Siddhartha Khosla keeps the murder mystery fun and melancholic on Only Murders in the Building. Khosla’s music elegantly deepens the characters, the narrative, and any deaths in question. The composer’s work is simultaneously light and heavy.
For season three of the delightful hit series, he’s again nominated for Outstanding Music Composition For A Series (Original Dramatic Score). Specifically, for the episode “Sitzprobe.” The score is a wonderful listen, so it’s no surprise Khosla loves creating these catchy melodies as much as audiences love listening to them.
Recently, Khosla spoke with Immersive Media about his fulfilling experience on Only Murders in the Building, which returns for season four this week.
You have your band, Gold Dust, and toured before becoming a film composer. How does your live band experience influence you as a composer?
Well, I think just because of my sort of my introduction to music, I was always informed by writing melodies and writing songs. I’m a songwriter before a composer, and so when you’re a songwriter you are sort of thinking about melody as sort of the guiding light of all of it, at least for me.
So making sure what was my chorus and what was the melody of the chorus, and I think that’s in my DNA at this point. And so, when I’m composing for film and television, I then think very thematically and what are my themes. In the past it was like, what’s the hook of the chorus? And now it’s the theme. I think the songwriting background I have has played a huge role in the work that I do now.
When you’re coming up with themes, is it responding to the themes specific to each season?
Yeah, every season only murders. I definitely have new themes that I’m bringing into the show. And so, this season there was this theme I had for Meryl Streep’s character, Loretta, and her relationship with Martin Short’s character, Oliver, and it was their sort of love theme that was ever present throughout the season.
What were your initial instincts for it? How did that theme evolve?
I was on a flight with John Hoffman and Jess Rosenthal, who’s a producer of the show. And on the flight, John and I, this is before they started filming season three, sort of walking me through a little bit of the story. And on the plane, I ended up writing a piece of a melody. John loved it and I sort of recorded it on my phone. John said, “Go and develop it.” I developed it using the sounds of the show and the sort of orchestra that supports it.
I think you’re the first composer told me they wrote something on a plane. Is that unusual for you?
I’ll write anywhere, any place that I’m inspired. I need to sort of document it. If not, I’ll forget it. I feel like I’ve written on the plane before. But yeah, the key is just capturing something when I think of it. Yeah, it is unusual for sure.
What you ended up with that theme, was it pretty close to what you originally wrote, or was there some exploration from there too?
The melody was exactly the same. And then the harmonic harmony around it obviously evolved and changed, and when I’m singing to my phone, I’m not singing in the harmony, but in my head I know what it kind of is. The theme itself did not change, and I probably have a recording of it somewhere where I have a 20 or 32nd acapella theme that I’m singing that really did not change in season. It just developed and got better in terms of the orchestration around it
And for the harmony and orchestration, what were you looking for when that work started?
Well just look to make sure it had the scope and weight that the show deserves. This is a pretty sweeping score. We have a live orchestra on every episode and we have a wonderful music team that I work with the orchestrating team to get everything where it needs to get. ‘m always looking to make sure the score feels old but new at the same time. It’s the sort of same formula from season one in terms of the sort of aesthetic of the music.
How did you balance that with the new season? What new elements did you really want to bring in and how did you want to stay familiar and true to the show?
Well, every season is sort of like its own little album and it has the same artist behind it. And so, just like an artist evolves over the course of their career album to album, so can a show music season to season. And so for me, I’m always hinting at the main theme that you hear in the main title somewhere or the other. It finds its way, even if I’m writing new themes, I find a way to return to that when I can.
There’s a scene in episode five called where Oliver and Loretta are on a boat and they kiss for the first time. You hear their new theme and as sort of the camera pans away from them and you just see a little more of New York in the picture, you see the bridge behind them and the city. And when it’s clear that Oliver has found his love, you hear me sort of go back to our main theme. So, there’s hints of it that come back. It’s just at this point that main theme has become so synonymous with the show. I think when you feel it and you hear it, it tracks. It’s fun for the audience I think, too.
Like you said, with any season or any album, it represents where you are at a time as an artist. How does the composer behind season three compare to who you were during season one?
You evolve and you evolve. I definitely feel like the thing with John Hoffman is that, John is always pushing all of us to think outside the box and nothing is off limits. And I think that gives you a pretty long leash and you don’t feel confined in any way. And I think that’s the beauty of it. The score is just, it evolved. It’s changed. I’m taking more risks in places. There was this scene in season three where it’s called, there’s an episode called “The White Room.”
We had this scene where Steve Martin is singing, trying to sing the Pickwick song. And in his rehearsal, he keeps on screwing it up and he can’t nail it. And there’s something in theater called The White Room, which is a place you go to when you’re performing and you black out a little bit. The moment is too big for you, you lose your focus and all of a sudden you go into this other dimension of the space and then you come back and all of a sudden the performance is over and you don’t know what just happened. And there’s this really funny sequence, a very trippy series of trippy sequences in the white room scenes where Charles Hayden Savage, played by Steve Martin, goes to the white room. And so, scoring the white room stuff was so much fun. I mean, it was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do too on the show and was.
Why’s that?
I must’ve taken 14 or 15 passes of the same cue to just get it right. Whereas the other cues we normally get, it’s like in the first take, the idea it’s normally there. This one was a really, John was pushing me, pushing me, pushing to think way outside, and it became this sort of ’60s pop-ish, weird sort of avant-garde sort of world that he enters. We have crazy female vocals on it and I’m making raspberries with my mouth and blowing sounds. And my son was flicking the doorstop. I mean, the kitchen sink is on that.
So there were these fun moments that we got to do stuff like that. Eery season has cool, interesting, challenging episode, like that season one where we had a silent episode where there was no dialogue. It was all sound design and score. This season we had a bunch of those, too. And that episode particularly stretched me.
Since you did 15 passes on that, what did your first pass sound like?
It was more the melody. I think I had a toy piano that I was just sort of playing quarter note pulses on in this sort of beach boys Donovan-ish sort of way. And John liked it, but he was like, “Okay, go further. Go further.” I think the melodic idea was always there and it was just a matter of going further and further and further. You can never go too far with John Hoffman.
Do you and John ever discuss cues as red-herrings for the mystery?
Unintentionally, in season one, I began the score with a bassoon as the key instrument playing the melody and the main theme on the main title. There’s a bassoon playing it on all throughout the first season. There’s a bassoon everywhere. And unbeknownst to me, the killer was the bassoonist. So in retrospect, I came across a lot more clever than I really was trying to be, but that was a big red herring.
What about this season?
I’m trying to see if I did anything this season. I mean, there’s no red herrings. You have to also be careful not to give away who did it, or if somebody’s in danger of dying or being killed. You just have to be careful about it. It’s best if I don’t know where the story is going. I’m scoring it episode to episode not even knowing where we’re headed. No intentional red herrings, no. Season one had an unintentional big one, obviously.
After your work this season, what were some lessons that you learned as a composer that maybe applied to season four or future gigs?
I think it’s just not resting on our laurels, really. You can easily get into season four or five of a show and then start feeling like, “Oh, we need to just use the same music over and over again because it’s working.” Audiences are smarter than that.
I just love scoring this show so much. When you love something, you want to see it grow and develop and get it to its potential. And I think for the show’s music to get to its potential, I have to keep on writing new themes. I have to keep evolving. I can’t just rest on the theme and say, that’s it. There’s nothing else.
For me, the lesson is just like, don’t get lazy, really. Audiences want to hear new music and new ideas and new stuff, too. It’s a fun challenge. I mean, this season I got to score Meryl Streep among everybody else. And so, I really love that challenge of scoring to somebody like Meryl Streep.
Only Murders in the Building is available to stream on Hulu.
