Song Exploder - Dustin O'Halloran - Transparent (Main Title Theme)

Episode Date: December 11, 2015

Transparent is an Amazon original series, created by Jill Soloway. The story centers on a family where the father, played by Jeffrey Tambor, comes out to his children and the to world at large as transgender. The first season was released in September 2014. It was critically acclaimed and won a lot of awards, including an Emmy for Outstanding Main Title Theme Music. In this episode, composer Dustin O’Halloran breaks down how he made the Transparent theme, using an 80-year old piano and channeling his own family nostalgia. This episode is sponsored by Hover, Lagunitas Brewing Company, and MeUndies.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hurway. Transparent is an Amazon original series created by Jill Soloway. It's about a family where the father, played by actor Jeffrey Tambor, comes out to his children and to the world at large as transgender. The first season was released in September 2014. It was critically acclaimed and won a lot of awards,

including an Emmy for outstanding main title theme music. In this episode, composer Dustin O'Hallel, breaks down how he made the transparent theme, using an 80-year-old piano and channeling his own family nostalgia. My name is Dustin O'Halloran, and I am the composer for Transparent. Jill Soloway has been a really old friend of mine. We've known each other for a pretty long time, and a couple years ago, she was on a trip to Berlin,

and she came here, and she was telling me about this new pilot she was working on. And she said that she had been writing the script, writing the script, listening to the piano solos volume two record that I made. Like all good collaborations, usually there's a friendship that starts and something that's more organic. And I just loved it. It was just like her finding people that somehow she had connected with along the way to be a part of it. She was telling me of this show. It was sort of autobiographical because her father came out four or five years ago. And that was sort of the inspiration for the whole show.

Listen, I have, I need to talk to you about something. There's a big change going on. I love your kids. I love you. I watched the whole pilot, and Jeffrey Tambor's performance was so strong, and it was so fragile and open, and that was really what I connected with this sensitivity. So for me, that was the part that I thought,

you know, maybe I can get into this. I could see that there was so much to explore in his character and his timing is so funny, but it's also there's just these moments in his performance that are so real and fragile, and I think connect on so many levels with a lot of people, not just the trans community. It's just about finding yourself at such a late age in your life, and I think that resonates with a lot of people. This is just a special piano to me. It's a Swiss piano from the 30s,

and it's the piano that originally recorded the piano solos volume 2 on, and I don't know why, but the sound of that record is so attached to this specific piano. My mom was part of this hippie Methodist church, and I was probably about six or seven, and I really wanted to learn piano, and my mom didn't really have much money, and so she got the church organist to teach me after Sunday service. It's ultimately the instrument I feel the most connected to.

So that was definitely the centerpiece of the score. The opening titles are just nostalgic because it's all these old VHS clippings of bermitsvahs and parties and childhood. And, you know, it's about this family, this deep family history and all of these secrets that are sort of unlocked during the course. of the story as it unfolds. I began to sort of fill things in. I knew that it was the opening title,

so I felt it should be a bit fuller and we could still keep that understated feeling that we were looking for. The harmonium is a big part of it. It just adds this really rich tone that sort of hides under the piano. The harmonium is sort of like a poor man's choir or string section.

It really fills these ligato notes for you. And it's just such a beautiful, kind of humble sound. I don't want everything to be so perfect in the plane, and so sometimes I really try to just go for those first takes. When you put all of the sounds together, you don't hear it as much, but there's more of a subconscious thing. There's a really nice fragleness in the imperfections.

The idea is to keep the piano, the centerpiece, and not overtake it. I really love when you get these kind of doubling, the piano parts so you can get extra resonating. Even if you can't hear the instrument, it just sounds like the piano has got this extra sort of sparkle and resonation. It's not actually a vibraphone. It's this weird handmade instrument that I got in this shop here called Glockenladen.

The guy who owns it, his parents pre-war owned a machine shop that made parts for tanks and military pieces. And he was their grandfellant. and when he took over the company, he was a musician and he hated the idea of the history of the company. So he started taking all the metal work machines and making instruments out of metal. I have this old tape recorder that I got at a flea market. It's one of these little handheld tape recorders. I'm afraid that it's going to break one day because it has this perfect warble.

And it's just, I really, I really love this sound. It just has this beautiful lo-fi tape sound. and I really love kind of adding lo-fi sounds to more hi-fi sounds. I wanted everything to sound like it was going through tape machines in the same way that the images of the title of this VHS kind of stutter, and I kind of wanted everything to feel like it had a kind of tape analog feel to it. I did an earlier version that just ended up not feeling right. Like I was probably thinking too much about it being an open,

title piece, more of a statement like, the show is beginning. I think that I had to kind of pull back and just remember that I just needed to make a really great piece of music that would fit the images and I didn't have to be anything big. And I think once I realized that, it helped me just kind of go back and do something a little bit more understated. I always find that I kind of have to do one really bad version or something that isn't good to get to the good stuff. And sometimes that's actually a good way to start is to do something that doesn't work because knowing what doesn't work actually helps you figure it out. Usually I just sort of try to put myself into a place where I can connect with what they're looking for. And I think that me and my mom and my brother growing up in the

70s and me learning to play piano and we're a pretty tight family and we have been through a lot of really difficult times as well. And watching these images, because these opening images are all sort of very innocent, but in the series there's a lot of really intense secrets that sort of come out through the whole family. The loss of innocence is really what I was connecting with. Now, here's the main title theme for Transparent

by Dustin O'Halloran in its entirety. For more on Dustin O'Hallorin and Transparent, visit SongExploder.net. You can watch the opening title sequence, and find links to more of Dustin's music. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out of full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishi Kesh Her Way.

I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me.

So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nossrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks.

Next time on Song Exploder. My name is Bjark, and I'm here to talk about Stoneemilker on my album, Wulnykura. You can find all of the past episodes of the podcast and subscribe to future episodes at iTunes.com slash SongExploder. You can also find Song Exploder on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I send out mixtapes on Fridays on my newsletter. You can find links to all of these at SongExploder.net. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX. PRX. My name is Rishi Keish Kei Wei. Thanks for listening.