BONUS: A Conversation with THE PITT composer Gavin Brivik

Hey there! As an addendum to the last post on The Pitt, I wanted to share an interview with the composter for the show, free to all subscribers, as a thank you for reading over the past four months as I get this thing off the ground. Normal post will still be going up next week. Love ya lots!

The Pitt is a show that thrives on its texture. From its unassuming costuming to its removed but clear-eyed cinematography, the technical craft here is stealthily designed to feel invisible. The score, too, is hard to notice at first, humming beneath the jostling of medical devices and the twist of sneakers on vinyl flooring. The typical opening credits jingle is replaced by a chill outro song, slowly fading in over the credits, like a sunrise alarm clock. All this is a vast swing away from the mournful orchestration that has defined the medical procedure for decades.

The composer, Gavin Brivik - whose previous work includes the music for Wild Indian and How to Blow Up a Pipeline - has made a name with Capital-L Loud scoring. But the music here, though no less tense and propulsive, is refreshingly subtle. I spoke with Brivik on the phone yesterday afternoon, just hours before the finale.

Were you given specific guidance from the showrunners re: What they wanted the show to sound like?

Gavin Brivik: It's funny, I had the same instincts as them. I think that's kind of why I got the show. I was sent the first episode, and honestly, I didn't think the show needed music. So I pitched them the idea of this very subtle and atmospheric score, that almost sounded like sound design at some points. It had these like sub-bass pulses that were almost more like a heartbeat monitor. I was trying to blend in with the medical equipment. They asked me to write music for the show without giving much guidance, but I think that we just aligned, you know, on what we envisioned.

There are so many moments where the music and sound design seem to be working in concert. Did you wind up collaborating with the sound design team at all?

I became friends with Bryan Parker, the sound designer. I was very aware of what he was doing early on, the first episode I got had a bunch of his work already in place. Mostly, I just tried to blend into his stuff rather than have him blend into mine. I would kind of choose like a musical key that worked well with the beeping sounds of like, all the EKG machines. As the show went on, we both became more aware of each other's work and could take it into account as well.

Is there a specific moment that sticks out as your favorite example of that crossover, between your work and his?

In one of the early episodes, there’s a triathlete whose potassium is super high and his heart fails. I remember there was a lot of discussion in across the board about when the music would entre for certain moments. We’d use sound design as a trigger to initiate the music, but we’d also use the sound to cover it up, so the audience wouldn’t know when the music started. So, in the moment with the patient, he’d pass out, and the machines would start going crazy, making all sorts of noises to notify the doctors. That’s when I would enter. I actually used the beeping from the machines and the patient’s heartbeat to signal the tempo of the music.

What kind of instrumentation were you drawn to for this project?

It's a very electronic score. My intent was that there is this cold, calculated feeling to the hospital, and something about synths feels icy and cold, almost surgical. There were a moments where I would use some very light strings, but it was very subdued. I was really scared of the music sounding saccharine or melodramatic, which was the opposite of what everybody wanted. You know, all the team is from ER and West Wing, all these great shows, but they really just didn't want the music to kind of fall into the genres that they had previously worked on. They wanted something modern and supportive. My biggest reference was honestly Gone Girl, the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross score. It has these tense drones in the background. There were just so many places in that movie where I didn't even notice it was scored. It almost sounded like an air conditioning unit.

How does composing for something like The Pitt compare to previous projects, like Wild Indian and How to Blow Up a Pipeline, where the score is so foregrounded?

With Pipeline, it was this Chris Nolan-style mixing where the music is sometimes so loud that it fights the dialogue. The score on The Pitt isn’t doing the same heavy lifting. But as far as my work goes, I think there’s similar instrumentation, like, the electronic instrument I used could basically work in either score, though I think The Pitt synths are more modern. Something like Pipeline was inspired by those Tangerine Dream scores for those late 70s, early 80s thrillers.

What is it that so compels you about writing scores?

I grew up with a cinephile dad. He showed me those early Michael Mann movies, he’s the one who showed me Sorcerer. I was always obsessed with the soundtracks to the movies of my childhood. But you know, for me, it really does come down to the collaboration. When I’m working on a film, I’m a part of something greater than myself. I get a lot of joy out of working alongside someone else’s vision.

To close out the discussion I figured it’d be apt to bring up the end credits song, “Fail Foward,” which you co-wrote with Taji,. What was the genesis for the track?

So the pilot ends with “The Smile” by Radiohead. The music supervisor, Ann Klein, placed in that track and it just set a different tone. We had actually written these ambient instrumental tracks that were closer to the score for the credits initially. But Taji and I, we’d been friends for years, even played in a little band together in 2019. And we’d down some small collabs. I asked if he had any unfinished stuff that we could use for a collaboration. He sent me this sketch of him playing the guitar part of “Fail Foward” and singing the first verse. I added a drum beat to it, wrote some more lyrics and produced it. So we sent it into the show, too, just to see, and Scott Gemmel really loved it. It’s a real departure, I think. But it’s a departure that comes from the kind of music that the doctors would listen to as they’re in transit to and from work, like Dr. Robby in that opening scene.