'Making a Murderer' composer Kevin Kiner talks about the show's distinctive sound

This winter Netflix has made a splash with its 10-part series Making a Murderer. Like Serial before it, the series pivots on an increasingly prevalent understanding that our justice system does not always work.

For this series Gustavo Santaolalla and Kevin Kiner were enlisted to develop what has become a signature sonic landscape to help distinguish its sound from other documentary series of its type. This music can now be found on Kiner's website. Recently, via e-mail, I asked Kiner about his process.

https://youtu.be/34M2zdLc-2U

The show credits Gustavo Santaolalla with themes, and you with score. What was your process for developing the sound of the show?

Gustavo and I have collaborated on a number of projects over the years (Hell on Wheels, Jane the Virgin). His philosophy has been a great gift to my compositions, and has helped really change the way I score a show. He loves solo instruments, and uses them in a very spare, exposed way. Negative space is also a big part of that philosophy. I've really embraced this, and it's opened a whole new pallet for our projects. It was evident early on that Making a Murderer was a unique and powerful project, and both of us felt very strongly that it needed an unusual, imaginative, sound.

So early on we started talking about instrumentation and aesthetics; we wanted it to be different. Obviously that's easier said than done. Both Gustavo and I play stringed instruments (guitar, ronroco, charango, Oud, ukuleles of all different sorts, cumbus, tambur, bowed guitar, dulcimers, hammered dulcimers, the list is pretty long and fun). So we are constantly looking for something out of the ordinary that will set a score apart. I remember on one project I walked into the studio and Gustavo was playing a piece of bendable pipe that had come off of a water heater! Amazing...but what a blast.

What about the series and its story led you to specific choices in instrumentation?

To me a big part of the show is the rural and isolated atmosphere that enables the possible obstruction of justice. Using acoustic stringed instruments certainly helps evoke that earthiness — but much more importantly, we feel these instruments (a variety of acoustic guitars, cello, baritone ukelele, ronroco) can be very expressive and emotional, especially when very few other instruments are playing. I can't stress enough how important it was to be spare and exposed with the instrumentation.

Additionally, I felt very strongly about not using piano. It's just so overused in this genre, and immediately gives a documentary like this a kind of cookie-cutter feel.

We wanted our sound to be something unusual, yet effective, and this was our biggest challenge. There are certain motifs that are routinely plastered onto these shows, and we were always fighting to stay away from those. I hope the result was both artistic and interesting — a little out of the ordinary. That was our goal, at least.

Do you typically begin with stringed instruments and build up from there?

Yes, that's correct. I have over 60 instruments in my overcrowded studio and many times I will literally look around the room and find something I haven't used in a while, pull it down and start trying to come up with an interesting melody...frequently there is very little "building up"; I try to get the solo part very solid, and leave it exposed, with just a little icing.

At what stage in the ten-year process of production were you brought in and how were you brought in? Were you involved much in the actual edit of the film and how music was being used? If so, what was the process of developing the sound in accordance to cutting and use of various audio sources?

We were working on the project off and on for the final year of production. But really, the bulk of the work was done in the last four months. We were not involved in the film editing. We started writing to a very close to completed cut. If there were changes to picture, we, or our music editor — Chris Tergesen — would conform our music to the final edit.

Having said that, we did write quite a lot of music when we first started that was not specifically to picture. These cues were cut into the show by Laura and Moira. This gave us a good idea of what was working for them, and helped focus our future efforts.

Did the variability of audio impact how you thought about music and what its role was in the series?

Yes, sometimes we would keep things really thin so that we were not fighting dialogue. Other times we chose not to do any music. I think those raw phone conversations or some of the courtroom scenes play more intensely without music.

What did you feel was the role of music in this series?

Any time I score a show my goal is to enhance the emotions or mood of the show without getting in the way. Additionally, as I said earlier we tried to come up with an unusual, artistic sound — something you don't hear in these types of projects. I'm quite proud of the end result. I think if someone is watching our show in another room you will hear that signature vibe and instantly know it's Making a Murderer.

I was watching Seth Meyers's spoof of our show and noticed that his music people had pulled something kind of similar in tone to one of our cues (solo cello, I believe), and it cracked me up! Someone was paying attention...

Garrett Tiedemann is a writer, filmmaker, and composer who owns the multimedia lab CyNar Pictures and its record label American Residue Records.

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