We chatted with film and TV composer Dara Taylor about her recent score for George Clooney’s film The Tender Bar, which is now available to stream on Amazon Prime Video. Dara has composed music for major motion picture films and series including Bad Moms, the action-comedy sequel Shaft, Amazon Prime’s series The Boys, Netflix’s Lost in SpaceThe Happytime MurdersUglydolls, and The CW’s Supernatural. We asked Dara about how she got into scoring film/TV, and the process behind creating the score for The Tender Bar. Check out what she had to say below.

Is it safe to say that music was one of your first loves?

Dara Taylor (DT): Oh yeah, definitely. But it was more like a “When Harry Met Sally” love for quite some time. It was my Harry – where I spent all of my time and had the most fun, but growing up I didn’t really see it as a possible career and I was (fruitlessly) looking elsewhere for a path. I think much of that though was seeing music as performance which is how I had primarily experienced it. It wasn’t until I found composition that the light really went on in my head.

How did you get involved with scoring film and TV?

DT: I studied theory, classical voice, and contemporary classical composition in undergrad, but I always listened to and appreciated film scores. One day sophomore year I was listening to Harry Gregson-Williams’s score to “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” (also one of my favorite books growing up) and it somehow just clicked, that maybe this is the path I wanted. So then I just needed to figure out how to do it. After graduation, I went to NYU and completed their masters program in scoring for film and multimedia. I then stayed in New York for a while trying to find that next step until eventually my boyfriend and I moved to LA where I hit the ground running. I started by going to Society of Composers and Lyricists events where I quickly started volunteering and then working part time. A friend from those events brought me to a scoring session at Sony for the ABC series Revolution which is where I first met Christopher Lennertz.

I next started interning at his studio, Sonic Fuel Studios, then was interim studio manager for a bit, then his part time assistant, full time assistant, score producer and additional writer and that all culminated to our first co-score, Lionsgate’s Barb and Star Go to Vista del Mar. Under Chris’s mentorship I learned an incredible amount not just about writing music for film and television, but about team building and management, putting your best foot forward in meetings and playbacks, and navigating the studio system. So when I eventually stuck out on my own I was fortunate to have a host of skills to use to build upon in my solo career.

Image via darataylor.com

What was the best advice someone has given you about composing?

DT: I actually really liked a quote I read from Pinar Toprak which said something along the lines of “scoring is getting the most emotion across in the fewest notes possible” which really stuck with me. I really started looking at cues with more intentionality and clarity and would ask myself, am I adding this because it’s fun for me or because it helps the narrative. Thankfully there are plenty of instances where it does both, but it helped shift my focus a bit in the never-ending journey of discovery and rediscovery.

What was it like preparing for The Tender Bar? What was the mindset like?

DT: The first thing I worked on with George Clooney and Grant Heslov was finding the tone. They wanted the score to have a sense of bittersweet melancholy but still feel hopeful. We also wanted the score to fold in nicely amongst the needle drops so we found a palette that didn’t feel too disparate from the songs, but yet still had its own character.

What were some goals in mind for the score for The Tender Bar?

DT: Because the soundtrack of the film is composed of so many wonderful and nostalgic needle drops, the purpose of the score was mainly to underline some of the more emotional beats. One thing George did so masterfully in spotting the film was not being too overwrought with the emotion as well. Score was often used in moments of self discovery and realizations, introductions to new feelings and important people, but the peak of the most emotional moments were typically in silence which really makes the audience feel them with the characters. I then crafted a theme that could be used as a common thread throughout the narrative, tying these beats together  throughout J.R.’s emotional journey that spans multiple decades.

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