How Thomas Newman Composed the Main Title for 'Feud: Capote vs. The Swans' | Behind the Song
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00:00Hi, I'm Thomas Newman. I'm going to take you through the music for my main title to
00:04Feud, Capote vs. the Swans. I hope you enjoy it.
00:18My daughter and I, Julia, were approached by Ryan Murphy's company. I guess the idea was I was going
00:22to write a main title. My daughter Julia would write the music for the eight hours. So I got
00:27to kind of watch as she did her thing and she watched as I did mine. I was busy doing other
00:31things as well. Typically I'll begin any project just by having tons of ideas and sharing them
00:36and saying, does this interest you? And if so, why? Or if it doesn't, why? In the case of this,
00:41I think it was this notion of Upper East Side, swans crossing in crosswalks and this kind of
00:46gossipy chatter, which I think brought us to this notion of these piano motors and things that
00:51really moved quickly and in a kind of yappity fashion. I like that this chatter begins. I got
00:57this from Alexis, but it has to stop at some point. It can't just chatter through the entire 90 seconds
01:02of the piece. Where does it stop and what replaces it? There was talk like that. And then there was
01:08then talk of what specific moments we'd want to literally sync to. Because it is an animation
01:14sequence, the intention was always that the music and the image in the editorial cut and the music
01:18tempo would really be aligned. But no, I think I was working from the beginning with the picture,
01:23because I think that's really what inspired all of these ideas. I think complexity, along with
01:30a kind of degenerative Truman Capote, which is kind of what you get out of this title, that
01:34poison pens, you know, the notion of the series, which is few, that it's Capote versus the swans,
01:40that all these women were very, very close friends. He betrayed them. There was alcohol,
01:44there was drugs, debauchery all along the way. So it was pretty A to Z on that level.
01:50And again, with a kind of frenetic, kind of cocaine pace, maybe.
02:01So here's the beginning.
02:09Like you can see, there's kind of this calm on top of this chatter too.
02:13This opening sound is an instrument called a jaycall. I think it's actually a bird call.
02:17You hold it next to your mouth and you kind of go like this, and it sounds like this.
02:24So a kind of splatter and a kind of windiness that kind of sets you in motion. A player that
02:31I work with a lot named Steve Tavallone, who put together these piano motors, and they'll kind of
02:36spill forth, and there'll be variations based upon the fingers that I have pressed down.
02:41And then I'll oftentimes just kind of try to mosaic them together to say, oh,
02:45I like this two measures, and I think this could repeat for eight measures, or
02:48no, eight measures is too much. It'd be more like six measures. And I put this together.
02:59It's a motor, so if I pressed one finger, music people will know this, a whole series of notes
03:05that they're kind of pre-programmed will keep playing in time. If I play a second note,
03:11they'll interact in different ways, and you get different types of harmonies and different types
03:15of pattern interactions, right? And then it's up to my ears to say, I like that,
03:20and what if this were the body of the piece? And there's real harmonic information that's
03:29kind of coming at us with it. And I think this is where it stops, and then something else has
03:37to happen that is not that shatter. I can actually un-solo this.
03:46So a bullet is loaded, and a gun goes off,
03:51and a woman falls, and there's a different idea now,
03:58and a low tone. So, you know, more darkness and spilling champagne, and this sound too,
04:04which sounds like a vocal sound, which is actually a processed violin raga.
04:14So again, a repeating kind of motor that brings forth a real sense of some kind of drama,
04:19distress kind of thing. And it's not something that I'm looking for, it's kind of something I
04:24find with the help of these players. I feel like I've got a butterfly net. I've got these people
04:27in front of me, and they have these great ideas, and how can I grab it? And so here's an idea I
04:31grab and say, wow, that's great, and what would happen if we put it here? And it's just kind of
04:36in that sense of practicality that these ideas begin to kind of shape and emerge. It starts
04:42poetically, and it ends with great pragmatism. George Deering, who's an amazing guitarist,
04:53plays all kinds of instruments. There's something he does on a bass where he's playing right on the
04:58bridge, and it's just kind of like a non-pitched kind of knocking, which is what this sound is here.
05:11You know, real anxiety, right? I mean, or some kind of
05:16of heartbeat. At the very least, a one-up of something, like things are worse.
05:20The poison pen. So, you know, along the way, you ask yourself as a composer, what's important to catch?
05:25What is going to be the best synchronicity? And that just seemed like a really fun
05:31visual and aural punctuation. I don't know why. It's fun when I hear it. I just think,
05:36wow, that's cool. This, along with
05:43this. So, two sounds combined, and then triangles at the end.
05:53So, it's all kinds of really intricate layering, and the funny thing is, it happens typically so
06:00intuitively that I can typically not remember what we've done when we're done, but I can
06:06it happens typically so intuitively that I can typically not remember what we've done when we're
06:12done, because it's just growing and turning into something. And again, it's coming towards my ears.
06:17It's not like it's coming out of me to the players. It's kind of like, I know, what if we did this?
06:21What if there's rhythm at bar 30 or whatever, and that that rhythm comes in following the pen,
06:27and it goes all the way to the end, and then suddenly you're somewhere. Once this idea was
06:31settled on, it wasn't in one go, but it was like 80% there, 75% there, and can we do this? And then
06:37I think we'd get different cuts where such and such would be slightly shorter, which just can
06:42be vexing, because suddenly, particularly when you're doing something so synchronous, now something's
06:46like a half a second shorter, and something that was perfectly in time with your tempo and your
06:52metering is now off. So then, what do you do about that, and can you move it off the metering, or is
06:59part of what makes it good the fact that it is in time, and now what? But that's kind of the gig.
07:04The decision made that, wouldn't it be great, just because this is so uptown, to have a string
07:09section. I guess I should just, I'll play it out of solo, just so you can kind of hear what it is
07:14inside the piece. So two kind of lidesome, slightly complex string chords. I could take them out.
07:30So you can kind of see how much dramatic information
07:33those strings have, because now here it is with them in.
07:39You know, and it's this kind of, kind of come and go phrase. So if I put that in solo, here,
07:43here are those strings. So a real sense of the harmonic vocabulary. It's typically, you know,
07:56an LCR, left, center, right thing, violins, violas, celli and bass, and you know, you're
08:02kind of capturing the room. You can kind of hear, you know, violin melody coming out on the left
08:13speaker, more mid, mid and low strings coming center and right, and then here it is with everything in.
08:27So the issue was, how does it end?
08:40Yeah, I really wanted to end on that sock.
08:46But this was designed to say, now fasten your seatbelts or unfasten your seatbelts and get
08:50ready for an hour of this. I think I had delivered a mix without it, thinking this was just an idea
08:55of a transition to Ryan and Alexis, and they really liked how it transitioned into the drama.