The Music of Netflix Drama Series BODIES
(This was originally published as a thread on my Twitter/X account in July 2024. I’ve adapted it here so that those without a Twitter/X account can access it. The original thread can be viewed here: https://x.com/JonOpstad/status/1812174432800055424)
BODIES on Netflix was a very interesting project to compose the score for. For a while I’ve wanted to put together a thread with some details on the approach to the music. It’s taken me a while to get round to this (busy composing) but for those interested here we go…
To set the scene, here’s the main title theme that’s heard at the start of each episode
BODIES posed some very interesting challenges as a composer — such a broad canvas with a complex narrative set across four time periods from the 1890s to the 2050s. This opened up so many doors of musical possibilities and such a range of musical choices to make
Scoring a Victorian period drama, a WWII drama, a present-day crime thriller & a dystopian near-future sci-fi drama all in one project was creatively very exciting, but working out how to approach this in a cohesive way sometimes felt like a complex musical jigsaw puzzle to solve
From an early stage on the project one of the key concepts discussed was to have a strong central theme, with a strong sense of melody, running through the whole score, helping to tie the whole narrative together across the four different time periods.
This main theme is heard at the start of each episode in the main title music (above). Here it is, played on the piano.
The score for Bodies employs a Theme & Variations approach. Variations on the main theme, twisted through different instrumentation, different harmonisations, different rhythmic approaches, are the thread that underpins the fabric of the whole score
Here’s a blast of an orchestral version of the main theme from episode 6 — “A Bullet In Time”
A lot of the time I compose at the computer, but for BODIES I took the approach of moving away from the computer & sitting down with pencil and paper at the piano to create the key architecture of the score, working on giving it really solid foundations.
I wanted this to be a score with a very strong sense of melody and a very strong sense of harmony, and so I put a lot of time into working these structures out at the start
Here is a simple lead sheet of the main theme, showing the melody line and chord structure.
I wanted to write a theme with solid 4-chord building blocks, to create a firm harmonic foundation. In film music this is something that can be heard a lot in the music of Hans Zimmer and others, but for me this originates in the music of the great Bernard Herrmann
I feel (others might disagree) that Herrmann’s music was some of the first film music to build structures from smaller repeating harmonic/motivic cells, at a time when the general tide was for a more expansive, sweeping Viennese-influenced approach
Bernard Herrmann is one of my favourite composers & his music was a big influence on my score for Bodies
The main theme has an 8-chord structure — actually a 4-chord structure with the two middle chords inverted the second time round. Here are the first four chords, notated as simple block chords.
The second time round the second chord, Eb minor in first inversion, is given a Db in the bass, making it Eb minor seventh in third inversion. The third chord, Bb minor, holds the Db in the bass, making it a first inversion of Bb minor. The first and fourth chords stay the same
The cue “A Bullet In Time” is based around this 8-bar harmonic structure, but with two small developments to this. Firstly, in the middle there’s a small extension to the sequence with the F minor chord moving to Fsus and then F major.
Then at the end, the final F minor chord is substituted for C major, with an added minor sixth. This brings more of a sense of wonder to the music — I use this at a few key moments throughout the score.
I want to take a little side bar at this point to talk about the interval of the minor sixth. A while into working on Bodies I was reading the autobiography of Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stanko, and in that he talks about the minor sixth as being an important element of his music
I hadn’t thought about it a lot up to that point but I realised that the unresolved quality of this interval was an important part of the music for Bodies, as can be heard in the very first phrase of the melody
And in moments like the one above (“A Bullet In Time”), where I’ve taken a simple C major chord but added a minor sixth to it.
Another technique used in varying the harmony of the theme is in using added-note harmony, with extensions on the chords. An example of this is in the cue “The Bomb Is Live” — one of the most epic orchestral moments of the score.
Here the sixth and eighth chords of the sequence have 9ths added to them for a thicker, richer texture. Here are the original chords 5–8 of the sequence again:
Then here are the extended voicings with added 9ths on chords six and eight (9ths shown in red).
In “The Bomb Is Live” these chords are transposed a minor third lower, so here are those chords transposed down and lined up with the cue.
At the other end of the scale from the epic orchestral expansion of the theme, “Connections” is one of my favourite cues in the score — a more haunting, lyrical variation on the theme, beautifully performed by the amazing Bad Snacks on electric violin.
This cue includes some further harmonic variation on the chord structure. After cycling through the existing structure, the cue then adds more colour with these substitutions. Again the Herrmann influence in the harmony can be felt here, particularly in the Cmaj7 resolution.
Here are those same chords lined up with the audio
Another variation on the main theme is the end credits music, which is an entirely string orchestra version. All of the orchestral material in the score was recorded by the excellent Budapest Art Orchestra.
While the main theme is the key thread that ties the score together and runs through all four time periods, there are a number of other sub-themes that also serve an important purpose in the structure of the score
First up is the “Investigations Theme”, which I used for the work being done by each of the four detectives in the different time periods. This theme is first heard in ep1 when Hasan has first discovered the body.
Again, there is quite a Bernard Herrmann influence to the harmony of this theme, but the winding string line over the top is more influenced by Jerry Goldsmith (another of my favourite film composers).
In this cue (“Questioning The Morleys”) from episode two that uses this theme — scoring a present-day police interrogation scene — I was channelling something of the feel of Goldsmith’s classic score for Basic Instinct
Scoring such a wide-ranging narrative, which itself was drawing widely on different genres, really allowed me to have fun exploring with the music and drawing disparate elements from multiple different influences into the overall musical melting pot of the score
Whiteman’s Theme is the thread that runs through the 1940s, Second World War-set, aspect of the narrative. For this I had a real concept in my head that I wanted to approach scoring it like a 1970s Hollywood composer scoring a 1940s drama
This concept might sound strange, but one of my all time favourite film scores is Jerry Goldsmith’s incredible 1974 score for Chinatown (set in the late 1930s) and I felt that this film noir approach could work very effectively for the 1940s Whiteman narrative
I have an extremely strong love of the experimental Hollywood crime film scoring of that 1970s era by composers like Goldsmith, David Shire, Michael Small, Lalo Schifrin, Don Ellis, etc. Scores like Chinatown, The Conversation, The Parallax View, The French Connection and others
Some later scores that I love that channelled this same energy include Goldsmith’s score for LA Confidential (1995, set in the 1950s) and Shire’s amazing score for David Fincher’s Zodiac (2007).
Whiteman’s Theme is fundamentally a single-bar riff in 7/4. I used this as a basis to explore this style of composition influenced by the 1970s Hollywood composers mentioned above.
Whiteman’s Theme is first introduced in the cue “Whiteman Is Followed” in episode 1. There’s a Jerry Goldsmith influence here in the staccato stabs in xylophone, low piano and col legno strings, the shifting modal harmony, and winding upper string lines
This approach is further explored in the cue “Scene of the Crime”, later in episode 1. Another touch in the music for Whiteman’s character is the use of bass flute in the orchestration (performed by the brilliant Gareth Lockrane)
Here’s another of Whiteman’s cues (“Planting Evidence”). This time I was channelling the unsettling tension of Michael Small’s score for Alan Pakula’s The Parallax View (1974). I’ve always considered Michael Small to be one of the most underrated film composers.
One of the things I love about that 70s era of film composition, with composers like Goldsmith, Shire, Schifrin, Ellis, Small et al, is how they were combining the more experimental atonal reaches of 20th Century classical composition with rhythms, instrumentation, etc. from other genres
Bodies gave me a chance to draw on harmonic techniques from some of the atonal 20th C classical influences that I love too, in particular the music of master Polish composers Lutoslawski & Penderecki. I drew on these techniques for both the 1940s and 1890s strands of the score
Penderecki’s influence on film music is quite acknowledged (I once went to an amazing joint concert of Penderecki & Jonny Greenwood where they were both in attendance) but Lutoslawski is a composer whose music has an enormous affect on me but who’s perhaps less widely appreciated
Lutoslawski’s music has an amazing quality to its use of atonal harmony that perhaps speaks to me more than any other 20th Century composer exploring the reaches of atonal music, 12-tone techniques, etc.
Lutoslawski’s compositions like Musique Funebre, Livre Pour Orchestra and Preludes & Fugue are just amazing music. I’ve read about Lutoslawski’s techniques and studied his scores and while I’m far from an expert on his music I wanted to draw on some of these techniques in Bodies
There are some beautiful atonal harmonic structures in Lutoslawski’s music. I drew on some of his techniques of interval class pairings in some of the more atonal orchestral moments of the Bodies score. Here’s a clip of mixing one of my favourite of these moments with engineer Rupert Coulson
So far I’ve shown several of the different harmonic approaches in the score — the 4-chord approach of the main theme, extended harmony, modal approach of Whiteman’s theme, more atonal 20th C approaches. There are also elements drawing on more traditional classical harmony.
Trying to find the Main Theme for Bodies was quite a journey and I explored several different ideas before finding the right one. One of the earliest ideas I wrote for Bodies was this composition, initially intended as the main theme but which was decided to not be right for this
I was originally thinking of this piece as a sort of Bodies Requiem. The harmony here takes quite a classical approach.
(It struck me at one point that I think this is the only cue I’ve ever written for a score that includes a Neapolitan Sixth — something I haven’t really thought about since classical harmony lessons at university. For anyone unfamiliar with the chord: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neapolitan_chord…).
The piece never appears in the score in its fully written form, but there are fragments of it to different degrees threaded throughout. To show the full form, here is my original demo of the piece (here transposed down a minor third from what’s notated).
This piece was conceived as a vocal composition, characterised by a male countertenor vocal. The lyrics are actually “Know You Are Loved” in Latin. While it didn’t become the main theme for the series, it does still appear in different forms at several moments in the score
One of the notable times this theme is used is the final scene of episode 1, where it is given a fractured treatment of distorted synths and pitch-shifted countertenor vocal. This is the cue “Maplewood Finds The Body”.
Bodies is fundamentally a thriller, but there are aspects of the narrative that are strongly emotional, and this is reflected in the score, at times channelling rich emotion in the music.
For some of the more emotional strings music I drew on influences including Arvo Pärt, John Tavener, Max Richter & Jocelyn Pook. Max Richter & Jocelyn Pook are both composers I have worked with, who have each had an influence on me. Pärt and Tavener are 20th century masters.
For anyone unfamiliar with the work of any of those four composers, I’ve listed two great pieces of music by each that I’d recommend as a starting point.
Musically, this aspect of the score involves less harmonic movement and instead a focus on simplicity and wringing emotion from individual moving lines and melodic parts. This is particularly true of the Hillinghead & Henry relationship aspect of the narrative.
Examples of this are the cue “Impossible Love”
And the cue “Confessions”
But there are other emotional strands in each of the timelines. One of the most emotional moments is the cue “I’ll Be Right With You” from the 1940s Whiteman narrative.
The cue “Empty Bed”, from episode 8, is a cue for strings and two harps, from the 1890s timeline, with a feeling of both mystery and uneasiness, which is an example of a different approach to harmony.
Here, the main harp ostinato is a simple augmented arpeggio of major thirds from D.
While the second harp part over the top of this plays a melody drawn from the D Octatonic Scale.
The Octatonic Scale alternates tone and semitone intervals and is one example of the “Modes of Limited Transposition” (the augmented arpeggio pattern could be seen to imply the whole tone scale, which is another of these modes)
The resulting mode of the piece isn’t strictly entirely a mode of limited transposition, as the A# is outside of the Octatonic scale (which would be completed with A natural and B natural instead), but the overall feel is very much within this language
My first introduction to the Modes of Limited Transposition was through an interview with the great Lalo Schifrin in THE WIRE magazine, that I came across while studying at university, where he described them as (paraphrasing) a middle ground between tonality and atonality.
Incidentally, that 1998 interview with Lalo Schifrin in THE WIRE was written by some young guy called Daniel Pemberton – I wonder what he’s got up to in the quarter century since then!
I’ve described all the main harmonic approaches in the score now, and how these related to the different themes and the different strands of the narrative.
There are a few outlier cues that take slightly different approaches to those I’ve discussed so far. One of my favourites is the cue “Back In Time”, which features quite rich extended harmony in the brass and strings (perhaps with a touch of John Barry influence here)
Another harmonic technique used is portamento strings chords, where the notes of one chord gradually slide to the notes of another, creating an atonal blurring effect (this can be heard to good effect in some of Mica Levi’s film music). Here’s the cue “Let Him Know He Is Loved”.
As mentioned earlier, the hunt for a strong MAIN THEME involved exploring a lot of different ideas to find the right one. Some of these different ideas became other themes in the score, such as this 4-note theme that became a specific motif in the 2050s timeline
So far I’ve discussed primarily the approaches to melody and harmony in the score, but the choices made in instrumentation were also very important — particularly in differentiating between the different time eras.
The story being told is epic in scale and so the instrumental palette needed to be suitably epic as well. A lot of the score is orchestral in scale, recorded with full strings and brass (up to 13 brass players), as shown in many of the examples above.
While orchestral music is used across all four time periods, to bind the score and story together, there are contrasts in the uses of other instrumentation between the four different periods that help differentiate them.
THE 1890s. This period uses the most classical instrumentation — predominantly string orchestra.
And solo cello, which is used extensively for the emotion of the Hillinghead and Henry storyline
A shoutout at this point to the brilliant Ashok Klouda, who beautifully performed all the acoustic cello solos on the score.
THE 1940s. I discussed the 1970s Hollywood noir-influenced approach I took to scoring this era above. Bass flute, col legno strings, xylophone, piano, woodblock and percussion are all key to this.
THE PRESENT DAY. The scoring of this era takes a more contemporary approach, with more sample programming, synths and also quite extensive use of electric guitar, and other elements like electric cello. An example of this is the cue “Armed Police”.
Another example is the cue “Approaching The Vault”, where the modern “hybrid” orchestration approach can be heard, of live orchestral strings and brass combined with electronic programming, thickening out the bottom end and adding percussive impact.
The textural electric guitar work on the score is all performed by the amazing guitarist Matt Calvert. This aspect is predominantly used in the present day timeline. Here’s an example from a cue from episode 3.
THE 2050s. Contrasting with the acoustic instrumentation, the dystopian future aspect of the score focusses much more on gritty fractured electronic textures, and more experimental analogue synth sounds. An example is the cue “Ambush”.
As well as more ambient electronic material, like the cue “Maplewood Returns Home”
I took quite an experimental approach to creating the electronic textures for this era. I wanted to create sounds that were electronic and processed, but full of grit and texture and with an element of human emotion.
As is often my approach with crafting electronic sounds, I like to work outside the computer with hardware electronic instruments that are full of character. One of the main ones of these for me is my very rare vintage Oberheim Four Voice synthesiser from 1975.
An example of the Oberheim Four Voice synth being used as a lead instrument is this section of the cue “Ambush”
Another instrument used was the more modern Folktek Mescaline synth.
Other synths that were used quite extensively were the Roland Juno 6 (which can be heard to good effect on the cue “Below Ground” above)
And the Oberheim Xpander
The Oberheim Xpander can be heard to good effect in this cue, “New Destination Incoming”
For episode 7, a special synth-based variation of the end credits music was created. Here I am working on the synth parts for it, with the Roland Juno 6.
While the hardware synths were often used for grit and unstable textures, I also used software-based synths in the 2050s score, often for an approach with more polish/gloss/sheen. An example is the cue “Maplewood & Defoe”, performed almost entirely on the U-he Zebra synth.
Another aspect of the palette — one that, like the orchestral elements, is used across the different time eras — is the use of vocals. Both female (soprano and alto) & male (countertenor) vocals are used in the score, performed by Hollie Buhagiar, Daisy Chute and Mark Opstad.
The cue “Know You Are Loved” is a good example of the recurring countertenor vocal melody in the score. The phrase “Know You Are Loved” is key to the narrative and the countertenor lyrics are this phrase translated into Latin.
I tried to bring a lot of range and variation to the instrumental palette, while keeping it cohesive. In particular I wanted to create contrast to the large orchestral forces, with moments of smaller instrumentation, and to keep these varied in colour.
One of my favourite examples of this is the cue “Polly Explores”, scored entirely for two harps.
Another is the cue “The Morleys”, scored for solo pizzicato electric cello (performed by the brilliant Peter Gregson)
The cue “Pushing The Button” is a moment of strong drama at the end of episode 6. Rather than scoring it for full orchestra, I chose to score it for just solo violin & cello, while maintaining a sense of scale, propulsion and tension in the writing.
Another instrument used throughout the score is the Halldorophone, which is an electro-acoustic string instrument related to the cello. In the score it is performed by Konstantinos Chinis and Ilias Pantelias
An example of the Halldorophone in the score is the opening of the cue “Archives”
Here’s some brief footage of me composing the score for Bodies. This is me writing the cue “Archives”, near the start of episode 4.
Scoring Bodies was an amazing experience. It’s rare that a project provides such a broad canvas to work with and opens up so many doors to explore at once. I hope that what I’ve written here about the music has been of interest.
Bodies is available to watch worldwide on Netflix, and the soundtrack album is available to stream/download in all the usual places. (CLICK HERE FOR LINKS)
Big thanks to all the brilliant people I worked with on Bodies. Directors Marco Kreuzpaintner & Haolu Wang, producer Susie Liggat, executive producer Will Gould & everyone at Moonage Pictures, music supervisor Mark Kirby, music mixers Jake Jackson & Rupert Coulson, orchestrator Dave Foster, music editors Mathilde Koechlin & Sam Rapley, and all the amazing musicians who performed on the score!