EXCLUSIVE: Interview with Tim Jones

He does the coolest music for the coolest show… it’s no surprise he’s the coolest guy! You’ll love our interview with music composer Tim Jones.

Chuck vs. the Podcast: Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us, Tim. The fans just love the music of Chuck, and we owe a lot of thanks to you for that.
Tim Jones: Well no problem, Graham, it’s absolutely my pleasure, and I appreciate you guys looking me up. You know, this show has been a lot of fun for me this year, and all of us are really happy that people have started to enjoy Chuck and his world. So, you know, thank you!

CvP: You’re very welcome. You know, among Mel, Liz and myself, we’ve often talked about how not only does every episode sound like a feature film, but the music has character. It’s almost like one of the characters of the show. I gotta say kudos to you for a super job.
TJ: Well I appreciate that immensely. You know, we also have a really great music supervisor, Alex Patsavas, from the Chop Shop. She does a great job, along with Josh Schwartz, of picking songs for the show, so a lot of times some of the great moments you may be speaking of may be songs. But then there are other times where the score – they’ve given me quite a lot of latitude to bring my ideas to the table and try to juxtapose some different things against picture, which has just been a real joy for me, and, you know, it’s kind of a composer’s dream job to have that kind of latitude and leeway to do something interesting, to make something more funny if you can, or play it exactly opposite and make it funny. I don’t know what else to say other than it’s been a blast!

CvP: I would think it would be a really fun show for you to do, with such a variety from action to drama to comedy.
TJ: Well it’s great because we – as a matter of fact, I was talking to one of the other crew members the other day, and we were talking about how the show has such different elements in it. There’s I think great emotion at times, between Chuck and Sarah and, you know, just the family vibe, and then we have this sort of danger. And you know when Chuck’s in danger, it’s real. He really could die or he really could get shot, and we try to play those things really straight ahead. We try not to wink at the audience, because he is in actual peril, and then there’s times when it’s just the comedy of the situation. I talked with Adam Baldwin one day, on the set, and he mentioned that he enjoyed the “computer music,” you know, that I wrote for the Buy More, sort of the vibe for the Buy More. And that’s just really fun because you put that up against some of the cues like when we open the episode where they find Bryce Larkin in the little pod, I think [the scene was set] in Finland, if I remember correctly, and you know I’m really going for a big movie sound there and big action-thriller sound, and then juxtaposed against the little bleeps and blips of the Buy More music, it’s pretty disparate. It’s fun. It’s a lot of fun. (laughs)

CvP: Now you’ve got quite a lot of experience with that. Looking through your resume on IMDb, you’ve done quite a few features?
TJ: I’ve done a fair amount of features. I’ve done some nice work with Sony Screen Gems. I have a great director friend of mine, J. S. Cardone, I call him Joe, but he really gave me my first big break in features which was The Forsaken for Sony, which was a theatrical release. That was a neat film. It was kind of a road picture and, you know, it had some vampire elements, but I just … I still hold that movie close to my heart. It was a lot of fun to do. It was very stylized and kind of different; I think we did something kind of different there. I’ve done some big action stuff, I’ve also done some comedy stuff. I’ve done stuff for the Disney Channel; there’s a movie called Brianiacs.com that’s kind of just this cute little movie that just never seems to die. I mean, I keep finding it on my royalties. (laughs) It just keeps coming up. It’s a really cute little movie, and that was a chance to do some kind of orchestral comedic stuff, which definitely comes to play in Chuck.

Strangely enough, I did a lot of work for Mercedes-Benz and IBM and some other companies. I did some industrial work with a company in New York, and I think that really cut my teeth on putting a lot of these modern beats and things underneath orchestral backdrops, which really plays into the texture and fabric in the music for Chuck. So it’s really been a combination of all the things I’ve done over the past 12 years that kind of culminated in the sound of Chuck, which has just been really fun.

CvP: You’ve obviously got a great mix there, and I do notice that. The orchestral backing and mixing that with the electronic music gives, I think, the perfect flavor for what he’s in because you have these dramatic and exciting situations, and then you’ve got his “nerdness” to mix with that.
TJ: (laughs) Right. Yeah, Chuck’s sort of – I’m sure he would agree that he’s a lovable geek. You know what I mean? And I relate to Chuck very directly. It was funny, when I had the meeting to get the show, I was in the meeting with Josh Schwartz and I said, you know, one of the very first computer games I ever played was Zorg.

CvP: You’re kidding, me too!
TJ: That was the first game I ever got on the Commodore 64. I sort of am Chuck. (laughs) We had a pretty good laugh over that.

CvP: I can totally relate. That leads toward a couple of questions I was going to ask – just for our listeners, they may not know that Josh Schwartz along with Chris Fedak created the show, and Josh is the showrunner which means he’s the lead writer on the show. What’s it like working with Josh? I hear he can be really hands-on with the music.
TJ: Oh Josh is amazing. He really has a good sense of music. He’s listening to music all the time. You know, Josh created The O.C. which was on for a number of seasons, and I think he was the youngest showrunner ever, at the time. I think he was 26 or something, so he’s a young guy. Tons of energy. Really wonderful to work with, has a great sense of humor and is also very good at kind of guiding the emotional path of the show. I’ve really enjoyed working with Josh in the aspect that he really knows where to pull back on a scene musically or where to kind of lean on it a little bit. I’ve really learned a lot from him about the emotional arc of a scene or the emotional arc of an episode, and that’s been fun. Yeah, so, to answer your question, I would say that he is very hands-on, but not so much I feel in any way squelched. He’s also really great about, you know, I try something wacky and it works, and he goes, “That’s funny.”

We did the episode with the master remote, you know with Harry Tang and his master remote, and I said, “Guys, I really want to run with this Lord of the Rings thing.” And they’re like, “Well, okay, give it a try, see what you think.” And we all ended up thinking that was pretty funny.

CvP: I noticed on your credits that you done some work on Lord of the Rings?
TJ: Yeah, I actually did. I worked on a video game, Lord of the Rings: The Middle Earth. It was a pretty big game on PC. I wrote, I don’t know, maybe 10 or 12 minutes of stuff for the game and we orchestrated it and had it recorded up in Seattle. That was a fun project. I really enjoyed that.

CvP: That sounds great.
TJ: It’s definitely a universe I’ve done a little bit of work in, so it was just fun to bring that to the table. The music wasn’t at all comedic, I mean I played it straight down the middle, as if I were scoring Lord of the Rings IV. (laughs) And I think that’s what made it so funny up against Harry Tang, who I’m going to sorely miss, by the way.

CvP: Oh yeah. The music you did for Harry was just classic. Well backtrack a little bit, because you were doing a lot of work on features, and you’d worked in TV a lot, but not a lot of series work. How did you end up getting into the room with Josh?
TJ: Well you know, this is an interesting story. I had mentioned The Forsaken early in the interview; the editor of that film was Norman Buckley, who has become a close friend over the years, a really fantastic editor, and he was working on the pilot for Chuck with Josh Schwartz and with McG, who is also an executive producer. I remember giving Norm a call, just kind of out of the blue, to say, “Hey, I hear you’re working on something. If you need anything, I’m here.” And he’s like, “You know, I’ll call you in a few weeks when I’m done.” I said, “Okay.” And I kind of didn’t take “no” for an answer and emailed him again and said, “Look, if you need anything, I’m here. Whatever you need, it’s not gonna cost you a dime, I’m on the hook for this.” So I got a call maybe 24 hours later, maybe less, and he goes, “Okay, you’re on the hook. I don’t feel good about making you work for nothing…” and I said, “Look, I’m the one volunteering.” And so basically I just started cutting together temp for them from some different sources, things they were using. They had some vibes that they liked, but they were really short, so I took those – maybe a 50-second clip of music – and I put it into a program called Live, which allows me to really mess with the time and the timing of everything. I sort of built cues around them, so I basically created some custom temp music for them. And it just started to work and Norm was enjoying cutting to it, and I just kept going. After about three weeks of stuff, Norm and I had worked on quite a few cues, and so when it came time to choose a composer for the show, I’d made it on to the short list, and it just clicked. I can honestly say it was the best meeting I’ve ever had. For anyone in the creative industry who has to go in and “take a meeting” to get a job, this was one time when I really felt relaxed and felt good about the project and what I had done. It was just a good fit.

I should also mention Ben Kundy (?), who is our fantastic producer, who is really there day-to-day dealing with all the things that come up for the show. He was also really helpful, I think, in helping me get the job. Alex Patsavas was there and she’s a friend from The Forsaken as well, so it kind of all goes back to this horror movie I did six years ago. (laughs) So that’s that story.

CvP: Now, has it been a big change of pace from your feature work?
TJ: Oh god, yes. I’ve been shocked at how much work it is, to be honest. (laughs) I mean, I’d always heard that network television was a fast pace and I’m like, yeah yeah yeah, I write fast. And I do. I think compared to some people I write fairly quickly, but I was not prepared for the onslaught of music, week after week! In those early episodes, I was writing between…I think the most I ever wrote was probably 25 minutes of score, but that’s in a week, you know. That’s in four days, five days max, and I was doing that six, seven weeks at a time. It was pretty challenging, but, you know, I think this difference is – and this is not to pat myself on the back – but I think the difference is that a lot of people in television, some composers have other people working with them who lighten the load a bit, who take cues off their plate, and so it becomes a little be more “music by committee”, which I really didn’t want for this show and it is not something I’m interested in doing. I just really enjoy the personal sense of satisfaction; when something’s done, you know, for better or for worse, you did it. So you can stand up and say, “Yeah, I did that, love it or hate it.” (laughs) There’s no one else to blame.

CvP: I have to mention that the average listener loves the music, but really has no idea about the process of how you come up with the music for each scene, how you even know what kind of mood you want to create, so can you tell us about…first of all, how early do you see the script? Are you involved early in the process, as the cuts start coming together, and when you see the material, how do you know where you’re going with it?
TJ: That’s a great question. It was a little different in the beginning of the series than in the last few episodes, so I’ll start at the beginning where, yes, I did read the scripts and I was working kind of way ahead of the curve. As Norman and I, and Josh and everybody else, but predominately Norman and I were really kind of working on trying to get a vibe going for some different things that we would then present to Josh, and he would kind of guide us along. So yeah, I was a couple episodes ahead with script reading at that point and was starting to get themes worked out. Basically what happens is that the editors will cut a show and they have to have music to cut to, that’s how they like to work, so a lot of times they’ll come at it with other scores. I think the Bourne Identity series got a lot of play when we were temping. I know Thomas Newman is a stalwart in the temping – he’s great, obviously he has a very unique sound, so he presents his own challenge when it comes time to replace Tom Newman, you know, who I’m not interested in doing a wholesale copy of. I think there’s enough of that going on these days.

So basically the editor goes through and they temp the entire show, they work with Josh very closely on the style and the feelings of different scenes, and they get as close as they can with the temp music. Then I’m brought at that spotting session and we go through the entire show, beginning to end, and they tell me where they want the cues, and give me a sense of the style. Sometimes I’ll have ideas, like the Lord of the Rings thing, what if we try THAT there, and they’ll say, okay, try it, we don’t know, but we’ll see what happens. Then I start, basically, working on cues. I’ll work on the show from front to back, and then I’ll decide, you know, if there’s different themes – like say there’s some Buy More themes maybe I’ll attack those first in the different parts of the show, or usually the emotional scenes can be the most challenging to get the right tone. One great example of that would be, there’s a really nice scene between Chuck and Sarah – I forget which episode it is, but they’re in a hotel room and he brings a pizza over…

CvP: Oh, I love that scene.
TJ: Yeah, and it was such a great scene. You know, the acting in that scene is superlative, the editing, everything just really came together, and so it was a big responsibility for me to put the right music there and make it happen. I felt like it did, in the end, and we were all really happy. It ended up just really being piano, you know, kind of playing around their emotions and clearing the dialog. And that’s, if you sort of go down on a scene level, that’s what I’m doing is that I’m really trying to get under the skin of a scene, and figure out what it is it supposed to be about and how am I helping the scene. And how do I stay out of the way is a primary concern, because you don’t want to step on what’s there, you only want to support it. Even in an action scene, even if I’m providing drive for the scene, I still want to make sure I’m staying out of the way of stuff so that the music isn’t popping over the foreground, you know? It still is underscore, by definition, and so that’s something I really strive for, is to try and make sure that I’m serving the scene and that I’m not jumping in the face of what’s going on.

CvP: Well so far what we’ve seen, it’s a perfect balance. I know myself, working in the industry, sometimes we can do something and because we’re not sitting in a movie theater, we don’t see how people are reacting to it. A conversation I had with Mel, one of the co-hosts of our show, that particular scene actually brought her to tears.
TJ: Oh, that’s…thank you.

CvP: I know the acting was great and the writing was great, but I’m certain that music played a big part of that as well.
TJ: Well thank you. We’re all very proud of that, and other moments in the show, but that was a really nice moment, and a really nice episode written by [Allison] Adler, one of our really talented writers and producers.

CvP: When you’re working, who would you say you interact with the most?
TJ: Probably the editors. I spend the most time sort of going back and forth for them. I’ll write a cue and post it to the FTP site, and they’ll grab it and throw it into the [editing software] and when we have enough to show Josh, he’ll come in and make his comments. We’ll go through a couple of rounds of that, usually, until we really dial in what we’re looking for.

CvP: What would you say some of the highlights of your job are?
TJ: Highlights of my job…now, is this my job on Chuck or my job in general?

CvP: Either one!
TJ: Well, I particularly enjoy Thursday afternoon, because that’s the time when I’m usually finished with the score and I’m able to go to the dub stage – it’s the second day that we’re dubbing the show – and I’m able to sit and kind of see everything come together: all the dialog, all the all the great sound effects. We have a couple of fantastic mixers at Warner Bros., Todd Grace and Ed Karr, and they just take all the elements and blend them in a way that I think is really well done. We do mix the show in 5.1. I write and compose the music in 5.1 one as well and deliver that to them. I don’t know that every show on the air is doing that. I don’t hear stuff that’s specifically for 5.1, especially the music. It’s more normal to do the sound effects, but not necessarily the music, and so that’s been really cool because we can do some fun effects and things that can kind of immerse the viewer, if they have a chance to listen to it in Surround [Sound].

So I enjoy that, I really enjoy seeing the culmination of the efforts on a Thursday. I’ve enjoyed – the social aspect of working in television has been different, because in a feature, by the time I get to a project, the cast and crew are really gone and it’s just in post[-production]. You maybe meet the cast and crew at like a screening or something, but with Chuck, because it’s an on-going show, you know, I could drop by the set and say hi to Josh Gomez, say hi to Zac. It’s been really fun. It’s been nice to have contact with those guys, and jus tell them they’re doing a great job and ask them what games they’re playing on the Xbox. (laughs) So I’ve enjoyed the social aspect of it, and I’ve enjoyed the public’s response to the show, which is much more immediate. When you do a film, it maybe takes months for it to come out. On the show, we’ll finish on a Thursday and it’ll be on the air next Monday, you know, so that’s a pretty interesting turnaround.

CvP: Well you’ve got a huge fan response to the show. I know even back as far as ComicCon last year, it got a standing ovation, and ChuckTV.net, our sister site, gets as many as 30,000 unique visitors a month.
TJ: Is that right? I had no idea. That’s great!

CvP: Oh yeah, huge, huge response.
TJ: That’s fantastic. I would just love to be able to – I know you and I were talking about this the other day – it would be really great to kind of let people who don’t know the show kind of know what it’s about, because it does have such a wide appeal. I have friends who have kids that are teenagers who love the show, and the parents love the show, and then I talk to my wife’s mother who watches with her friends and they’re 60s and 70s, you know, so it’s really cool that a show – I can’t think of another show that appeals to that many age groups.

CvP: You’re absolutely right. I know there’s a lot of people that might say that an 8 o’clock timeslot would be bad for an action show, but I think it just advertises the universal appeal of the show.
TJ: I would hope so, yeah. I would hope that it does allow maybe people who aren’t allowed to stay up until 10 o’clock, they might have a chance to watch it, and maybe people who aren’t awake at 10 o’clock… (laughs) I don’t know, I’m not a network expert, I don’t know these things. I do know that we had some pretty stiff competition. I mean, Dancing with the Stars is a juggernaut of TV ratings, and, you know, I’m happy we’re still here, and obviously looking forward to going back to work when this strike is over, if and when this strike is over.

CvP: Speaking of that, now that the show has wrapped for the time being, what are your plans?
TJ: Probably gonna fly a lot of model airplanes (laughs), spend a lot of time on my bicycle – I rode about 30 miles this morning and would like to be much more active in that, because, it’s funny, we were all talking on the dub stage a few weeks ago about how we’ve all been trapped in front of a computer for 16 hours a day and our health is just going to the dogs, so yeah. And spend time with my family. I have two little kids, a son and a daughter – my daughter is about to be six and my son is four – and my wife Evelyn, so we’ll spend some nice family time. And I’m gonna be doing some other side projects. I’ve recently signed with ICM, which is one of the bigger agencies.

CvP: Great! Congratulations!
TJ: Oh, thank you. I have a wonderful agent there and he’s kept me very busy and we have some great things perking, so we’ll have to get back with you on that. But with any luck at all the strike won’t go on too much longer and we’ll be able to get back to the business of making Chuck.

CvP: Also, you were going samples of your music for the podcast. Can you tell us a bit about those? What you’re gonna play for us?
TJ: Sure. There’s a film I did for Sony that’s one in the series of John Carpenter’s vampire films, it was the third film in that series. I mention it only because I got the opportunity to go to Prague, and I wrote and orchestrated this score for an 85-piece orchestra and a 30-voice choir and sort of a medieval ensemble that included a glass harmonica and a harpsichord and a viola de gamba (???) and some interesting instruments. This movie was actually set in Asia, but it had a lot of Western instrumentation against it which was a lot of fun, so there’s a cue from that. And a cue from The Death and Life of Bobby Z, which is a movie I did recently with Laurence Fishbourne and Paul Walker. That was a lot of fun. In fact, I think that that movie kind of helped me hone in on the sound for Chuck. It was kind of a rock and roll based score. I mean, I wanted it to feel fun, and it’s set down around the border and it’s just got a lot of guitars and just had a real fun feel to it, so I know for a fact that a lot of that seeped into Chuck. [Note: You can hear the music Tim’s discussing by listening to the podcast.]

CvP: That’s great. Tim, we really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. We look forward to your music in the Fall because we’re convinced that Chuck is coming back for lots more great episodes.
TJ: Well, from your lips to God’s ears. We’d be very happy to do some more music for Chuck. I appreciate it you taking the time to listen to me talk about the show, because it’s something we’re all very proud of.

CvP: Great. Please do give us updates on what you’re up to; we’re happy to put them on the site.
TJ: Sure will.

A special note of thanks to Tim for sending us pictures to use with his interview, as well as the shot of Mel’s Diner! You can listen to Tim’s interview on Chuck vs. the Podcast Episode 002. Also check out our interviews with Sarah Lancaster, Julia Ling, and Yvonne Strahovski.