Mann: Ultimately, I made a cover of The Killers song “All These Things That I’ve Done” that became part-song and part-score that weaves throughout the whole opening of the first five minutes of the show. We didn’t know what song until the very last minute. The other major thing that happened in the pilot was this song that opens the show. That became the blueprint for later episodes. The pilot has so much going on it that the challenge was to create a sonic identity through the whole show, but also making sure the momentum stays and getting the right feeling at every moment. A lot of that first pass became the foundation of what we did. had seen it I asked them to give me editor’s cuts, the scenes in order, without having a ton of work done to them yet. I basically made a template of sounds that I would draw from that would make sense and be useful. As soon as I saw it, I started filling it up with stuff. Mann: I didn’t actually start writing anything before I saw it.
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Doing a song for a soundtrack is all part of that.īTL: How much changed in terms of your initial audition so to speak after you saw the pilot? I was in a band and I sing, so to me that’s where I feel I’m offering something a little different then just a composer. I used to be a music producer before I was even a composer. It was a very high priority for him to find the right composer who knew their way around songs. He relies on it in a way that is a pleasure for someone like me making stuff. I made a presentation of it in order of what happens in the script so as you were listening to it, you could picture the music very clearly. I like to call this music beautiful darkness. I put a reel together of material that made sense after having read the script as an idea of what the sound could be, which were more emotional and beautiful. He asked me if I had anything for this show. I didn’t end up doing it, but I met him again for this pilot, partially because the director was James Griffiths and I had come in at the last minute on episode three of The Mayor and solved some music problems for them. but I had met him one time because he had a previous show that I was talking about possibly doing, Growing Up Fisher. Gabriel Mann: First of all, I had worked with ABC a significant amount, so from that regard I know their music department well and they know me well.
#One in a million you composer series
There are a million little things (pun intended) that Mann had to accomplish to achieve his composing technique, but knowing his music has made an emotional dent is what satisfies him.īelow The Line: You have been with the series since the beginning. He also talks about the non-traditional way he entered into the world of making music for television and what’s involved in composing for a weekly series.
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His musical journey of writing songs for his own solo projects, having a label deal with a successful band The Rescues, and opening for pop stars like Alanis Morissette on a European tour, circuitously led him back to scoring for television.īelow The Line spoke with Mann from his home studio in Los Angeles, and he spoke about how he got the long-standing gig with A Million Little Things. He also wrote songs and scored Season Two of High School Musical, and The Unicorn, as well as Rebel, and was the resident songwriter for Arrested Development. Writing scores and theme music for dramatic television may come more naturally for Mann, but ironically he got his start in the world of comedy, making his mark with the theme song “Hey Hey” for Modern Family. There are times when he’ll sing phrases meticulously timed to the emotion or an entire song depending on how it fits into the warmth of the story. The eight main characters, brought even closer together by one friend’s unfortunate demise, support and love each other unconditionally through thick and thin.Įach week, the stories deliver heart-rending moments of highs and lows which composer Gabriel Mann musically matches with notes and tones of darkness and light that subconsciously move us. What makes the ABC episodic drama A Million Little Things, now in its fourth season, so addictive and relatable is that it centers on a group of friends who are more like family. The Cast of A Million Little Things (Photo by Robert Trachtenberg)