One of the interesting challenges, I think, from a musical perspective is how do you provide a sense of cohesion across chapters while also allowing for transformation? And Barry told me about his love for chopped and screwed music, which is a style of Southern hip-hop where you take tracks and you slow them down. And then chapter three is many years later when he's really in his late 20s, and he goes by Black. The second chapter is when he's in high school, and he goes by Chiron, which is his name. And there's something to me just musically that sounds almost like washing over itself somehow.īRITELL: With "Moonlight," which is divided into three chapters, the first chapter is the main character Chiron as a young boy where he goes by the name Little. And then we recorded it very close to a mic.īRITELL: The ocean is a big part of the film. And what I asked him to do was to play it as quietly as he possibly could while still generating enough sound that he felt comfortable with the note. And there's a violin that's doubling the melody on top.īRITELL: The sound of the violin in that piece was something that I thought about right away.īRITELL: I've collaborated extensively with a very dear friend of mine, Tim Fain, who's the violinist. That idea of introspection and thinking internally felt right with these kinds of harmonies. He is quiet, but you know that there's a lot that he's thinking and that he's feeling. #Moonlight songs how to#You're in a major key, so there's this sense of stability, but at the same time the alternation back and forth creates, I think, a feeling of introspection.īRITELL: I was imagining how to get inside Little's point of view. (SOUNDBITE OF NICHOLAS BRITELL COMPOSITION, "LITTLE'S THEME")īRITELL: It's a piano with these alternating harmonies.īRITELL: It's going between the major one and the minor four chord. And I actually was saying to myself, you know, what is the musical analog of poetry? And among the first things I sent to Barry was a piece of music I wrote that I called "Piano And Violin Poem" because I was sort of trying to channel this idea, and that actually is "Little's Theme." And what was amazing to me when I first saw the early cuts of the film after it was shot was how well Barry had preserved that feeling of poetry in the movie. The director of "Moonlight" is Barry Jenkins. When I first read it, I was just overwhelmed by this feeling of beauty and poetry. He spoke about composing the score for "Moonlight" on "Song Exploder," a podcast that explores how songs are created.īRITELL: There was just this incredible sensitivity and tenderness and intimacy in the screenplay. SHAPIRO: This is the first Oscar nomination for Nicholas Britell. NICHOLAS BRITELL: My name's Nicholas Britell, and I'm the composer of "Moonlight." #Moonlight songs movie#One of the nominees this year is the movie "Moonlight." And along with best picture and best actor and actress, there's an award for best original score. To me it represents the whole process of us finding a common ground and working together to keep all those little idiosyncrasies tucked into the mix.The Academy Awards will be presented on Sunday. In the end we kept it, because what that chord suggested was all the mystery. In a statement, Johnson said of the song, “Whenever I walk outside at night and look up at the stars, it’s always a way to be present instead of worrying about the future or dwelling on the past.”Ĭelebrated producer Blake Mills, who helped Johnson craft all of Meet the Moonlight, called the tune “one of the most spiritually interesting things I’ve ever worked on.” He added: “There’s a chord in the song that wasn’t part of the initial composition it happened by mistake when we were first playing it. “Meet the Moonlight” features a simple percussion click, a mesmerizing tangle of ethereal guitars and piano, and Johnson’s tender croon: “But it’s good to be right here/It’s good not to miss/Too many chances to follow love.” The song is paired with a music video directed by Morgan Maassen, which was filmed almost completely underwater. Jack Johnson has released the dreamy title-track from his upcoming album, Meet the Moonlight, set to arrive June 24 via Brushfire/Republic Records.
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