Skip to content
CapRadio

CapRadio

listen live donate
listen live donate
listen live
donate
  • News
    • News

    • State Government
    • Environment
    • Health Care
    • Race and Equity
    • Business
    • Arts and Lifestyle
    • Food and Sustainability
    • PolitiFact California
    News
    • News

    • State Government
    • Environment
    • Health Care
    • Race and Equity
    • Business
    • Arts and Lifestyle
    • Food and Sustainability
    • PolitiFact California
  • Music
    • Music

    • Classical
    • Jazz
    • Eclectic

    • Daily Playlist
    Music
    • Music

    • Classical
    • Jazz
    • Eclectic

    • Daily Playlist
  • Podcasts & Shows
  • Schedules
  • Events
  • Support
    • Support
    • Ways to support
    • Evergreen Donation
    • One-Time Donation
    • Corporate Sponsorship
    • Vehicle Donation
    • Stock Giving
    • Legacy Giving
    • Endowment Support
    • Members
    • Member Benefits
    • Member FAQ
    • Member Newsletter

    • Fund drives
    • Drawing Winners
    • Thank You Gifts
    Support
    • Support
    • Ways to support
    • Evergreen Donation
    • One-Time Donation
    • Corporate Sponsorship
    • Vehicle Donation
    • Stock Giving
    • Legacy Giving
    • Endowment Support
    • Members
    • Member Benefits
    • Member FAQ
    • Member Newsletter

    • Fund drives
    • Drawing Winners
    • Thank You Gifts
  • About
  • Close Menu

The Mod Eclectic blog

A running review of local artists, modern pop music and culture from Capital Public Radio.

subscribe

 We Get Support From:
Become a Supporter 
 We Get Support From:
Become a Supporter 

How Composer Daniel Hart Brought 'A Ghost Story' To Life

By Robin Hilton | NPR
Thursday, October 19, 2017

Listen
/
Update RequiredTo play audio, update browser or Flash plugin.

A ghost stands in the ruins of a demolished building in a scene from the film A Ghost Story.

Bret Curry / A24

The best film scores walk a delicate line: They help propel the story, guide an audience's emotions and are also often a distinct character, with a role and voice as important as any actor's — but they also have to do all that without getting in the way, or drawing too much attention.

For the deeply existential film A Ghost Story, from director David Lowery, composer Daniel Hart faced an additional hurdle: Much of the 90-minute movie unfolds without any dialogue and very little action, leaving large gaps of silence for him to fill and sustain the story.

A Ghost Story, roughly, is about a couple living in a house in the remote countryside that may be haunted, and the myriad stories that unfold there as other people come and go. But more than that, it's about the vast enormity of time with questions about reincarnation, time travel, life after death and parallel universes. The film also features a scene-stealing cameo by Bonnie "Prince" Billy and another brief appearance by Kesha.

The music Hart came up with is a breathtaking score as mysterious as the film's myriad meditations on life's most cosmic questions.

For this +1 edition of All Songs Considered, Daniel Hart talks about how he gave A Ghost Story it's most important voice and reveals some of the tricks he used to pull it off. You can hear the full interview, with music from the score, with the play button at the top of the page or read edited highlights below.


Daniel Hart on writing "I Get Overwhelmed," the pop song that inspired the entire score for A Ghost Story

"I wrote it at the beginning of 2015. I was spending so much time online, just into the night, like hours and hours, sometimes actually working but then sometimes just reading and poking around. And I just got to a place where I felt like the point of diminishing returns had definitely set in. And I was just totally preoccupied with everything that I was thinking about. I just had all these questions that started coming up into my head like, 'What what am I doing? Why am I making the choices that I'm making? Why are all these terrible things happening around the world? And I'm spending so much time reading about them — and what good does that do?' And I couldn't really make sense of any of that. So I wrote ['I Get Overwhelmed'] about it."

On the trick he used to create the film's ethereal, ambient soundscapes

"I took ['I Get Overwhelmed'] apart and I took the different parts of it and I ran it through this program called PaulStretch. And it's specifically designed to take music and make it incredibly slower so that it sounds like atmospheric soundscapes, because it's meant to slow something down. Like if something was three minutes long you can make it three hours long, you can make it three days long. Everything becomes a sort of long, languid musical phrase. And I took the separate elements of the song, like the strings or the guitar or my own vocals, and I ran them through PaulStretch to make these long soundscapes out of the different elements of the song, then used that as one of the recurring themes throughout the score."

On where he found the Latin lyrics for the choral pieces used in the score

"One of the other things that I figured out early on in the process was that this was going to be a score that needed vocals, that needed some kind of lyrics. I don't know if it was because in my mind I was trying to fill up the space that would have been filled by dialogue, but it was one of the things that became clear to me when I started. So I started looking for texts that were related to ghosts and then drawing lyrics from those texts, then writing music to go along with them. [I] hired a couple of choral singers in Dallas to do most of that work. I don't know why [I chose] Latin. But I liked the way it sounds — and there's [also] a little bit of the Tibetan Book Of The Dead. And you know they're just part of the larger piece, so they're not upfront and center like they might be if it were a song."

Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

View this story on npr.org

Sign up for ReCap and never miss the top stories

Delivered to your inbox every Friday.

 

Check out a sample ReCap newsletter.

Thanks for subscribing!

Thank you for signing up for the ReCap newsletter! We'll send you an email each Friday with the top stories from CapRadio.

Browse all newsletters

Most Viewed

California coronavirus updates: The FDA may soon authorize another round of boosters for some individuals

State may scale down its new home loan program designed to assist first-time homebuyers

A plumber crawled under a house in Los Angeles to do a job and then went missing

California coronavirus updates: Americans' life expectancy has dropped to 76 years, second time in a row since pandemic

10 new California laws that go into effect in 2023

We Get Support From:
Become a Supporter

Back to Top

  • CapRadio

    7055 Folsom Boulevard
    Sacramento, CA 95826-2625

    •  
      (916) 278-8900
    •  
      (877) 480-5900
    •  Contact / Feedback
    •  Submit a Tip / Story Idea
  • About

    • Mission / Vision / Core Values
    • Stations & Coverage Map
    • Careers & Internships
    • Staff Directory
    • Board of Directors
    • Press
  • Listening Options

    • Mobile Apps
    • Smart Speakers
    • Podcasts & Shows
    • On-Air Schedules
    • Daily Playlist
    • Signal Status
  • Connect

    •  Facebook
    •  Twitter
    •  Instagram
    •  YouTube
  • Donate

  • Listen Live

  • Newsletters

CapRadio stations are licensed to California State University, Sacramento. © 2023, Capital Public Radio. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy | Website Feedback FCC Public Files: KXJZ KKTO KUOP KQNC KXPR KXSR KXJS. For assistance accessing our public files, please call 916-278-8900 or email us.