Stranger Things: Tales From ’85 is a new animated series from showrunner Eric Robles and
Stranger Things co-creators Matt and Ross Duffer. All 10 episodes of Season 1 are now streaming on Netflix and will have a sound familiar to fans of the long-running live-action show. The new animated show is set in 1985 and it’s a freezing winter in Hawkins, where the original characters must fight new monsters and unravel a paranormal mystery that’s terrorizing the town.
Composer/musician Jason Nesmith (http://jelmusicgroup.com) helped set the tone for the animated series by creating music for the show open, which taps the original series’ identity while also expanding on its sound palette.
“It was demanding situation in the sense that we all really, really wanted to get it right,” says Nesmith of the musical signature. “We were working really hard together on it. So that really did take up a lot of my time.”
Nesmith has built a career on creating original music for television. His credits include contributions to The Ellen DeGeneres Show,
The Jennifer Hudson Show,
Extra,
TMZ Live,
Teen Titans and
RuPaul’s Drag Race.
In the case of Tales From ’85, he was called on to create a signature for the new animated version of the franchise that pays homage to the original while also establishing itself as a unique program.
“The original Stranger Things, their theme is iconic,” notes Nesmith. “If you know the show, you know that piece of music. So, when Eric Robles, the showrunner, and the Duffer Brothers — the original creators of the show —wanted to do this animated series,
Tales from '85, the theme was very, very important to them. It harkens back to the original, and has elements of the original, but then it goes into a completely new piece of music so that it separates the animated show as its own thing and sonically brands it as its own experience.”
The :24 theme fades in with the original music from Stranger Things and then kicks into Nesmith’s version while the show’s graphic unfolds. It ends with a fade out that mixes the composer’s new version with the original theme.
“That was very deliberate,” he explains.
Nesmith received a written brief from which to begin his creative process. He then had numerous conversations with the producers, helping to gain insight into the direction necessary.
“I think the real magic happened in our conversations back and forth,” notes the composer. “I got to speak with Eric and some of the other people on the team a lot throughout the process.”
He put together several ideas and presented them to the team, one of which really registered with them.
“Eric and the Duffer Brothers, they started to feel that one of the things I did was really getting close or in the ballpark. ‘Let's work on this one. We like this,’” he recalls them saying.
His original track consists of synths and a steady kick drum.
“If it's something that is going be synth-centric, there's a good chance I'm going to start on the piano,” he says of his process. “For the last chunk of years, I play mostly on piano, because that's mostly where I write.”
Nesmith works out of his home studio in Los Angeles, which is equipped with a number of guitars dating back to his live performance days, as well as a rack-mounted Apple Mac Pro.
“I actually use Digital Performer,” he says of his setup. “That's my DAW. It's not the most popular DAW in the world these days, (but) I love it. I've been on it forever. I have other composer friends who are still on it too, so there's like a little network of us that talk about (it). I have a Pro Tools rig here, if I need to deliver in Pro Tools. I've messed around a little bit with Ableton…And Logic, of course, is great, but I just find Digital Performer, I've been using it for so many years that it's really become just an extension of my fingers. I can really write quickly without tech slowing me down.”
The mix for the Tales from ‘85 open was completed on a large stage in Burbank, and then was delivered as full mix, along with stems.
“We don't always get to do that,” he says of working on a mix stage. “I wrote the theme for Extra. They change it every couple of years. We didn't get to mix that on a big stage, but I deliver stems to them and they mix it in-house.”
Providing stems, in addition to a final mix, allows for flexibility and the option of using elements in different capacities.
“Composing for TV — you have to be flexible and you have to really work with the production,” he says of the process. “You can't (have) the idea of saying, ‘Here's my mix and that's the final thing.’ That doesn't exist in this world. What exists is, ‘Here's the mix that I think sounds great. Now, does this work for you guys?’ And if it does, great!”
Having an idea that was so well received right out of the gate was definitely advantageous, Nesmith shares.
“I was pretty lucky in the sense that the one they liked was really close,” he says of the experience. “They liked almost everything about it. There (are) two parts to the melody. There's sort of what I call ‘phrase 1’ and ‘phrase 2.’ They had me change phrase 2 a little bit. There (were) a couple of elements that they thought may be distracting, so we pulled those out. But we did get it!”
Photo credits: Netflix, Nurit Wilde, Elijah Nesmith