Jeff Cardoni
Jeff Cardoni is the brilliant self-made composer who has shaped the emotional experience of an unpredictable maze of films and television shows including The Kominsky Method, Silicon Valley, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, CSI: Miami, A.P. Bio, Young Sheldon, Wilfred, Speechless, Just Friends, The League, Malicious, Can You Keep a Secret? and A Perfect Man. Since his arrival in Los Angeles in 1997, Jeff hustled to build his career from the ground up. With sincerity and focus, he has refined a chameleonic artistic voice with rich expertise in fostering cathartic moments for his audience. He is the essential manifestation of where cultivated talent, self-belief, and sedulity can take you in the entertainment industry. A beloved and well-respected member of the film music community, Jeff was the recipient of ASCAP’s Composers’ Choice Award for ‘2018 TV Composer of the Year’ at their annual Screen Music Awards ceremony this past May. In our insightful conversation, Jeff deconstructs the Hollywood mythology of overnight success with personal anecdotes and reflects on his musical highlights from Mike Judge’s tech world comedy, Silicon Valley ahead of the series finale.
Courtesy of Subject
Coming from a multidisciplinary musical background, what made you gravitate towards the world of composing, and who were your most significant mentors in the early stages of your career?
Wow, that’s a good question. I mean, I played piano a lot when I was young; that’s what I learned on. It’s so cliché, but I was always aware of movie music like everyone was — all the hits of the ’80s like John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith.
I never really thought about it as a career though, but back then, I was living in D.C. and playing guitar in an indie rock band. We had a manager who was in L.A., and he was a brother of someone in the band. He was actually also a music supervisor for movies. This was the mid-90s, so movie soundtracks started selling millions of copies — it was the new hot thing. Because he was involved in some movies, he ended up exposing me to that. I had never really thought about it before. Through him, I got a glimpse of that, and then I ended up moving out here with some of the guys in my band. [The band] broke up as soon as we got here, so after that, I decided that I wanted to try to get into scoring.
Basically, the bass player for my band, who also moved here, went to work at this composer agency with his brother. They rep composers and music supervisors, and so, they gave me a little guidance in the early days. I had a couple of meetings with agents and they were telling me how it works because I was pretty clueless. At that point, I knew that I had to start from zero, learn what to do, and try to figure out. That process started twenty years ago.
What was the company called?
It was called Soundtrack Music Associates. They’ve had several iterations, but one of the guys, John Tempereau, is an agent there, and he’s still around. Since then, he’s kind of taken over the company. A few people who were there have since gone, but he’s still doing it. Back then, he sat me down, put me in my place and said: “You’ve got to do this, this, and this.” He gave me some tough love as far as explaining how it worked. I think every clueless composer just starting thinks, “I just need to get an agent, and then everything will start happening.” That couldn’t be further from the truth. That was like step fifty down the road. It’s like, “You can’t sell something that isn’t anything yet.”
After that, I had to go and find things to work on to build a reel. Through that, I met a couple of composers. I never worked for Hans [Zimmer] or anyone big like that. I didn’t go down that path where you work under them, and then they hand off a project to you, and then you have a big career. That wasn’t my path, but I mean, it wasn’t a choice not to. To be totally honest, if I could go back in time, I probably should have pursued that a little bit harder because it definitely can open up some doors to you that are harder to open on your own.
I didn’t really have any hookups. I tried sending demos to Hans’ place, but I never really got any traction. I did meet up with John Murphy back in those days because he was new in town too. We met through mutual friends, and I helped him out on a few things. Back then, he didn’t really know how to do it either because he was new to the game too, but he hit the ground running and scored some hit movies right out the gate. I remember being up at his house around that time when he was working with Danny Boyle. He was doing this movie, Millions, and it was also some time around 28 Days Later too. I can’t remember exactly, but I worked with him on some stuff, and I wasn’t there for too long. We were more friends than me being his coffee boy, or whatever, but it was cool to see. He’s a super creative, talented dude. I think we connect because he’s super down to earth. There are a lot of pretentious people out here, and he’s not one of them, nor am I, so I think we relate on that if nothing else.
In some ways, it’s an advantage not to have been an assistant to a giant composer because it can be hard to get out of that shadow. That can become a problem in itself.
Yeah, yeah. It’s definitely not the answer to everything. For every person who worked for Hans [Zimmer] and turned into Harry Gregson-Williams, or whatever, I’m sure there’s fifty who have not. A friend of mine told me this recently, and I never really thought about it.
I was on a panel, and a music exec talked about this… On the bigger studio-level movies, there’s so much money, and so many things are on the line. When they’re hiring someone on these films, they usually don’t want a question mark on the composer. I think, a lot of the time, if they had done several movies with big composer A, then they have met his assistants over the years through interacting with the main guy. So, if there’s ever an opportunity where the main guy can’t do something, they’re more apt to hire someone who they’ve known through the years that is associated with an A-list guy rather than take a chance on an unknown entity. It only applies to the big A-list projects, but I’ve been fighting against this for a while — it just is what it is.
What were the steepest learning curves you overcame in your first major composing opportunities?
I guess the biggest thing is the speed that’s required and honestly, learning not to overthink stuff. I got here the last week of ’97, and I’d been here for a while before I got CSI: Miami in 2003. I was putting up fliers at AFI [American Film Institute], cold calling people, reaching out to The Hollywood Reporter, just trying to get a gig. I did a bunch of low budget shorts, and a bunch of hour-long documentaries for TV, basically whatever I could do. I made a lot of mistakes, but the good thing is that no one really saw that stuff, so it doesn’t matter. I was clueless, which is probably another plus of working for a more established person because you can learn things on their watch instead of your own.
On one of the first gigs I got, which was an hour documentary show on USA Network, I sent mixes to the dub [stage] with the wrong sample rate. It was all playing back at the wrong speed. In those days, it was not like Pro Tools — you had to send it on a DAD8. It was a major screw up because it’s not easy to change. I don’t even know what they did exactly.
Sample rate converted or something else?
Well, yeah, but you have to bring in a deck and actually wire it in and play it as a different speed. Stuff like that is not good to find out, right? I had some mistakes like that. In the first five years, you always think you’re better than you are. At least I did. Some new movie comes out, and you’re like, “Oh, that wasn’t that great. I could have done that.” And then looking back on it, I couldn’t have done any. You know what I mean? You learn to respect things even if you don’t like them because there are so many factors involved beyond what you finally hear in the film.
For me, the biggest learning was to be able to look at something and have the confidence to come up with an idea, or even nugget of an idea, instead of overthinking or needing to be guided. I had to look at a temp track to figure out what to do because I think once you start, the hardest part is looking at a blank page with nothing there. Once you get a nugget of an idea going, then all the other stuff falls into place. It’s coming up with that initial idea that’s the most difficult, but then the more you do it, you get more confident, I suppose.
I think now, with all the technology and tools that everyone has available to them, it’s almost harder because you have infinite choices for every decision and every sound. That can paralyze people from getting anything done. That’s a big thing, and it’s also about learning to trust the people you work with.
The Kominsky Method revolves around Sandy Kominsky, a formerly successful actor turned premier Hollywood acting coach and his best friend/longtime agent, Norman Newlander, as they navigate love, responsibilities, and emotional traumas during their twilight years. Since we last spoke, the show has received tremendous praise from critics and viewers alike, earning two Golden Globes. Can you elaborate on your initial impressions of this narrative and why you think it has resonated so deeply with its audience? How did the musical identity come about?
I think the writing is so good, and the acting is so good. Those two [Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin] can read the phone book, and it would still be interesting to me.
I got a call one day from Chuck Lorre’s assistant, and Chuck is on the show called Young Sheldon that I do. Chuck has never called me. I didn’t even think Chuck knew who I was. So, his assistant called, and I asked: “Am I in trouble?”. He said, “No, Chuck is on the line. He wants to speak with you.” I’m like, “Jesus. It’s Chuck Lorre calling me.” So, I pick up, and I’m like, “Hey! How’s it going? This is Jeff. Did I do something?” He’s like, “No, on the contrary. I have a new show, and I have no idea what I want to do with the music. Would you come in and take a look?” I was like, “Hell yes. I’ll come in and take a look!.”
I went down over to Warner Brothers and watched it. At that point, it had no music in it at all, and I said, “I don’t think you need any music.” I mean, it was that good with nothing, but Chuck, he thought it did. He brought me in, and we started talking over some ideas, but it was very hard because this is his passion project. He wrote everything, and he directed the first episode. We had that to fight against because for most of his career, he’s been doing multi-camera shows. Single cam was totally new to him as well. It was definitely a process of figuring things out, as a project and as far as using music because there’s basically no score on multi-cam shows. And then it was a process of trying to figure out what it was going to sound like. It was a struggle for a while, and there were several days where he was getting frustrated. It was tough, but he didn’t know what to tell me. Those were some desperate times, and they were trying to decide what the hell we were going to do. I had this little tune, and it came together — it worked.
The hardest part was the beginning. The first few episodes of the first season are really heavy because someone dies, so it’s pretty dramatic. The tone of it definitely shifted after half of the season, and there’s not as much music as I would have thought it would use. The danger when there’s very little music is that it almost becomes a sitcom because you’re just playing transitional things. Trying to find the right balance was challenging, especially given Chuck’s background. Anytime there’d be music playing under a line of dialogue or a joke, he was really sensitive to that, and it would pull him out of the dialogue. It was easier for the more emotional moments because it worked that way naturally, but in the more funny moments, we eventually ended up not scoring them, or rarely scoring them.
It’s definitely a fine line. When it comes to music for film and television, you obviously want it to feel perfectly appropriate, as if it was always meant to be there.
Yeah. I also have my own personal demons I’m battling with because I never set out to do comedies. I never really watch comedies, so when I saw the first episode of The Kominsky Method, I was like, “Oh, it’s a drama.”, and I wanted to score it like that. I’m probably overly sensitive about not wanting to do comedies, so I wanted to make it more dramatic than it probably deserved. We kind of fought against that a little bit in the beginning as well, but that’s my own personal thing.
Silicon Valley really led me to get more comedies; I never saw it coming. I’ve studied in the last few years, and tried to steer the ship a little bit away from comedy, but it’s challenging. It’s funny because if you listen to the music on Silicon Valley, it’s not comedic at all. It’s almost like a thriller at this point — it’s all tension. I try to keep myself sane and not score comedies comedically.
Because then you risk sounding cartoonish.
Absolutely. Sometimes, it’s a losing battle, though. You’ve got to pick your battles, especially if there’s a writer involved as a producer, you know what I mean? They’re so attuned to their jokes and how they’re landing. If music can help it, they want it, even though, to me, some of the best comedies have no music whatsoever. It can be a slippery slope because once you go there, it’s hard to get out of there. If one joke has an exclamation point, then suddenly, every joke needs one.
In this second season of The Kominsky Method, Sandy is challenged by his daughter’s decision to pursue a romantic relationship with a man similar in age to himself. Still dealing with the loss of his wife, Norman finds solace in reconnecting with a former sweetheart. Which storylines this season have led to the introduction of fresh musical ideas?
Hmm, that’s interesting. That’s a good question because I would say there’s a little bit less music this season. My big moments to shine end up being in the last cue of the episodes into the end credits. A lot of the score internally was played dry, but I would say the most musical moments of season two have to do with Norman’s story as opposed to Mindy’s, but [hers] is really funny. Paul Reiser is her boyfriend, and he’s unrecognizable. He’s friggin’ hilarious. He gives this monologue at the end of the second or third episode, and it’s seriously Emmy worthy. It will make you cry — it’s really that good.
The Kominsky Method broadly explores existentialism, as well as the inevitable realities and uncertainties humans face as they grow older. Because these universal anxieties are the focus of a situational comedy taking place in the youth-obsessed landscape of Los Angeles, does that have any influence on your approach to scoring this series?
Not particularly. There was a conversation early on like, “Do we go big band, or try something old because they’re older people?”. But that felt like we were putting more icing on a cake that was already there, so we went a little more neutral with it. I don’t think the music really comments on their age because I believe what they’re talking about is still pretty universal to everyone.
If you’re younger, I still think you can appreciate the concepts about aging. I don’t think you necessarily have to care a lot about Hollywood either to find them enjoyable. It’s not an insider type of show where it’s much better to watch if you’re an actor, but I think actors probably appreciate some of that stuff. To be honest, I think Paul Reiser’s character in this season definitely brings this even more into the mix, because he’s not an entertainment business person at all. He’s a school teacher. There’s a lot of talk about choices we make in life and how they lead us down a path. Looking back, did you take a wrong turn somewhere? And feeling like, “God, how did I end up here? I never saw this coming.” At some point, I think everyone faces that in their life, no matter how old they are.
On the subject of age, film and television composing is one of the rare paths in the music industry where being older and wiser perceived as an asset rather than a disadvantage. How have your instincts and skillsets improved with time, experience, and expansion of repertoire?
Right. Well, I think it’s a dichotomy. To what you said, I feel like it’s about experience and practice, really. You get better as a musician. Music is a lifelong pursuit, and you never get to a point where you can say, “Okay, I know everything now.” I think that you learn something new and you grow as a composer every day. I’m by far way better than I was and now, have a point of view, and, I guess, a style. That can only come from time and experience. The irony is that, yes, I’m a hundred times better composer today than I was fifteen years ago. Still, on the flip side, I think if you look at the older composers that are working, it’s because they’ve had enough various successes that make people still want them when they’re older.
People hire Thomas Newman or John Williams because of the movies they did that people have seen and love. I think it would be hard to be sixty years old and do your first thing. On the flip side of that, people are always looking for “the new thing.” When you’re in the game, you’re not the new commodity. For some projects, people are looking for the new DJ, or the new dude from a band, or someone who just did a Sundance movie. You fight with that as well, for better or worse.
As you go along in your career and get more credits, people will always look at those projects you’ve done. While in some careers, having a long resumé is a plus, as a composer, it could work against you because someone could say, “Oh, this guy did this movie or this show — he’s not ready for this.” When you’re young, and you’re a blank slate, you’re not prejudged on any of that stuff. In a lot of ways, you might have a better shot at getting something than someone who’s mid-career but not an A-list top of the game composer. I struggle with that and try to make different choices to steer where things are going for me. Age isn’t as important, but it’s still a thing. Not the physical age, like “If you’re over thirty-five, you’re old news.” It’s more about your experience. If you have a long history, it might work against you unless that long history includes a bunch of classic movies.
I think as far as Hollywood goes, so much of it is about how people perceive you. That perception is built from talent, who you know, what you look like, what you sound like, but also what you’ve worked on. People will judge. If John Williams wrote Star Wars for a sci-fi channel movie, he wouldn’t be perceived the same way even though the music was equally as brilliant. We can all be lucky to be tied to something that does well and get raised up by that. I think many of us have these hopes when a project comes out, and want it to do well, but then a lot of times, it doesn’t. That doesn’t change how hard you worked, or how proud you are of what you did, or how proud anyone was of the project. Projects like that come and go, and they don’t necessarily help you or hurt you.
In my years of doing this now, I think you have to put 110% into whatever you’re going to do. You have to do as good a job as you can and leave nothing on the table because you never know what’s going to happen or who’s going to see it. Even if no one’s going to see it, at least you can sleep at night, knowing that, “I did something awesome for this. I’m really proud of it, and if no one ever hears it, there’s nothing I can do about it.” That goes for money as well. It doesn’t matter what you get paid on something. I think if you agree to do something, you have to deliver 100%. If something doesn’t pay well, you can’t just do a 50% job. What if you sign on to do this low budget thing, and suddenly, it gets attention, and then your shitty, phoned-in scores are on it. No one knows what you got paid, and no one cares, but they will notice if the music is bad.
That’s an excellent point.
In life in general, you always have to try your best, and then you’ve got to surrender — what happens, happens. I don’t think any of us get into this to make money. Anyone sane would never become a musician or a composer just to make money. If that happens, that’s a fluke, but at the end of the day, we are all servicing projects, and we’re craftsmen, but we’re artists too. Any artist creates because they want to create. Ideally, they want to do the best they can and make something of artistic value to them, whatever the end product may be.
If I get the opportunity to work on a little film that’s probably not going to be seen or doesn’t have a budget, I still treat it every bit as important as anything else. Because at the end of the day, I’m looking at a picture on a screen, trying to write some music to it. It doesn’t matter if that film is fifty million dollars, or it’s a five hundred thousand dollar indie. It’s still a picture on the screen, and the process is the same. You always want to do your best for each scene, and that doesn’t change.
Silicon Valley charts the triumphs and challenges of a socially awkward software engineer and his crew of brilliant yet quirky peers on their journey to attain wealth, clout, and glory through a revolutionary data compression tech play called Pied Piper. Historically, what have been some of the musical moments you are most proud of in your run with Silicon Valley?
That’s tough. I have the worst memory, but I would say the end of season one when they had the whiteboard with the dick formula on it. That was a pretty funny moment, so that’s one. I don’t know why, but I always go for the emotional moments. That’s what I personally like to do. At the beginning of season two, they’re at a funeral for Peter Gregory, and [Gavin Belson] was giving a speech about how we’re in “rarified air right now”. There’s a nice little piano cue under there, and that was one of my favorites.
Usually, the last episode of the season always has something like a big three-minute courtroom scene, a chase, or something like that. Those are always my favorites. I thought the end of season five was pretty cool because they got a new office, and it was a little victory for them. That was a fun one too.
How did you envision your role in the musical storytelling amidst the vibrant soundtrack curated by Jason Alexander and Rudy Chung, and how did that reconfigure over time?
Yeah, Jason and Rudy. We’re at every spotting session together, and we talk about stuff. They were part of the reason I got the gig in the beginning. I know them because they were on CSI: Miami for years.
At first, they didn’t really know what the music was going to be, but from the first second I met with Mike [Judge], I was always like, “The music has to be cooler than these guys.” You didn’t want it to be nerdy or be making fun of them. You wanted it to feel like Entourage. The music still hits even though they were a bunch of geeky guys, working on computers.
There was always that concept, but after the second episode, Mike [Judge] really started asking about how we could score some of the more sweet moments, and the tense moments because there was nothing for that in the beginning. There was no template and no temp music. We’d just sit in the spotting sessions and watch the show with no music. Mike would be like, “Maybe we try something for this? Should we score that moment?” and then that’s how the whole synth-y ambient sound evolved. It’s lived on through a lot of the show, and now, there are way more of those tension-filled, high stakes moments instead of just transitioning with music or playing it dry through the rest of the scenes. That’s really the evolution from where we started.
Going into the sixth and final season, we see Richard Hendrix testifying to Congress about the security of user data, Hooli villain, Gavin Belson gearing up to take on Amazon, and the traitorous Jian Yang engaging in illegal activities behind the screen. What can we expect musically from this bittersweet finale?
I don’t know yet. We’re halfway there, and I don’t know what’s going to happen at the end. I mean, as I said, it’s really turned into a thriller as far as the music. It’s all tension, and there’s always a problem that they’re fighting, racing against the clock. There are seven episodes, so I have not seen the endgame just yet.
Aside from building tension, it feels like there are a few more emotional moments as we get into the home stretch. These dudes have known each other for a really long time, so there’s definitely some history and love between them. There are some hilarious moments between Jared and Richard in the first couple of episodes that are really touching for a comedy show. As ridiculous as they are sometimes, I think the emotional stuff still hits you.
If you had to create your own music startup, what would your innovation be? Which three other musicians — dead or alive — would you recruit to make it a reality?
Oh my god! Wow, that is a tough question. My innovation would be to partner with GrubHub, so you could get a custom song every time you ordered food to your house. It would be AI-generated every time you place an order. Your food would show up, and as you’re eating, you could put it on. What would this be called? It would be called Dinner Tunes, and you would have your own music that no one’s ever heard that was specifically designed for your dinner that you ordered from GrubHub.
Would the lyrics have to do with whatever you’re actually eating?
No, it’ll be instrumental. First, I would recruit Ennio Morricone because he’s done such a variety of stuff. I think he’d have a really unique AI Ennio cue. Wow, this is tough. Maybe Trent Reznor because some of his stuff is very calming. The third one would be a singer. I think Sia would also be involved. Actually, no. You know what? It would be Billie Eilish because I recently heard her on Howard Stern, and some of her vocalizations were insane. I think she could add a cool and soulful wordless vocal, so AI Billie Eilish would also be in there. After seeing her, I realized she’s pretty friggin’ amazing, and her voice is sick, especially for how young she is.
What’s next for you?
At the moment, I’m finishing a thriller movie called Paradise Cove. It’s really cool. And then, I’m doing a Christmas movie called Same Time Next Christmas that finishes up in November. I’m excited to work on this because the director is this guy Stephen Herek who directed Mr. Holland’s Opus, which I love, and he also directed the first two Bill & Ted’s, which are more important to me.
I’ve got this show for [Jerry] Bruckheimer called L.A.’s Finest. It’s a spinoff of Bad Boys. I’ll be doing the second season of that. I think I’m going to be doing this Netflix film called The Sleepover with a director named Trish Sie, who I worked with a few years ago on Step Up: All In. That will be next year, though. What else? Another season of A.P. Bio. There’s also a show I think I’ll be doing for Amazon called Good People. There’s a pilot, and Whitney Cummings was a producer on it. I scored her movie [The Female Brain] a couple of years ago, so she called me in to help out on it, and we’ll see how it goes. These projects are a good way to do something different. It should be a lot of fun.
Interviewer | Paul Goldowitz
Research, Copy, Layout | Ruby Gartenberg
Editing | Alex Sicular, Ruby Gartenberg
Extending gratitude to Jeff Cardoni.