Gavin Brivik on heart recordings, hospital silence, and writing with Andrew Bird
The Pitt barely has a score, and that's the point. Gavin Brivik talks about contact mics, deathly silence, and the song that broke through.
Words by The Garrett Tiedemann
Gavin Brivik is one of the most joyful and open people I have ever had the privilege to meet. The brainchild behind the music of one of television’s biggest shows right now, The Pitt, he has spent the last decade-plus experimenting with music that uses non-musical elements to create sound-design dynamics within a mixture of electronic and classically composed scores. While this approach typically produces scores meant to be heard in a mix, The Pitt is unique in Gavin’s work in that its ability to disappear and blend with the other elements of sound design makes it so important and valuable to the show. ‘Need Someone’, the song he wrote with Andrew Bird for The Pitt's second season, is out in the world now, and it's the reason we met. I wanted to understand how something so present sits in a show whose score is built to disappear.
The Pitt’s score feels like a perfect continuation of your work over the last few years, mixing sound design and non-musical ideas with your scores, but was the intention always to have a score for The Pitt that could hide or disappear entirely within the rest of the sound design?
That was part of my pitch to The Pitt because they did not want to score. Initially, Scott, the showrunner, was truthfully okay with it just being bare bones. But I think a lot of other people felt it needed something. So when they were speaking to composers, I kind of agreed with Scott. I watched the first episode and said, "This show is so good, does it need a traditional score?” I pitched the idea, what would it sound like if the medical equipment were the things making the score? What would it sound like if the machines were oscillating and pulsing, if EKG machines were beeping in a specific rhythm? And so the found sound stuff was perfect because Terri Murphy, the post supervisor, had seen the movie I worked on, How To Blow Up A Pipeline, in which we were very heavy with old synthesizers, Tangerine Dream stuff, but then also a lot of found sound oil drum recordings and electrical currents. So she had been familiar with the fact that that was one of my things and something I'm really passionate about. I think they were attracted to the idea of somebody using a score that sounds almost like sound design. It's almost like room tones that are pulsing or putting a contact microphone up to my heart and getting just thumping sounds and trying to find those types of ideas to make the score feel nonexistent, and it's just a part of the hospital rather than like, here's music, you know, feel this way. I was just very happy that they were even open to that idea because I was nervous to be in a pitch meeting saying, I don't think you guys need a score.
"I was nervous to be in a pitch meeting, saying, I don't think you guys need a score."
– Gavin Brivik
It reminds me of No Country for Old Men and the extremely minimal score, but for the credits. Were you always going to have either a needle drop or something more composed and pronounced for the credits?
I love that you just made the connection to No Country, because I have not. That's such a good reference. Yes, exactly what you just said.
The first episode had that licensed track by The Smile. An amazing needle drop, and it gave us a tone. When I spoke to the team, they were like, "What would Doctor Robby listen to?" The opening episode shows him walking into the hospital with his headphones on, and there was this idea that the end credits were always some version of him going home, some sort of aftermath. So the needle drop really became a way for us to find a musical identity.
For the first season, I collaborated with a friend, Taji, on a track. He had this sketch he'd already created, but it was very bare bones. The showrunners had a lot of thoughts: let's speed the track up, let's put this type of drum beat on it. And it was cool. Then, for season two, they said, "Let's just create completely original stuff. It's a new season, there's a time jump, and there are new characters.” I think they gave me a lot more freedom.
The Pitt / HBO
How did the song with Andrew become a reality?
It happened naturally because the section Andrew and I were going to play originally had a potentially licensed song sitting there. I was in the spotting session, and I begged them, please give me the opportunity to write something original. And the truth is, these are icons of TV. They've had a lot of mixed experiences with original songs, and you just never know what you're going to get.
But you started in bands, right?
That's where my musical foundations were, playing in bands. But the truth is, I still needed a collaborator. I'm not a lyricist, I'm not a vocalist. I wrote this instrumental and pitched it to Andrew; he wrote something on top of it, and then we reworked it together. That's where the collaboration was. It needed to change. And he's one of our genius songwriters. He understands song form, and he has a classical composing background too, so he's truly got both sides of the coin. He gave me a lot of great advice. What if we take this effect off the guitar? What if we give it one more verse? What if we loop this section? What if the drums come in later in the track? It was a really good learning experience.
Why was it so important to you to write something for this instead of just a needle drop? Was it just caring for the character or…
I think it's multiple things. One of my dreams has always been to write more songs for the projects I work on. I love the collaboration that comes with it, and it pulls from my roots. At my core, I love being in a band. I miss those days of writing songs, going into a studio with instrumentalists and just producing something. It's a different creative process from being in my room with a keyboard, writing stuff. So it felt alive. The film composing world can feel very electronic. We'll record live players after the fact, but the creative process isn't always about getting live people in the moment, which this song was.
Andrew, at his core, is like the Beatles, the Beach Boys. He goes to the studio and writes the tracks in the studio, doing it all with a band, the old school way. And that's the coolest fucking thing, man. It's such a lost art form. Everybody's a bedroom producer now, which I am too, and I love that, but it's cool to see somebody who just goes to the studio to create the music with a band, learning it in real time, who didn't prepare everything. Andrew doesn't work in a DAW like that.
It was also important because the truth is, season two doesn't have as much soundscape score as season one. Season one had a mass casualty event. There was so much intense drama and action, and season two is so much more character-based, a lot more subtle. So part of it was wanting to contribute more, to find a way to help shape the show musically. This was a great opportunity to do something more creative and original for the show.
Did you know Andrew before asking him?
No, no. I made a legitimate list of my dream people for the song, and Andrew was number one. I've been listening to him forever, and when I listened to my instrumentals, I just thought, these would be so perfect with his style. He could play the violin, and he could whistle. His compositional mind would be great for this.
And somehow, my agent had recently signed Andrew. So I asked, "Can you please send him these instrumentals?” Within a week, he sent an email back with a voice memo attached, just him singing the song. And he's like, "What do you think?” Holy shit, man. The dream of dreams.
Then it was perfect, because I could use his voice memo to sync it to the picture. That's how I won everybody over. They were reluctant to do anything original without hearing it first. After that, we went into the studio and knocked it out really quickly.
Did you initially see this as an opportunity to combine a scored moment with a needle drop subtly rather than having a more jarring juxtaposition between score and song?
They may not have used score at all, because for most of the show, and this is something I'm the biggest fan of, a life lesson I'm taking forward in my scoring career, they never score anything sad. There's maybe one or two moments in season one, but they're so subtle they're almost not noticeable. The idea is that anytime a doctor is giving a family member the news, this person's passing, we're so sorry, you just sit in this deathly silence. What is the real truth for the people who get that news? It's the most uncomfortable silence, or just the background hospital sounds, and you have to live in that moment. They're so confident to do that, and I know they were fighting for it creatively with their own executives. But I love it, because it gets us used to the idea that a score can be something more carefully selected. It doesn't always need to be a crutch.
Every composer you speak to, and every composer reading this, can relate to getting an email saying, "This scene's just not working, can you fix it with music?” I've had this conversation with so many collaborators where I say, "You've watched this scene a thousand times, and it's boring to you now.” But for me, watching it for the first time, it's so good. And it doesn't need music; it stands on its own. So sometimes music can be more carefully selected, have more intent, rather than just filling a void. I truly think if they hadn't used my song, they would have left it silent, and maybe had a song when it cuts to black. My pitch was to fade in with a scorey sound and then get into the song.
"I made a legitimate list of my dream people for the song, and Andrew was number one."
– Gavin Brivik
Has this opened any thoughts to what you want to do with season three?
I have no idea. The truth is, even with season two, I didn't hear from them until they were already editing episodes. They work so old school, making an entire season and releasing episodes while they're still shooting. So we'll figure things out as the show comes out. But I'm excited. I hope we can do another original song, and that there are more opportunities for that. I'm so curious. Even if I wasn't working on the show, I'd be asking, "What's going to happen in season three?” The funny thing is, the way it works, I'm seeing it almost as a fan in the spotting sessions. I'm not reading the scripts; I'm seeing it weekly as we work on it, learning about the show as I go. So I can't wait to see what they do. At its core, I'm still a fan, even though I work on it.
So are you working week to week when you're scoring?
Oh yeah. But thankfully, because the score is so minimal, it's not as daunting. That's the truth for a lot of the show's collaborators, though; that's why everybody is working tirelessly, because it's a literal week-to-week thing. They're doing the old network TV style of production, which I think is so cool. And it makes me appreciate the shows that did this with wall-to-wall music, because working that way is just so intense. It would honestly probably hurt the music. With the spare approach, I can put more thought into the song. I was able to make that demo. If I had to write forty minutes of score that was being noted on top of it, I don't know if I could have done the song. It would have been too much to take on. So it's wild that they're doing it, and it's such a cool process that we don't really see anymore.
As you are composing week to week, have there been any composers or anything that you've used as your backbone or returned to as your guiding principle? Or is it just the show's sound design?
The show's sound design is always number one, and Bryan Parker is the best sound designer. I rely on his sounds to figure out what key and what textures I can use to blend in. But it's impossible not to cite Reznor and Ross. The perfect way to describe The Pitt's sound is if you take The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, keep just the weird background noises and take out the piano melodies. It's these eerie soundscapes. I've always gravitated towards them, especially for pushing the bounds of what we do compositionally.
When you think about those textures and how they are sort of minor key and are meant to make you feel kind of twitchy, The Pitt’s score doesn't do that. The Pitt’s score just slots right into everything else that's going on and gives you the slightest bump.
I agree, I think it would be too heavy-handed. Another great inspiration is Hildur's score for Chernobyl. I love her music so much, and she's in that school too, pushing the bounds of that world. It was about finding the middle ground, because I'm right there with you. When I listen to Girl with the Dragon Tattoo or Gone Girl, there are levels where it could tip the hat too much. So it was about trying to find neutral. I never use any chords. I'm using singular tones, or some of the early found sound machines.
I did get medical sounds. I couldn't find a hospital to record at; nobody's like, hey, I'm a composer, can I just put contact mics on your EKG machine? So I found royalty-free medical equipment sound effects, and I'd process them, find some humming sound, find the tone, and stretch it out. That material is actually really complex in its tonality; it naturally has some sort of overtone thing, I don't know, but I'm using a lot of it as source material. So everything's tone and drone-based rather than harmonic progressions. The harmonic stuff is what would feel heavy-handed. And that's probably why ninety nine percent of people don't know there's a score in The Pitt. It's all tone-based rather than moving harmonically, which would cue people into hearing something musical.
Right. Which would also direct them to an emotion.
Exactly. Which is exactly what the show is trying not to do, you know, except for the Louie moment.
