CineConcerts was very fortunate to speak with Nima Fakhrara about the score for the Netflix film Lou!

CineConcerts (CC): You grew up in a completely different region of the world. How did that influence you? How did you get into music and get to where you are now?

Nima Fakhrara (NF): I was born in Iran and to nonmusical parents, not a musical family at all. I had an uncle that played this instrument that I grew up playing, the santoor. It's a hammered dulcimer, trapezoid shaped kind of thing. I started playing music at five years old. My parents took me to the best teacher at the time that they knew that would be teaching the santoor. And so, I was a five-year-old kid learning this instrument that would be taught to probably minimum 20-year-olds. So, it was a very interesting dichotomy because I was this rebel, little tiny kid into the world of structural musical systems and I was just this five-year-old kid enjoying music. So, I learned musical notes before I learned the alphabet.

And then we moved to the U.S. in ‘96. And before that, I was being taught by amazing masters of music, both of them have passed away. My former teacher, who was the person that kind of fell upon all of these things is still alive. Amazing teacher. So, I learned all the the pretty classical stuff before I moved to the U.S. in ‘96 and then fell upon me, a middle Eastern family, they were like, “No, you're not going to do music.” So, I went into pre-med, of all things, but I was still in the music world a lot. There was amazing small little orchestra, it was basically a small chamber ensemble. I was writing for those people as soon as I got into the U.S. And so, it was this cultural shock of like, “Holy sh*t, how do I write for bass when there is no bass in my music at all?”

But I've always loved films and all of a sudden it was one night that I decided that I was just going to pursue music. Musicians say in all the time, when all of a sudden you feel the music. It happened one night for me and I was like, “Hey, guys, I'm packing up. Going to L.A.”, came to L.A. in pursuit to becoming a hammer dulcimer musician for orchestra. That's what I wanted to do. So, when I came here, I went to Cal State Northridge.

[But] Going back a little bit further, I worked with a gentleman named John Schneider. John Schneider is a gentleman who is amazing guitarist that works in a world of microtones, which is kind of very similar to the radif he studied with Harry Partch, which the concept was in an octave, there's more than 12 notes. There’re way more notes. So, he built these instruments. So, he's a guitar player that added movable frets so he could play quarter tones.

I would go in for lessons with John Schneider to kind of figure out, me playing Persian instruments and him playing these removable credit guitars. And then as I was listening to films and things, Black Hawk Down was an inspiration that I was like, this is really interesting. There is Middle Eastern stuff. There's rock and roll, there's orchestra, there's electronics. What is this? That’s where I was like, oh, you can actually do stuff with movies and music and put all your love together. And that's where I was like, “All right, this is the world that I want to be in.” And my first year of college, I scored 35 short films.

CC: Everybody comes to you, right?

NF: Yeah, that's what it was. My wife will tell you, I'm a persistent motherf***er. If I want something, I'll go get it. And that kind of translated to my sound as well. And that's where the custom instruments and all the world comes into it. But funny enough, the musical influences of the world, of my past, if you will, because I started very early in the classical world, I was always this rebel of not listening to the teacher and always going around and like f**king around with the radif for not even playing the radif correctly. We had to memorize all of this stuff. So, I was like, not going to do it. I mean, I’m a kid.

I think it kind of brought over this recklessness and kind of this unpredictability to my music as well. So, every instrument for me is this kind of playground, if you will. So, the structure, even though I know it, I rather be in the playground a little bit longer. So, the influence is, there's an esraj hanging here, but the esraj is, is not what you're going to hear in my music. It's going to be probably thrown out of a building to see what the resignations are when it breaks. You know, that's the difference.

CC: Would you say that like that this experimentation that you do with sounds is a personal quest to try to find that moment that you had when you first discovered music?

NF: Yes and no. You know, it is the best way that I've always heard to describe where music comes from. It’s when Philip Glass says the music is a river that's just flowing through. You just have to listen to it. If you don't listen to it, it's still there. It's just kind of going through. You just have to listen to it. The moment that I felt the music was, it’s funny because I've gone back to it. This is, I don't know, 25 years ago, past my 10,000 hours. It was the moment that I was like, there is a power to the music that you just realize. Right. It’s very kind of romantic and poetic to say that, but there is a power to music that can change your emotions and especially to kind of commentate on your extreme emotions. These extreme emotions are what we're always after, and that's where we reach for music, the moments of extreme emotion.

The funny part about these custom instruments is that it’s a search of new colors for me, it's the search of the kind of the surprise moment. “Holy sh*t, this worked.” And it's this concept of “Can I make something musical out of nothing?” Right. You know. We're getting so philosophical, you.

So, basically, when I go search for sounds, I've always challenged myself in the idea of performance. I'm an improviser. I look at a scene, I'll improvise 700 things. I'm go over it until it works. But the concept of being able to perform a sound that is not being performed by a traditional instrument, and is a sound that you can get from a synthesizer, perhaps, but you're actually performing this instrument, is a refreshing thing.

Even though these big kinds of cylinders are hanging out in the garden and stuff when you bow it. Yes, I can get that with the synthesizers, but there is a different emotion every time you bow this thing, right? Every play of an instrument, it just gives you a different sound. And music is just surprises. If you don't play with these surprises, you'll just get nothing. And these surprises that are just so freaking refreshing.

CC: If you read something or if you see something, you have to have some sort of thematic elements in your mind. Or how does it begin? And then how does that change over time?

NF: I have an overactive imagination. For me, everything is on the story. As soon as I start kind of watching something, if I know I'm going to be working on it, the voice memo recorder on my phone turns on and it stays on ‘til I’m about finished with a movie. Whether it's me just sitting in front of the piano and just getting the rhythm of it. Cubase is running. Everything is on a kind of record. I'm just sitting around and just watching whether it's humming or not.

It ends up being my first impressions. I'm a big fan of first thought, best thought. So, I will fight to the death for my first thought. Honestly the percentage is 95% I'm always right, when it's the first thought it works. It just works. But it all comes back to like 10,000 hours. You better have your 10,000 hours or that first thought’s never going to be your first thought.

So, it's for me, it's first impressions and then you just hear it. Sometimes you don't hear it. It takes a little minute. But most of the time I'm very fortunate and I've been trying my best to kind of be trained as a quote unquote composer, a film composer, a media composer. So, I can sit here and I could analyze an emotion versus analyze a character's emotion and be able to kind of translate that musically. I'm not precious with my music at all. I'm an that type of guy. So, for me, again, it's just whatever is on my left screen or above. That's what I'm working on, you know? And it's just all about that, even though if I'm writing an album, that's what I'm doing now, which is very funny. It's still having to do with extreme emotions. It still has to do with that. And that's what I love.

CC: So, let's dig into how you got involved in this project. I assume that you had had early talks with the director of the movie?

NF: I wish, I got in the project actually very late. It was one of those things that they were working on the edit and trying to figure out what the voice of the whole thing was. I was working on it for about two and a half months, not a long period of time. How it all came about was we were throwing the kitchen sink and trying to figure out what fits. And that's what I was trying to do. As we kind of talked about it, it's just me searching and figuring out what's right and doing something unconventional over conventionality.

And the conversations that I had with Anna [Foerster] was, Lou doesn't talk too much. Lou is of very few words. So, it was more of how can I, as a musical composer, to be able to translate the words that are not being spoken but still leaving the Easter eggs behind? So, if it's a love scene that we're watching between a daughter and a mother, there’s a lot more context behind it. There is a ton of musical Easter eggs. Even from the opening logo', it was a lot of these, “Hey, how do we want the audience to feel? How is Lou feeling? How is Jurnee Smollett feeling? How is Vee feeling? And that was the conversation. That's why the score is so, I like to say it's very colorful. It's a lot of things, but it's just so it's such a colorful score. It's there's so many things in it.

CC: There's just so many layers. There’re so many effects. There's almost like soundscape effects, but there's also very strategic moments in the score, which I'm interested to see how that applies into the film. Those are very strategic, creative decisions that you're making as a musician. Are you yourself surprised when you play back your music to picture? Do you know what kind of effect it's going to have on people?

NF: I am a genius and I know everything. No! It's a sense of understanding what the film is. To be honest with you, I'm an improviser, as I told you. Every single layer that goes into it, it's some sort of an improvisation, as I'm looking at the scene. So, every layer that comes about its commentating on some sort of layer. The other layer will look at it at a different perspective.

You know what's really funny? We discovered this in Lou, which was very hilarious. Me and my music editor, Scott Hendrick, my wrangler. He makes sure I get shit done. You know, we talked about it. I was like, Huh? I'm looking at this scene and I've probably seen this 600 times now. An audience member is going to watch it one time, and they're going to have to go away with exactly what I wanted them to do. And I need to feel that the 700th time.

CC: How do you do that?

NF: That's the funny part. It becomes that sense of, “What are we trying to achieve at the moment?” It is the achievement of this feeling. Are we doing our job or are we overcompensating? Are we buying an F-150 to just be like, “I have a big car”? Or are we trying to compartmentalize all of these comments and figure out how to be commentators? And again, it's like for me, especially on a movie like this, there's a lot going on. And musically, the ear itself doesn't have too many capabilities of listening more than to 3 things at the same time. So, it's this challenge of like when is the audience going to be listening to music? So those moments are very important. When the rain goes away, when the dialog goes away, you're just getting 2 seconds to be able to kind of tell the audience, “Hey, listen to the music here or go away & don't listen to the music. Let me just get your heart rate up.”

CC: Even if there's 100 different layers of stuff that you're not consciously listening to, your brain is experiencing it somehow.

So, you have an idea of character. You start distilling down to what you think the most important, critical theme is and then from that you start layering on top and then maybe you get another instrument, you play it back and then put something else in.

NF: That's kind of what it is.

I'll give you a very easy analysis. We're trying to win the Champions League in soccer. All I'm trying to do is I'm trying to pull all these amazing players that do something very, very specific to win the Champions League. So, it's just all about figuring out what these players can do. I can make a mistake and that player can be just kind of a really amazing defender and I need him to do something else.

So, for example, I put a layer down and I'm like, okay, so this is doing a lot of things, but I still don't have a melody. I'm still not commentating on the characters yet. I've commented on the moments that I need to, I'm commentating on this momentum that's going through, but there's still something missing. Then the fun part becomes is, do I need to be commentating on these things or is the audience smart enough to catch this? And then it's, is the picture telling you the story? And then as I'm kind of writing, most of the instruments kind of come through the river and just start splashing in my face, if you will.

To describe my music, I've always kind of said it's a complex minimalist. Yeah, it's doing a lot of work, but in very, very few words.

CC: Is there anything in the music itself that caught you by surprise or is something that you feel people should specifically listen to?

NF: You know, it's funny because every project is like a baby of mine. I am going from Lou to doing Becky 2, I'm doing an album.

With Lou, the challenge was we’re dealing with a J.J. Abrams Bad Robot Netflix film. So how do I throw all of these rules out the window and then slowly bring these back in and then not give you something that you've already heard before and be able to do it in a brand-new color, in a brand-new ensemble, in a brand-new way? But still give you nostalgia, because we're dealing with the eighties, right?

So, there's a lot of that. I mean, we recorded everything on cassette, a whole challenge by itself. Every raw material was recorded on cassette first before it came on to ProTools. And then sometimes it went right back to the cassette.

The conventionality of all of these conventional worlds kind of collided on my end, which was, I want to do a very intimate sound. How do we achieve that without doing a string quartet? And I recorded a string trio and I didn't record any violins. There are no violins in this score. It's all bass strings.

The string trio is like a detuned viola that sounds like a cello. There's a cello, and then there's like, the cello itself is detuned. The generalized ensemble that played it is a weird ensemble. It doesn't have your traditional numbering. You usually don't want to have even numbering in your ensemble. So, when you have violins, you want to have three, you don't write two. I did two on purpose. I would use even numbers on purpose.

We recorded everything in a very pop way. It was mixed by a pop record artist, it feels like it was done by a band. That was one of my biggest things, I wanted to make it very small. And in the bigger ensemble, as I said, it's like 20 people, but there's no violin at all. There's detuning involved. There are singers, some of them are operatic singers. Again, it's like figuring out unconventionality. At the end of the movie, everything collides.

And musically you have this intention of like just going bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. But at the end of the day, I literally just went with one single instrument and you'll see. You'll see, it's just literally a bold guitar doing so much work. But it's that example of, you can put a single note piano and you can translate that emotion. If that single note piano is correct, then you are doing your job, correct?

CC: Yeah. It's almost like flipping conventions on its back and redefining them and I feel like that seems to be the most fun for you.

NF: I'm not reinventing the wheel, like, we have a masters that have done that, but as a student of film you just have to be aware of it. What you can do, what you can't do. I mean, we have a lot of composers that have done that going against the grain. But unless you learn why it's been done before and how it's been done, or incorrectly done, then you're just like, cool. It actually works. And that's the fun part about it.

CC: Ever gone into a creative meeting where somebody has a distinct idea of what it's going to be like, what it's going to sound like, “This is going to sound like John Williams.” And then you go in and you just can't do it. You create something that is so not that. And it changes people's perspective for the better?

NF: All the time. You know, every time you hire me, you're going to get a surprise. It's not a surprise in a bad way.

One of the things I like saying with my filmmakers at the start is, if you allow me to experiment, I can always come back and be safe. I've been around the block a few times that I can just come back and give you something that is already good to work. Let me go explore.

My team is good enough to be able to allow me a week to go down my rabbit hole. You kind of facilitate all of that. And then the fun part about it is that usually at least 95% of the time when I go through these rabbit hole moments, we get something. I get that descending vocal line that opens up an entire soundtrack. Like those things just happen out of the blue. And if I don't do it, it's like I just can't come up with a lot of this.

With Lou, I was isolated for two and a half months. I was in middle of New England weather, snowy weather, very much like Lou. And it was this incredible experience of just diving into a character. So that's the fun.

CC: What about your solo album? So, you've got, your film music career, but I feel like a lot of creatives want to, after multiple projects, they always have to express something else, something different. Have you done a bunch of different solo albums?

NF: I have not. I put a caveat on there. I can't reveal too many things.

I have been basically hired or commissioned to write an album based on a video game franchise. And I am going to 1550 B.C Middle East. And I am writing an album based on that. So, it's not a solo album, it is more of me going and hanging out with amazing musicians that I've kind of collected. And we've always been just like, no, we're going to do something else, we're going to break the instrument. Now we're kind of going back and finding these amazing traditional songs that were done then and are reproducing them and making it kind of this brand-new world. An ode to blank for now.

CC: So, my last question is, is when you're around the house, do you have ideas all the time and do you have to dictate them or do you have to be in your studio?

NF: I'm in Connecticut. I kind of created this environment here to be as creative as possible. Basically, I'm in the middle of the forest. So, my days are very much like weekends. I wake up every morning, I drink espresso, smoke a joint, come into the studio and just the entire house is just kind of this creative world for me and my wife and the kids. So, my phone is always next to me.

Definitely the way that my brain works is if I'm on a project, all of a sudden, a melody will come to my mind. And there's instruments everywhere. Downstairs there's pianos. So, it happens all the time. If I'm not on a project, I train my brain to stop thinking. And it's the same. It's that same concept. I don't listen to music when I'm on a project. I just kind of avoid everything. So just my memory, just my mind just keeps working by itself.

CC: How do you turn it off?

NF: You just have to be trained. You just have to kind of tell it to stop. I used to wake up at three, four in the morning and come up with melodies and stuff. It gets really tiring because listen, those things will come back and if you lose a melody it wasn't meant to be. They'll come back to you. And that's the way it is.

I used to wake up in the middle of the night, and whisper these memos on my phone, and I'm like, those will never go anywhere. There's plenty of stuff that happens. Lou’s first ideas were on my voice memo. Becky's first screams, very crazy. Like I'm screaming underground, trying to come up with melodies. But yeah, a lot of it comes from there and some of it comes from the instruments itself. I'm sitting behind a piano and all of a sudden, a chord structure comes in.

As I said, it's the overactive imagination and me being kind of disciplined enough to kind of be aware of my first thought. So sometimes when I'm sitting at the piano, all of a sudden, the chord structure will come up and I'm like, this could be cool for Warhammer, or this could be cool for this, or this could be cool for that. That's sometimes it happens that way as well.

Nima Fakhrara's Journey to Lou