed: You hear-- I mean especially the iconic opening of Breaking Bad-- but throughout the music in Better Call Saul, it all seems inevitable. But I wonder if you had false starts, if it was difficult to kind of wrap your hands around it at first. Dave Porter: It really was. I won't shy away from it. It was one of the tougher challenges I’ve had in my career for a lot of reasons. One, the beginning, getting the tone right of a new show is always difficult. And composers’ creative efforts are very front-loaded on television shows in that once you’ve established and made a lot of choices in the first episodes you’ve made those choices and you’re stuck to them in a way, but you’ve made a lot of hard choices. And then from there it’s kind of flushing and developing what you’ve created. And that’s certainly true for Better Call Saul, but as you mentioned, the additional wrinkle there is the connection to Breaking Bad. And it was hard-- first of all, I should say that Vince and Peter were adamant that this was a very, very different show and everything about it should be very, very different. And, you know, it’s one thing to say that <laughs> and incorporate that into your head, but it’s a whole other thing to actually do it when you’ve been coming off six or seven years of something that was pretty successful, and how much of that mold do you really want to break? And also there’s a sense of familiarity. I mean I’m working with all the same people. There’s many of the same characters. It’s the same setting. It’s Albuquerque. And it took me a while to wrap my head around it and really embrace it as a whole new animal. But once I did I found it very freeing. Jo Reed: Yeah, I bet. Dave Porter: But it took me a long time to get there. It really did. Jo Reed: And with Flesh and Bone, this is very different, again, in which music is quite central because it’s the world of ballet and oddly enough strip clubs. Dave Porter: Yes. <laughs> Jo Reed: And that has to be another challenge. Dave Porter: It is, and I absolutely relished it, just a very different approach as you say, just because of the story and what we’re talking about. Music is so central to everything about it in a way that while the music in “Breaking Bad,” for example, has great power, it’s much more the fabric of everything going on. Here the music is much more bold and much more forward and centric just because of the nature of what we’re talking about. <music> Jo Reed: How do you compose? Do you compose at the piano? Dave Porter: I don’t. Well, I compose at a keyboard, not a piano. I compose in front of the computer, but I have a small studio that used to be a garage in my backyard, and it’s filled with instruments, actually, both electronic things and acoustic things. And when I’m first getting started I spend a lot of time watching. I spend a lot of time with metronomes, believe it or not, which is not fascinating to listen to <laughs> but is very important to my process. I find that finding a tempo or tempos that work against the picture and seem to fit in with how the editor edited the picture is a hugely important first step, and once I’ve got that as a sort of template to follow at least rhythmically, I often will just walk around the room and start plinking around on things until I stumble upon something that piques my interest. And then I’ll record that and include it and try to build from it step by step. I wish I could say there was a specific path that always got me from A to Z but there really isn’t. It’s just a lot of trial and error. Sometimes it comes very quickly. Sometimes it’s five in the morning and it’s due in the morning and <laughs> I’m struggling before it comes out of me. But thankfully it usually does. Jo Reed: I can't help it, I’m really curious. Do you have a favorite moment or few moments of scoring that you just feel, "Oh, that’s so good"? Dave Porter: <laughs> Yeah. I mean for me honestly my greatest rewards in what I do are when the people that I’m collaborating with turn to me and say, “Oh, you absolutely helped me say what I wanted to say here.” Or an editor turns to me and says, “Oh, you made this edit work when I struggled with it for days,” you know, to “Something that you did that you brought to the table as part of our collaboration made the whole better.” And not to be totally self-effacing about it, but honestly that’s really the part of the process that I love. It’s why I got into doing this. I really do love and appreciate the collaboration aspect of it and the pride for me comes in knowing that what I’ve done is helping, helping make some creative output that a lot of people, a lot of people before me have put a lot of time and their hard effort doing the best that they can into helps it achieve a higher level. Jo Reed: I don’t know if you’re done with Flesh and Bone. I don’t know where you are in the process. Dave Porter:  I am, yes. Jo Reed: And so what’s next? What are you working on? Dave Porter: Well, next I do a big network show for NBC called The Blacklist, which stars James Spader, so I am actively working on that. And then I’m awaiting on pins and needles the second season of Better Call Saul. The first episode should arrive on my desk any day now, so I’m very excited about that. Jo Reed: Yeah, I’ll be very excited to hear what you do. It really is such a pleasure to talk to you.  Dave Porter: Well, thank you so much. That’s very flattering, and I’m just certainly honored to speak to you guys. Jo Reed: It’s really my pleasure. So thank you, Dave. I appreciate it. Dave Porter: You’re welcome.  That is television and film composer Dave Porter. You've been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out how art works in communities across the country, keep checking the Art Works blog, or follow us @NEAarts on Twitter. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I'm Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening. Music Credit: Breaking Bad, Flesh and Bone #### End of Dave_Porter_combo.mp3 ####