Doctor Who | Series 2 | Murray Gold
"Murray Gold..." begins Clayton Hickman. This is promising. I've yet to meet a sentence that started with the words 'Murray Gold' that I didn't like. "Murray Gold," he continues, "wants to know if we're interested in sending someone to Cardiff to sit in on his recording session with the National Orchestra of Wales". He does, does he? I see. Just you even think of sending someone else...
Shaming it is to admit that until now, despite a 35-year residence in the United Kingdom, I've never even been to Wales before, never mind the backstreets of suburban Llandaff in which one will find BBC Cymru. I realise instantly that it's obviously the right building – there's Doctor Who stuff everywhere. Including the series 2 trailer on an endless loop on a TV in the foyer. I'm met there by Ben Foster, who introduces himself as Murray's orchestrator and conductor. "Murray tells me you're also a composer," Ben reveals as we walk toward the studio. My knees weaken slightly. I mean, yes, 'composer' is one of half a dozen jobs I'd be entitled to put on my passport and tax return, but I wouldn't know a symphony orchestra from a Sequential Circuits Prophet 5. I greet Murray in the control room, and he introduces me to the session engineer, Gerry O'Riordan. "This is David, from Doctor Who Magazine," is what Murray in fact says, "he's also a composer." I have a mild suspicion I'm being gently teased...
1.00pm. The session isn't due to start for an hour, so while Gerry runs around plugging things in and lugging things about – I feel his pain – everyone else sits around chatting and killing time. Almost before I've got my coat off, Murray has also invited me along to the mix session the following day. "It's at Air," he adds. Air Studios? George Martin Air Studios? Big budget Hollywood blockbuster Air Studios in leafy Belsize Park? Those Air Studios? Well, twist my arm, why don't you... Gerry and Huw Thomas – the BBC Wales in-house studio engineer - are having necessary but dull conversations about "rattling in the patch bays" and "the hum on those bass mics just being room tone" which even I have stopped so much as pretending to listen to. Murray breaks off discussion of the cover of the new Radio Times – it's got a Cyberman on, apparently, not that I've seen it yet – to raise a few practical points. "Does the talkback go to orchestra speakers, or to their cans?". 'Cans'. I've been working with sound, on and off, for thirteen years and I still want to giggle when someone says 'cans' when they mean 'headphones'. Anyway, what did Murray and the guys record here with the orchestra last year? "All of The Christmas Invasion," apparently. "I supplemented it with some of my own stuff – some sustained strings - in an illusionist kind of way, but I think it's quite hard to see the seams. And lots of stuff that originated in series 1 – which we're doing again this time, because amazingly, until about two weeks ago I'd only finished the first four or five episodes. I'd love to have got a full orchestral recording of Madame de Pompadour's theme. We're re-recording the Cyberman cues from episodes 5 and 6, because of course they're coming back... the idea is that episodes 8 and 9, and also 12 and 13, will have loads of orchestra material in them." All sounds a bit tight, this close to transmission. "I've done it so fast now, it takes about a week per episode. I just did 45 minutes of big loud music for Graeme Harper in about five days!" "Bassoon's a bit more 'soloistic' occasionally, isn't it?" interrupts Gerry, whom I strongly suspect of making that fifth word up, on his way to reposition a couple of mics. There are a couple of other people sitting in as well – Murray's agent Catherine, and Nicky, who is in charge of music contracts at the BBC in London. "I've got kids just the right age for Doctor Who," Nicky tells me. "And a friend with kids the same age as mine keeps nagging me 'Don't you buy them Doctor Who Magazine?'. And I'm like, 'Shhhhh! Don't tell them about it!' She's got twins and she has to buy them one each..." Catherine, meanwhile, is here to help out – she's writing down any verbal notes or comments Murray makes during the recordings which he'll need to refer back to later. Everyone but me nips out for a sandwich, and I have a sneaky look at Murray's cue sheets. It seems we are aiming to record thirteen complete cues today, plus a few 'beds' and isolated chords. More than 43 minutes in total. Now, I don't know much about orchestral recording sessions, but that sounds like a lot. A hell of a lot. I nosily look for a few clues about upcoming episodes on the score sheets, but the cue titles are almost cryptically unhelpful. What does '13DW18' mean, exactly?
1.50pm, and everyone's back from lunch. How many players out there? Counting down the list, it adds up to 78. "The more the merrier," beams Murray. "I think the N.O.W. are strongly associated with Doctor Who now, and they quite like that." Can't be bad if it gets their name in front of eight million people every week, no. "I've never been to a session this big," confesses Nicki, quietly. I've never been to anything like this ever, I mutter under my breath. "I watched the choir session on Doctor Who Confidential," continues Nicky, "about six times. And my kids kept saying, 'Mummy, if you're boss of music, why weren't you there?'. So I had to come to the next one..."
1.52pm. Tune-up time. "I should be recording that sound," Murray grins. "It might be useful...". While conductor Ben is getting ready to start, there's much discussion going in the control room on with Jo, the orchestra's publicity officer. It seems that because there are cameras here from Wales Today, the orchestra and their 'people' are keen to have another bash at Murray's arrangment of the Doctor Who theme. No-one minds in principle, but there's a slight concern at it eating into the session's productivity – they already have a hell of a lot to get through. The consensus is that they'll either do it after the first break or at 5.00, so long as they're not too far behind schedule. "5 o'clock?" enquires Murray, confused. "But doesn't the show go out at 6?" It doesn't have to go into today's show, apparently, just as long as they get the shots... reassured, Murray then says something I find unintelligble, which turns out to have been a farewell in Welsh. I feel suitably ashamed.
2.02pm. "Good afternoon, everybody, and thank you for having us back," begins Murray. "Welcome to another six hours of over-the-top chase music, gothic melodrama and brooding love songs. I'd just like to say thanks to you guys – obviously now the National Orchestra of Wales gets a bigger credit on the end titles than I do...." All together: aaah... "-which is as it should be! A journalist has just asked me," - this can only be me, by the sounds of it - "how come we're doing this again when we didn't think we could afford to do it in the first place – well, I think everybody enjoyed it last time and got a good vibe from it all. Inevitably there's not much sitting around, but I think it's better that way. Enjoy it!"
2.05pm. "It's lovely to be here!" Ben announces to the band. "The music we're doing here will be appearing toward the end of the second series, which I hope you've all been watching. And I suggest we begin straight away with '13DW18'." "Are we rehearsing or taping, Gerry?" enquires Catherine. "I won't be taping for at least ten minutes, I suspect," Gerry reckons, "not until I've got some idea of the microphone levels. Is everybody hearing the click?" We gradually realise those last five words were addressed to the orchestra rather than the control room. "We haven't got click in violas," Ben reports. I begin to wonder if every job's jargon sounds as ridiculous as this from an independent perspective. There's some muttering and giggling from the main room. "Orchestra humour," reports Murray indulgently. "Makes no sense to anyone else." While technical issues are sorted, Ben reports a few copying problems with the manuscripts. "Violas – come in at bar 7. You're marked as coming in on bar 8." There are a couple of more of these, and then the click problems are sorted, and then a dodgy pair of headphones is replaced, and, finally, we're off...
2.20pm. Cue '13DW18' sounds remarkably familiar – it's one of the 'approaching Dalek menace' cues from The Parting of the Ways, as I suspect the title should have implied. The sound dips in and out as Gerry gets each mic in turn balanced. They play this one through several times. "Ben," Murray begins, "can I suggest that in bar 34 the horns play that phrase as legato rather than staccato?". Somewhat against my own expectations, I follow what he means by that. Generally, I speak 'music' like I speak French – I know what all the words mean, but I always have to pause for just too long to figure each phrase out. "Not bad for a first take," reckons Murray afterwards. One more time.
2.35pm. "That's great!" enthuses Murray this time, and on we move. The second cue is clearly a bit more complex. Almost as soon as the first runthrough grinds to a halt there is the audible noise of half the orchestra going back over some of the twiddly bits at their own pace. It's actually quite an interesting noise in its own right. I wonder if Murray will let me nick it. "Good ending!!" reckons Murray by the conclusion. "Hollywood!" according to Gerry. "Nah," Murray responds, "it's missing a drum machine." A smiling pause. "The words every Doctor Who fan wants to hear me say!". I have no comment at this time.
3.00pm. And on to '13DW19 – Requiem'. "I think the french horn phrases at 'A' should be two crotchets instead," says Murray after mulling the first rehearsal, "so take one more for luck?". Gerry agrees. "Recognise the cue...?" Murray calls across to me, as we wait. I hang my head in shame. More from Parting of the Ways, apparently. There's chat about a few noises in the room during the take. "If you were making an album for Decca you'd worry about it," is Gerry's assessment. "Well, this might end up on an album," ponders Murray, "but at the speed we're having to work it's not the biggest priority." Next! But no, there's an unexpected commotion in the main room. "Sorry, we're just having a baby in here," announces Ben. One of the string section has just had a message that he's become a father. "He promises to call it 'Murray' if it's a boy," Ben reports.
3.15pm. '6DW14' calls Ben. "Cybermen," mutters Murray. Ooh. I won't have heard this one yet. "I know they can be a bit unpredictable, but the bowed crotales were a bit heavy on the last take," Gerry observes. Words are starting to lose all meaning. "Menace," is Ben's final note on this cue. "Not so menacing that they won't make a toy out of it!" counters Murray. Ben is suddenly waving his arms like a mad thing. Everyone stops. The take has ground to a halt after less than a minute. Nothing major, Ben just reckons it wasn't working so they'd be as well starting from the top. Murray, meanwhile, is worried about the intonation of some woodwind. "Oh, it's the highest note that instrument can bloody play, isn't it?" he finally realises. "That's why they're straining. Ben loves doing that...". Never mind all that - on a more important point, when it says '13' in the cue title, does that mean episode13 this year or episode 13 last year? I ask because we've thus far had a couple of '13's – which seemed to be from last year – and a '6', which was definitely this year. "Ah yes, that one is this year. Does it not say 'S2-13'?" Nope. There's an 'X2'. "That's this year, that's a bit of Tooth and Claw." And '8/9 – DW Devils' must be from The Impossible Planet and The Satan Pit. Murray doesn't seem bothered about being consistent with this – the 13s are Parting of the Ways, the 6s are The Age of Steel. I suppose it only actually matters that all the cue sheets have the same thing written on them, not what that thing actually is, but my ordered Asperger's mind cannot cope with this laissez-faire attitude. If you meant episode 20, why call it episode 6? You mad fool!! We're definitely doing a Dalek-y cue, anyway. Hence my question in the first place. I can't stand the confusion in my mind. It's the one that goes, er, 'Da da dum! Da da dum!' I suddenly understand the pitfalls of trying to describe music in prose. "It's totally ripped off from Eminem!" smiles Murray. "Which in itself is a sample of Led Zeppelin, I think." "Needs John Bonham on it," is Gerry's assessment.
3.30pm. "Cup of tea!" announces Ben. Twenty minute break. "They don't get twenty minutes in London!" moans Gerry. "It's fifteen! Have I covered those lumpy trumpets?". A question, I am fairly confident, that has never been asked before. Gerry's also heard a glitch that shouldn't be there. He isolates it to a single track, one mic. The click looks no more than one sample long – an electrical click, or maybe a timing issue. Nothing software won't be able to get rid of, especially since it's only on one track. I'm surprised anyone seems worried about it. Meanwhile, the orchestra room is under discussion. "Everything amplifies the percussion," muses Murray. There doesn't seem much anyone can do about this. "I'm not hearing anything I don't think you can dig out," Gerry reckons, "but then I'm not looking at the scores." "The trumpets are rising to the challenge!" smiles Ben on hearing a bit of playback. "I hardly used them last time, and felt terribly guilty because they're so good..." "Have you got a new gadget there, Davy?" enquires Murray, breaking off from the debates on spying my m-Audio 24/96 MicroTrack recorder. "Ooh, it's one of those m-Audio boxes!" coos Gerry. A conversation about disk space and phantom power ensues. My attempts to remain unobtrusive while recording the proceedings seem to be to little avail. I do, though, get a chance to look over the recording equipment for the session. There is a huge 48 track desk sitting there unused. Gerry has brought another 48 track desk with him, which he prefers. Which is being used purely as a level controller. Inevitably, I suppose, all these dozens of tracks of high-quality audio material are being fed into... a tiny Apple laptop running ProTools. Huw is recording a backup session onto a Pyramix system, which the studio has just bought – similar to ProTools, only designed mainly for PC. I think he's doing this just to prove it works! Murray will take the multitrack recordings to Air tomorrow, have them properly mixed, take away stereo mixes and import them into Cubase or Logic.
3.50pm. The orchestra is back: theme tune time. "There's one cameraman," Catherine tells us, "and I've said they can have three minutes!" "Are we recording this?" wonders Gerry. "Yeah," decides Murray. "Why not?". And he's glad he did. "They've got much better at that!" he enthuses afterwards. "That sounded great." I suspect he might decide to use this version at some point... And on to '13DW2'. Take one's not bad. "We want them in the zone, though!" reckons Murray, so a second take is requested. It's still not perfect, though, so for the first time, they decide to retake just one section of a cue, from point 'B' onwards. Sounds good, but Gerry's worried. "If you try to edit that on to the previous take of the first bit, it will sound a bit weird," he announces, "as there's no sound in the room when they start." "Don't worry about that," Murray assures him, "there will be a spaceship going by at the time."
4.20pm. We're doing 'Escape From Observatory'. "Excellent dots, Ben!" Murray enthuses after the runthrough, then turns to me. "Recognise it?" "Tooth and Claw," is my confident answer. I don't tell him that the title kind of gave it away even before I'd heard it. "We just need to re-do the end," Murray decides. "Actually, we just need bar 87." I think it's a tad ambitious to punch in just one bar, and so does Gerry, so they cover from bar 81 onwards and it takes a couple of goes. Murray remains pensive. He's worried about a D flat somewhere in the horns. "It does your mouth in," apparently. But they go with the fourth take anyway. "We've got a solo alto flute in the next one one," Murray announces. Gerry flies into activity to get a mic somewhere near the flautist to pick up the solo properly. She rehearses while they're doing so, and I suddenly know exactly which bit is coming up... it's 'Rose' music. Lovely! "Ben's put a C to D flat octave leap in the horns!" Murray realises as they run through it. "With a piano dynamic! Good luck with that." Er, apparently, then, this is difficult to play. For the only time today, nobody's terribly happy. "It's not the flute," says Murray, "it's just that the arrangement doesn't work alongside it."
4.45pm. Next cue is, not to put too fine a point on it, loud. And dynamic. And fast. It almost sounds as though Tom and Jerry should be tearing through the room. "Can I request a little less piccolo on the 'running up and down' stuff?" asks Gerry. "The 'running up and down stuff'?" giggles Murray. "You're playing out of your skins!" he tells the band, "and this is great, this one.". Lots of swelling tremolo strings ensue. They start quiet, but inevitably they get big. 'Big' is, after all, pretty much the reason we're here today at all. "We need to do this one again, folks," announces Ben. "It's a very important cue." I know why it's important, but I'm not telling.
5.00pm. "F***ing marvellous!!" announces Murray. And then realises he's just announced that to the entire orchestra, rather than just to Ben, as he'd intended. Good job he was saying something nice, really. Everyone's happy but Gerry, so – unusually - they go to take three. "This will be well worth it, folks," Ben tells everyone. "Episodes 12 and 13 are unmissable television!". "Very enjoyable," announces Murray this time. "Which is what I should have said last time." On to '12DW18', and Murray has decided that the end of this cue sounds like the theme tune to the kids' TV show Rainbow, and joins in by singing it every time. "Feed the whole world with a RAAINBOW!!!". That's 'paint', dear, not 'feed'. How could you feed the world with a rainbow? His response is to sing it even louder on the second take, just to wind me up. "It's been a hard session and you've all been fantastic," announces Murray, "so let's have a break." It's the 'long break' - what one might call 'lunch', were it not early evening – and he has just remembered something and makes a phone call. Unfortunately the person he is chasing, Julie Gardner, has left the building. What's that all about? I enquire, nosily. "I was supposed to deliver a CD of something," he smiles, "and I've only just remembered." He brandishes said disc at me. Across it is written, in large black lettering, 'Torchwood Theme'. Oh, go on, let me hear it. Murray smirks inscrutably. Evil swine.
6.00pm. We're back. "This is the 'Cyberman theme'," Murray informs me. "Those six notes, 'da da da, da da da'...". Oooh. I still haven't so much as seen the cover of the Radio Times. "Those horn swoops don't bed in very well, they're sticking out a bit," reckons Murray. "Maybe a staccato note in the trumpets might help..?" "A minim, fortissimo, on section B – play an E and an F," translates Ben, absurdly quickly, for the benefit of the players. After some quieter discussion an unexpected horrid farty noise blares out, which turns out to be the horns rehearsing that bit. "I think it was the rip that made it stick out," Murray concludes. "Can I just tacit them, then?". I get it: tacit=unspoken. I'm amazed at how well I'm following this. Am I boring you yet? Next up is '6DW'-something, and what I later discover is some of the big emotional stuff from the Cyber episodes. "This is difficult and fast!" announces Murray, sporting another of his collection of evil smiles. What this is, in fact, is 120 bars, at a tempo too fast for me to even guess at, oh, and it's in 5/4 time. Gerry mutters something about the Mission Impossible theme, which is entirely appropriate and justifiable. And there's a surprise false ending. "Any casualties? Anybody hurt?" enquires Gerry after a first take which was reasonable but which they're all clearly going to want another bash at. "Funny how easy it is to count to four and how difficult it is to count to five," Murray muses during the inevitable faffing-about before take two. There's a bit of a pause while all the players have a quick practice through their respective twiddliest bits. Paying no attention to anyone else all the while. It's a marvellously dissonant noise, actually, but not one that has much place on prime-time BBC One, more's the pity. This cue is taking a hell of a long time, but Ben's being meticulous about rehearsing all the sections to perfection – it is a very fast piece, so the tiniest of timing errors will be really obvious. "Are there any crazy page turns?" Ben suddenly wonders. Apparently there are, a few moments where the players have to turn the page of the score just on a really tricky figure. Ben is displeased with himself for this, but it doesn't seem to be too much of a problem for anybody. The next take is pretty good, and Murray tells the orchestra so. But they still want one more. And Ben wants more orchestra in his 'cans'. And suddenly the 'click track' seems to have gone missing. This could not have happened at a less helpful moment – just as the players were really getting to grips with a tricky cue. All present in the control room discuss moving on to a slower take while a headphone amp is repaired, but the consensus is that they're 'in the zone' and distracting them by chopping and changing would be a false economy. The take that eventually issues from all this seems fine to Murray, and Ben duly moves on to cue '3DW16' "This is low priority," frets Murray, while everyone is settling down. He's worrying about missing out on some important material later on, for the sake of a cue he might never need again - which turns out to be the 'downloading' music from School Reunion. The end of which may be the single loudest noise I've ever heard. "Actually, that was good and will be really useful," admits Murray after the take, exercising his prerogative to change his mind. "How about a slow number, now?" 'Rose's Theme, Part 2' is what we move on to, which is at a a nice sedate 70 bpm. "It was quite good," decides Murray after the first bash at it, "but I think we could afford to make it even more pronouncedly romantic. A bit more 'push'...?" A bit more push he gets, after a bit more faffing about with microphone stands. Indeed 'faffing about with microphone stands' seems to take up a good 70% of Gerry's working day. Do we want to head towards the final break in the same mood, or with a bang? 'Bang' is the consensus from the band. However, we seem to be spent in terms of 'bang'. About the only bit of a 'bang' left is a piece of Cyber music, and it's not all that 'banging'. It will have to do. It is largely composed of what will soon become a very familiar six-note motif, the one Murray alluded to earlier... there's concern that the percussionist is using wooden mallets. I'm not sure why. Ben's banging on the while about "taciting a B flat quaver in bar 62". And there's a diminuendo missing. All I know is I haven't got it. "How was the menace for you, Murray...?". This piece needs to 'menace', apparently. It's cue '6DW1' and the titles aren't getting any more interesting or revealing. I long to turn a manuscript page to find a cue called '...and then the Daleks burst in!!'. Anyway, Ben muses for a few minutes and then asks the orchestra if the second attempt at this cue can be made "more menaceful". "'Menaceful'?" mutters Murray in subdued incredulity. He's just making words up now, isn't he, I timidly suggest. "He's the conductor," smiles Cathering, "he's allowed to do that." Okay. I'll put it in italics and pretend it's Latin. "I think," Murray announces over Ben's headphones, "that it should be both 'menaceful' and 'threatensome'". Murray now almost seems to be trying to put Ben off, just for a laugh. Are these people really an hour behind schedule?
7.30pm. Next cue up is '13DW – End'. Although apparently it's actually the end of Dalek, and not from either Doomsday or The Parting Of The Ways. Murray's naming scheme grows ever more idiosyncratic. "A very important cue, this, everyone," Ben announces. "This will actually end series two!". "Not necessarily," mutters the reliably gnomic composer. The piece is pretty huge. "And with the choir on it, it will be even bigger!" Murray promises. "Bung a huge reverb on while you're at it," suggests Gerry. Ben's got reams of notes on this piece, which I haven't the energy to concentrate on other than a request for "a bit less on the wind chimes". "Either he plays them or he doesn't, mate!" chortles Gerry. "They're on or off."
8.00pm. One hour to go, and at least five cues to fit in. Well, actually, it's more complicated than that – Murray wants a load of individual notes and chords as well, in order to facilitate getting in and out of cues pre-emptively if a sequence runs short. More importantly, though, Murray and Gerry's jokes are becoming more appalling by the second. Do we call it 'stir crazy' or 'cabin fever'…? We proceed with '12DW14B-Rose'. "Recognise it?" Murray enquires of me. Er, not instantly, no. "Good. That means I can use it again!". I hazard a guess that it might be from Bad Wolf, based on the title. And just for once, I'm right. "Let's do Christmas Song!" bubbles Murray at the end. What, Song For 10? Can he still remember the words? "'Well I woke up todaaaaayyyy!'" begins his obvious response, "but this isn't the vocal version, it's more of a John Barry take on the same piece." "Your best John Barry, here, everyone," requests Ben at almost exactly the same instant. Was he listening in? Apparently not. I suppose it's not that spooky, though, given that they'll have been discussing this piece for weeks… "Very nice cue!" notes Gerry at the end. "It was a big fat noise, I enjoyed that!" "It's the first one in a major key, isn't it?" responds an amused Murray.
9.00pm The final hour of the session passes in a blur of frantic activity, the highlight of which is the recording of the 'devil music' from The Impossible Planet – a marvellous, discordant random blare of noise clearly inspired by The Beatles' A Day In The Life and which I end up looking forward to hearing in context. In a neat resolution which will please long-term Doctor Who fans, the final take of the final cue finishes just a few seconds before the scheduled end of the session – so no plugs are pulled in the middle of a take, and everyone gets to thank and congratulate each other. And quite rightly, too – it's been a startlingly productive day, and I've been hugely impressed by Murray's music, Ben's confidence and the tightness of the orchestra's performance in playing it all 'cold' and needing little more than a cursory run-through to get it all bang on.
Next day at Air Studios back in London should, of course, be slightly more relaxed – all concerned have a day and a half to mix these cues down into a form Murray can use on his remaining few episodes, and no performance-related worries. Naturally, my train runs hideously late and then I forget the directions I was given the previous night, follow another completely erroneous set of directions courtesy of Nicholas Briggs ("You said left out of the tube station!") and finally get to Air Studios about two hours after everyone else. Managing not to be distracted by the presence on the entrance wall of George Martin's original, pencil-annotated score for The Beatles' Yesterday, I am shown in by assistant engineer Olga to hear Murray complaining to mix engineer Jake Jackson about his schedule for the next few weeks. This is another day where he's directing the work rather than doing it all himself, of course, so I can grab him for an hour or so for a chat…
So how long have you been coming to Air Studios to do your mixing sessions?
Ever since I could afford to! I did Hawking here, the TV biopic, which was way before I did anything on Doctor Who, because I was already on the director of Hawking's next project when I got the call from Russell to do Doctor Who, and I had to drop that. So it's probably about three years. We recorded the Crouch End Community Chorus stuff here, for Dalek, last year. I did the score for the movie Alien Autopsy here, and a film called Mischief Night.
You're using the National Orchestra of Wales on your Doctor Who scores now, and this has been your second recording session with them. Is having the orchestra available something you pushed hard for, or was it asked of you by someone else?
Well, I pushed for it, and I think it was Julie [Gardner] who came back to me and said, 'Okay, they're up for it - when do you want to do it?'. And this is the only part of my schedule where I've actually got two weeks – this was the only week in two months where I didn't have a delivery deadline, so we went for May the 9th. I thought that would also provide the best opportunity of benefitting the most episodes towards the end of this series. But I did say early on that the last couple of episodes should have the orchestra available, because they were bound to be rousing. I didn't know what they were going to be about, but I knew they were going to be pretty special...
Is it something you would like to have had available last season as well, given that there was an awful lot of big, orchestral stuff in there which you had to replicate using samples?
Yeah, I think I'd still like to have the orchestra as often as possible... but it's not always possible. And it does take a lot of time and energy... and, of course, I don't know how much of what we've recorded I'll be able to use. What's important is that the cues exactly match the action, and there's no guarantee that the music that I've got earmarked for certain sections will work across the scene. So I might have to rewrite cues from scratch. But I want to use as much of this orchestra stuff as possible, obviously, becomes it comes readily sounding good.
If you're not sure your music is going to work with the visuals, why are you not working to picture, with the orchestra? It's something we've seen done so many times...
The last episodes I did was The Idiot's Lantern, and I'm in the middle of doing Love & Monsters at the moment. It takes two weeks to get the sheet music written for the orchestra, and there's actually been no episode, apart from the Christmas special, where I have that amount of time between writing it and delivering it. Writing the music itself, I've got down to about a week now - it used to take at least two weeks per episode, and if scoring it for orchestra takes another two weeks, you just can't do it! So I have to just sort of guess, compose on the basis of the script and hope that we can make it fit. That's why we recorded a whole load of 'get-out' chords, so I can interrupt cues with a chord and finish them off.
Is that why you find yourself re-doing some of your older cues actually with the orchestra this time, because there will be similar moments in upcoming episodes where you'll be able to use them?
Well, I have at least seen the new episodes, so I know the emotional terrain of them. The 'devil music' we've done with the orchestra for The Impossible Planet is newly-written, although it's very impressionistic, they're not actually 'cues' as such. I've recorded some old cues from series one that I really wanted to see realised in an orchestral way, and also slightly caught up with myself because we've managed to record cues from as recently as The Age of Steel. I was trying to get some of the stuff from Idiot's Lantern in, but even that wasn't possible for time reasons.
Is it that the video editing is biting into your time?
I think it's because I'm permanently working. I think around the end of April last series, I'd completed ten episodes. I remember having just finished The Doctor Dances when I spoke to you at the start of May. And this time around, at the same point in the year, I still had seven to do! Okay, it's broadcasting a little bit later in the year, but not that much later – so the back end of the job this year is much more compressed, time-wise. Seven episodes in nine weeks to be written, recorded and delivered!
And Doctor Who's always music-heavy these days – you're not receiving any episodes where you only have to write ten minutes' worth, or anything like that?
I did request that directors perhaps look out for a little more 'silence', partly to help me out. I think they responded by upping my workload by ten minutes per episode!
Standard practice in film and TV scoring is to use a temporary score made up of already-available music, as a working model to give the composer an idea of what the director wants for a given scene or sequence. Has that been happening to you, and if so, what sort of things have you been presented with as 'temp' music – are people perhaps using bits of your music from series 1, and saying 'give me something like that'?
Graeme Harper 'temps' all of his episodes exclusively with my music. James Strong temped his with eighty minutes of [Star Wars composer] John Williams! Oh, and a bit of [Gustav] Holst, just to compound my misery. Those two episodes have the tightest turnaround times of all the episodes – and they're still to come! Euros [Lyn] has his own favourites that he uses over and over again. James Hawes always uses my music now... I suppose it feels easier for me if they use my music to 'temp' with. All of the directors have had major coverage with music – the only one that doesn't have quite so much is Dan Zeff's episode [Love & Monsters], but that's a one-off in all kinds of ways...
Tell me a little bit about how you've got Ben Foster involved, and what the need is for someone to orchestrate and conduct the music after you've written it...
Ben takes my compositions, and makes them playable by an orchestra. I just don't have time to do that! And it would take me five times as long as it takes Ben, anyway. Ben's knowledge of the orchestra is exceptional. I've worked with a few orchestrators before, some of them much more well-known, people who work in Hollywood, but Ben's really much more to my taste, I like the way he realises the pieces. I don't have the time to spend two weeks looking at score sheets, so Ben works on that while I'm busy doing another episode. I think in the time he's put together the scores for this session I completed episode 11 and then episode 7, and I'd occasionally meet Ben to discuss how it was going. I think because this is the second time we've done it, everybody's a bit more confident about the process, and that includes the orchestra as well. We're familiar to them now, and it's a working relationship so that familiarity is important.
I can certainly imagine the last thing you want is a conductor up there who's even slightly unsure of what he's doing – especially with the volume of music you're trying to get through...
No, and I think when we used this orchestra for the first time, for The Christmas Invasion, that was the his first time as a professional, standing in front of an orchestra, and it was an amazing job.
What do you think having the material mixed professionally, by a dedicated mix engineer in an environment like this, gives you that you wouldn't get by doing it yourself? Especially given that firstly it's for TV rather than film so it doesn't necessarily need that sort of 'size' to it, and secondly the orchestral material will only ever form a component of the final score rather than a full finished soundtrack.
I don't know! That's why I'm doing it, to find out. I wanted to give it a chance to have the best possible treatment. If it turns out that it's significantly better, then I'll try and do it here all the time. But it's not cheap! I love Air Studios – it's not just the facilities, it's the atmosphere. It's laid back, the people are really nice...
And it's good not to be just sitting in your own studio for months on end...?
Oh God, that's driven me mad. It's been a really long winter! I took last summer off and went to America, came back for series 2 and thought 'I'll work from October until it's finished'. And you think the run-up to Christmas will go quickly, but of course you have to get to the end of April before the sun comes out.... and it's just too long to be sectioned off on your own! And also, of course, I'm almost the last person working on it. I mean, I know they're busy on Torchwood and stuff, but it kinds of feels like everybody else has gone home and I'm still plodding on. I've still got five episodes to go! I've got to deliver an episode on Monday and I don't even know when I've got time to do it. But anyway...
How do you think your music has changed since you wrote that first cue for Rose, which must seem like years ago...?
I think I've got better at it, to be honest. That's a tough question, though, because I haven't had a chance to look back, to review the year-and-a-half of work. I just carry on moving forward. But when I listen to the music that's going on in there [in the mixing room, next door], I find it thrilling, because it feels like quite a distance has been travelled. But, at the same time, there's music in Rose that will feature again in Doomsday! So from that point of view, I still feel that what I did in Rose was thematically right. We open the second series with the same kind of tune that series 1 started with, which was absolutely deliberate, and other stuff that was in Rose will come back in 12 and 13 this year, it has to. So there's been a lot of consolidation. I think in the minds of the production team, they've settled on a way that they want to use music, and they've settled on it being 'abundant' and 'grand' and 'all-pervasive'. I think in some of the earlier episodes of this season, the engineering of the plot is such that there's a lot of running around which is always accompanied by really energetic exciting music, and that's really come from 'the top', that directive.
It's not that you've come along and said 'This scene and this scene need loud, exciting music' - it's an intrinsic part of the programme design?
Yeah. I remember that The 'A' Team had a style in that way, which was that it came to a point in every script where everything had been set up for fifteen minutes of running around, and for the theme tune to blare over the top of that. And I used to love that! It takes a lot of imagination, on television, to have fifteen minutes of exposition and then a burst of motivated energy and then a ten-minute denoument. It takes a lot of engineering, it's not as easy as some people who criticise the format give it credit for. It's a real technique and an art – sort of 'Powell and Pressburger', in 45 minutes! And the music follows that structure, to a certain extent, you get exposition, then running around, then glorious denouement...
How much opportunity is there, within that, to make each episode thematically or sonically distinctive, given that you do rework old 'themes'? I ask because, as a Doctor Who fan of old, I'm used to each story having a kind of sonic or musical 'fingerprint' which makes it instantly identifiable, which was never the case on shows like Star Trek...
There's definitely a kind of similarity in the style across episodes, but then again, along comes something like The Girl in the Fireplace, and although it did have a little bit from somewhere else in it, it lived in a world almost completely of its own – very thematically-driven by a central motif around Madame De Pompadour. And the Cybermen have their own six-note theme which is in the first cue in Rise of the Cybermen and then you probably hear it about forty times thereafter in different contexts. And when it kicks off, when the metaphorical red button of the script is hit, when the fuse is lit... the music has to go with it. There's no compromise, it will be 160-180 beats per minute, frantic and furious. Occasionally I'll send it in without 'choir', and inevitably 'choir' will be requested to be sent on! But there's so much music around that the 'exposition' stuff does vary a lot from episode to episode. There is an attitude that is similar from episode to episode, and yet I think that most people, if you played them a cue from an episode, would have a pretty good guess at what episode it came from.
Is Doctor Who unique in that respect, in that people expect each episode to have an individual character as well as being part of a series house style, where most series tend to have a style that doesn't vary much from start to end?
Yeah, that's what makes it a tricky job! There's an 'arc', and also there's episode by episode variation. I love the way that there's a series of musical 'signposts' and emotional pointers back and forth between episodes and across series – music is a kind of emotional 'memory', and the kind of leitmotiv format works really well sometimes. In School Reunion, for instance, the Christmas song is reincorporated into the score. That had originally come at a moment where we saw the new Doctor and Rose at their absolute happiest - and then that music came back, in connection with another of the Doctor's friends, and that makes you wonder whether there's a sense of the Doctor thinking 'I've been happy with you and I've also been happy with her'. It also makes you wonder whether this other woman is intruding on the Doctor and Rose's happy memories, that sort of thing. Our emotional memory, our journey since 2005... it's already nostalgic. There are episodes from the first series which you already feel poignant about, you already feel poignant about Christopher Eccleston leaving, and that was broadcast for the first time less than a year ago, as we speak. But it feels like ancient history - it's like a photograph album, and we've got music that connects to those photographs. I really like that - and what I was doing with the orchestra yesterday, I have a few pieces earmarked for the end of this series, but there's a number of candidates and at the moment I don't know which one will work best. It depends which memories you want to bring back, I suppose.
You're still able to talk as intelligently as ever about your work on the show – but do you still have the same enthusiasm for it, eighteen months on, as you did on day one of Rose?
There were several big emotional moments – one was getting the job, another was after I'd seen episodes 4 and 5 of series 1, when I realised that without asking permission, and without testing it on anybody else, Russell had had the audacity to come up with the most brilliant, confident take on Doctor Who. There were all kinds of really emotional moments for me on series 1 - the rest of life seemed like a bit of a letdown in comparison, because there was the intensity of the working relationship I had with the directors - especially with Joe Ahearne towards the end – and the heightened melodrama of The Parting of the Ways, which I got emails about from fellow composers who were really moved. A very well known composer wrote to me and said that unfortunately he's not able to use a cor anglais any more because whenever he does, he sees a Slitheen on the toilet! So that was a kind of emotional high. And I think coming back, it took a while to get back into it after The Christmas Invasion, because that was another emotional high. Being broadcast at 7pm on Christmas Day and there being a song in it – at the time I didn't bother asking if they'd actually even used the song because I was expecting them to say 'Thanks for the song, it was lovely, but, er, you know...'
Did you supply them a variant of that cue, without the vocal?
I can't remember now. I don't think I did. I sometimes do give them alternatives, but sometimes when I'm just on the brink of sending them, I think to myself: 'Which one would you like them to use, Murray?'. And once I've answered that question, it makes logical sense not to send them the thing that I don't want them to use. And with the song, there it was in the episode. But starting over again was quite tricky, especially because it was the middle of winter. And I wasn't very happy about it being the middle of winter, because I'd had so long in the sun! I kept thinking, 'Where is this new body of themes going to come from?'. Obviously for the Christmas special I had to use the 'Bad Wolf' theme for the Doctor recovering from his regeneration. I think ultimately it does come down to me, there's a kind of personal touch – everybody else who works on Doctor Who seems to have a department, whereas I am a department. It's my ambition to have a department!
You are happy to keep working on it, though? You are coming back for series 3?
Yeah... we'll have to see how it goes. I suppose I'll probably stay on it as long as the present regime, because I really like them and I do love the work, but it is hard work. But I like meeting all the Doctor Who people, and going to the parties and being the last one to leave, which is my regular role. I always have this sensation that I'm the one who has just been let out of my hutch, whenever there's a screening or something like that - everybody else is nice and relaxed, and I'm going at a hundred words a second...
Why isn't there an album of your music out yet? It would seem to be the most obvious piece of merchandise after the DVDs, but more than a year on there's still no sign of one...
I honestly don't know what's going to happen there - whether there will be an album, and if so what kind of album it will be. It looked like there was going to be one in May of this year, and obviously that hasn't happened. If they can't get it together, I'll find a way of making sure that the people who want the music can get it, you know?
Note to readers: write to someone important now... and what about Torchwood? Are you doing it? Are you doing it all, if so?
I'm thinking about it! I haven't signed anything yet, but we've already established a tone for it, and I think I'm going to be involved with it one way or another... I think I will be overseeing it every week. That's about where it is at the moment. We've got a palette of sounds and a theme tune!
And after a season and a half of Doctor Who – do you have a favourite moment or a favourite episode, in terms of your own work?
As for actual highlight moments, they're probably not very different to most other peoples'. Billie Piper and Christopher Eccelston in episode 13, Chris saving her life then dying by absorbing the energy – that moment between them. The end of The Doctor Dances was obviously a highlight as well. And there's been a fair bit this series too, The Girl in the Fireplace, for me, was great... there's something so touching about the show, something so loving and tender about the way it's done, that really just gets me, actually! Something about Doctor Who makes you want to give everything you've got – you want to give as much as you can for it. It's like a really close friend.