Birds of Prey composer Daniel Pemberton discusses creating a different sound for the film, his process for creating the movie’s musical themes, and breaks down his favorite track.

If you were impressed by the score on 2015’s underrated Steve Jobs or Guy Ritchie’s The Man from U.N.C.L.E., felt awed by the score on Netflix’s Dark Crystal, or found yourself bobbing your head to the hip hop influenced sounds of the Into The Spider-Verse score, then what should really blow you away is this: each of those very different sounding but equally amazing scores were all created by Daniel Pemberton.

That richness of sound and diversity in arrangement is what makes Daniel Pemberton one of the most exciting and talented film composers in the business. With Pemberton, you’ll never quite know what kind of sound you’ll end up getting, but you’ll always know you’ll get something utterly and unexpectedly perfect at capturing the look, feel and atmosphere of the film.

Hypable recently had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Daniel Pemberton about his work on the absolutely fantabulous score for Birds of Prey. In this interview, Pemberton discusses his approach to making music for films and the creation of all of the movie’s absolutely perfect character themes. He ends the interview by taking the time to break down his favorite track off the album — the rocking, rollicking good time of a track “Fight Together.”

Interview with ‘Birds of Prey’ composer Daniel Pemberton

Lelanie Seyffer: What about Cathy Yan’s vision as a director appealed to you as a composer?

Daniel Pemberton: What always draws me in when someone is trying to do something different. One of the things Cathy and I talked about is that we didn’t want this to feel like all other comic book movies that were out there. We wanted it to feel quite different. And musically that always gets me excited because it means I’m not boxed in, it means there’s a lot more freedom, it means I can always think of new ways of addressing scenes and emotions and things in the film. I really like having much more of an open canvas to paint on than being told that you must make it sound like every other comic book movie.

You’ve said that you love doing films where I can be really inventive and bring my personality into the world. What from your personality do you feel like you brought into the film?

So the world of the film — and also Harley’s outfits — I really dug. I just thought, “Oh wow, these clothes are awesome!” I’d wear them in their male equivalent possibly.

And I really like that kind of I don’t give a fuck attitude, that attitude of I can do whatever I think is cool and not care whether other people think it’s cool or not. I kind of relate to that because I just try to do what I do, not to do what is consciously seen as being cool. I like that attitude of if you’re into something then it doesn’t matter what people think.

When I’ve worked on film music I’ve always tried to have that attitude of — I really just care about what I think and if I think it’s exciting and cool, then great that’s what I’m aiming for. You get more interesting music that way rather than if you try to appease or second guess on what other people think is cool. And I think Harley’s got that attitude a lot.

What’s something interesting or unique that you did for this score?

When I make the score, I always try to leave space to change things up in the last minute and come up with things on the fly because when you’re in a room with musicians you get this really exciting way to get really interesting results. There’s an energy of people being in the room and when you give them an ability to put their own spin things rather than just tell them to play exactly what it sounds like in the demo, it always gives you more exciting end results.

So for this soundtrack, we had jam sessions. We’d record cues and then we’d kind of like jam around on eight bars and just try lots of different ways. It was a good way to give the music a bit more, to make it a bit more warm, and to bring the energy of live performance into the soundtrack.

Was there anything that surprised you as you were scoring the movie?

I think one of the great one things I really like that came across the very last minute is what I call the Birds of Prey battle cry. We had these two amazing opera singers who I’d written some more kind of operatic soprano parts for Harley’s of break up theme — her emancipation — and then because I still had some time with them I said, “Okay, let’s try something else.”

I wanted to try these screams. I’d been trying to get these kind of battle cries on film, but I could never really nail them. And I just got these two amazing singers and had them making crazy sounds in the studio and it actually worked out really cool. We ended up sort of distorting those and putting them through sort of echoes and it ended up being a really cool feature in the “Fight Together.”

In Birds of Prey, you were able to bring the worlds of soundtrack and score together with Jucee Froot’s “Danger Danger” and Charlotte Lawrence’s “Jokes on You.” Can you talk a bit about the process of trying to bring those two worlds together?

With “Joke’s On You,” we’d already found this cue for the opening, but we were talking about trying to turn it into a song somewhere else. So I worked with this producer Matt Royale and we worked together, then he went away and put some ideas on top of that and then we came back and did work and ended up with the song “Joke’s On You,” and we got that over to Charlotte Lawrence and she did a really great vocal on it.

So we played around with that and we tried it over the opening and thought wow this is really great over the opening so I went back and arrange it so it was very dramatic put more flourishes in more operatic vocals and that’s how that piece came about and then we reworked it onto a more commercial song as well.

So with “Danger, Danger” — one of these things about Harley is that I always felt like she’d take two different styles and shove them together. And I kinda wanted to do that with the score and take something like her theme, which is badass and metal sounding, and take something different to that like hip hop and shove it together. I’d written that track and I wanted to get a hip hop artist, so I looked at Jucee Froot, checked out some of her stuff and really liked the kind of flow and energy of her.

She was in Miami at the time, so we’d Skype in weird hours and we’d work on the tone and energy of that track. The version you hear in the film is a really great example of what we tried to achieve in pushing two worlds together. And even though the album version isn’t quite the same, the film version is really what I was trying to achieve in taking two worlds and shoving them together.

Everyone you talk to who has loved this film, those two scenes where you combine the score and the soundtrack have really emerged as favorites.

I think it’s one of those things as well because those two scenes were 100% tied in with the score and the world. That’s what I was trying to bring through the music. It makes them feel 100% part of the world and that’s what I always want to achieve — to create new things that couldn’t exist anywhere else. These two scenes and the music that goes with them couldn’t exist anywhere out of Gotham or outside of Harley’s world.

This is, technically, a sequel. Did the score from Suicide Squad influence you at all or did you just kind of take this movie as it came to you?

I think that Cathy wanted to do something that was very different so I kind of went down that mood. But Stephen Price, who did Suicide Squad, is like a really good buddy of mine and super massive talented composer, so we were always chatting on the phone anyway about everything.

I always feel like we have our own secret superhero musical gang, possibly like Suicide Squad finding ourselves in tricky situations battling evil forces in the comic book studio world.

So, obviously, a lot of talk about Harley because this movie is all about her emancipation, but I’d also love to talk about some of the other characters. Can you talk about your process and kind of what you were trying to convey musically with the themes for the other characters?

So, for Roman’s theme, a lot based around detuning string instruments. We did a big session at Fox Newman stage and one of the things that makes that interesting is that it feels incredibly uncomfortable. And to get that sort of lack of feeling keeps you on edge.

We spent a long time working with the string players to do a quarter tone detuning, which is when things are slightly out of time with everyone. So they’re not landing on the tunes the same way and you change the speed when they go in and out of tune. Imagine an orchestra, if they’re playing a one-note melody and they’re playing perfectly, you get one nice straight line. With detuning, you make that line very wavy and unstable. We do a lot of things like getting people to play incredibly close to the bridge which makes a very uncomfortable, scratchy sound. And a lot of Roman’s theme is about making you feel uncomfortable and because the landings aren’t on pitch, you’re on edge, you feel like — argh, I can’t see why but this is weird.

For Huntress’ theme, because she pops up a few times early on and you don’t know who she is, I needed to have some kind of sound for her that you can remember in like a second. The great Morricone Westerns which had these really simple sounds, but they helped you remember a character because they’re so recognizable. That’s what I wanted to do for Huntress.

And the thing about Huntress is we could build that into her backstory. Then it becomes her theme. I wanted to make this thing of like, oh you understand why that’s her theme now, because of the backstory and that’s where they come from and having all these different elements meant. It’s a great film setting because you have all these different characters, these different worlds and you could kind of make this character quite different and not have to commit to the same kind of sound.

Since we talked about Roman and Huntress, can we talk about the sounds you used for Black Canary a little bit?

So Black Canary is this kind of whistle, a very simple motif. I tried to do these things that were more like screams but it didn’t work on the scenes she was in. It was more of a strain. So we ended up doing this thing made of like sampled whistling and someone singing very softly. And I wanted to…there’s these battle cries later I wanted to be more like her theme, and I had some great ideas for those themes, but the scenes they’re in in the film – there’s not always pay off. Not every scene in the movie are these big massive moments, so you have to hold back for those moments. If there’s a sequel I want a moment to give Black Canary a big, massive shriek.

What was your favorite track to work on or the one that was the most fun for you?

I think there’s a bunch of things I really like. I love the songs. I’m really proud of being able to work on the songs and things like “Joke’s on You” is a really great song. I think I really like the fact that Harley has got quite a memorable riff. The fact that Harley, Huntress, and Canary have got these tunes that are really simple but you’re able to identify quite quickly, which is really very hard to do.

But I think my favorite cue in the film is “Fight Together” because it pulls together everything I was trying to do in the movie. All comes together in that cue, so you’ve got all these characters’ sounds and all these musical ideas and musical approaches and they all come together in that fight.

What was your favorite track to work on or the one that was the most fun for you?

I think there’s a bunch of things I really like. I love the songs. I’m really proud of being able to work on the songs and things like “Joke’s on You” is a really great song. I think I really like the fact that Harley has got quite a memorable riff. The fact that Harley, Huntress, Canary have got these tunes that are really simple but you’re able to identify quite quickly, which is really very hard to do.

I think my favorite cue in the film is “Fight Together” because it pulls together everything I was trying to do in the movie. All comes together in that cue, so you’ve got all these characters sounds and all these musical ideas and musical approaches and they all come together in that fight.

Daniel Pemberton breaks down ‘Fight Together’

One of the things that was important in that cue was that a lot of really interesting stuff came out of jamming with a band. I’d load the cue and then we really jammed. We’d first record the cue, then we recorded it letting the band go loose on like eight bars, and going round and round and round, improvising around very simple ideas. So you were still playing those ideas but people were trying to do things in lots of different ways, and through that you find really cool moments.

Another key part was using the 303 Roland, which is sort of a synthesizer but more of a bass line generating machine. It’s an important part of modern music culture that I felt hasn’t really been used enough on film scores.

While I was working on the film, I saw a Jeremy Della documentary about rave culture called Everybody In The Place. Rave culture was also like, colors, funfairs. Loads of raves used to have big funfairs at them and it’s kind of energetic, sort of crazy, and felt like everything that Harley embodied and the world embodied, so there’s a lot of 303 hidden in the tracks with these kind of mad electronic sounds.

And then on top of that we start bringing in the themes. So we got Huntress’ theme so when Huntress kind of turns up, we suddenly get her theme. We’ve heard it all through the film and we finally get to hear it in this track. For Huntresses theme I wanted something that instantly caught your ear and had a kind of mystery about it. Also a simple enough idea that you get who she was in two seconds. So we got that playing on the flute and that’s great.

Then the bass line starts moving to Harley Quinn’s theme. We got Huntress, we got Canary, we got Harley’s theme, all coming together. We’ve got these amazing battle cries as well, which kind of felt like them all just fighting these guys. These five girls are taking on this whole army of guys. And that kind of primal screaming is something I’ve always been interested in having in my music, like giving a big surreality to it. And again that was done like I said earlier with those two amazing opera singers. That experimentation and just them doing these amazing performances.

The whole track is sort of chaotic but it wants to build and build and build — until they finally come together, and that’s when we cut in with the Birds of Prey theme, which is this mad sample of someone singing “Cuckoo Cuckoo.” And that was like, really cool ‘cause it was just trying to find a way of doing vocals differently. We tried many different things but getting someone to sing “Cuckoo Cuckoo” was really great. It really kinda sounded cool and different and odd and also kind of fit in with our Birds of Prey theme.

And that theme builds and builds and on top of that we put orchestra. We recorded a big symphony orchestra and we brought in a whole choir on top of that as well, at the very end. And so the idea of that track is everything you’ve experienced in the film all comes together at that key moment when finally they all fight together and basically becomes the Birds of Prey and it was really satisfying for me to get that pay off of all these things coming together.

It’s just a mad, kick ass track. That one is just a good track to get you in the mood for kicking some people’s butts.

The Birds of Prey soundtrack is available now! Buy on Amazon, iTunes and Google Play!

Thank you to Daniel Pemberton for his fantabulous insight into his creative process!