MIKE JOZIC: I suppose by now that the process is really familiar to you as well.

McCREARY: Well, that helps.

JOZIC: You see certain scenes and you go, "Oh, this needs this…"

McCREARY: Yup, but you know, I didn't realize what a challenge it would be, as far as the changes in tone. I know that the Gaelic piece in 10 stands out, and I don't know about the fans, but for me that wasn't the first time I had departed seriously from the tone of the show. In episode 9 they had temped it with an Italian opera. I thought it was like April Fools on the Composer day. I was like, "that's a good one guys, what do you actually want me to write here?" They looked at me and said, "Well, we just think this is kind of funny," and I'm like, "OK".

JOZIC: That was "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down"?

McCREARY: Yeah. It was after the main title when Baltar is sitting in his laboratory contemplating suicide. It's a really funny scene and the Italian opera makes it really funny, but that was an original opera aria that I wrote. I wrote the lyrics, we had an opera singer come in and sing in Italian [and] the whole deal. That was a really surreal experience. I mean, nothing…nothing like the tone of the show. There was a couple of other pieces like the one in episode 4 and especially in episode 11 and later on where there is some big band music and even some elevator music that's played in the bathroom. Almost every episode had something in it where I had to kind of stretch and go, "OK, how am I going to do this?"

JOZIC: This is probably something to do with how my brain is hardwired, but even though those other pieces were departures from the regular tone of the show, I pretty much just accepted them and didn't think twice about it, but the Gaelic piece still just stands out so strongly for me as being 'different'.

McCREARY: It was used in more of a pivotal way whereas the muzak in the bathroom is literally background music.

JOZIC: I guess. It was also very thematic.

McCREARY: The Gaelic piece?

JOZIC: Yeah, because, other than the Number Six theme, I can't really think of anything that just has that thematic quality.

McCREARY: Oh, it's true, but if you listen carefully I've actually slipped several themes in there. I would say there's about ten or fifteen but I have to keep them so low profile to not come across as thematic writing. Certainly nothing that gets as much play as the Number Six theme, which is just as well because I think the thematic approach would be overbearing on the show.

But you score enough scenes with Boomer and Helo together and you start tying them together. You can't help it.

JOZIC: I don't mean to ride you over "Wander My Friends"…[laughs]

McCREARY: No, it's cool.

JOZIC: So, do you find it difficult scoring for characters without using themes? Or is that where you pepper in your ten or fifteen themes? [laughs]

McCREARY: That's where I put in my ten or fifteen themes.

Yes, it is difficult. Well, I should rephrase this. No, ultimately, it wouldn't be difficult but I really try to make the music as [interesting] as I possibly can and I try to put in as many little tricks as possible to help tie these characters together and help tie these scenes together. Some of them pay off, some of them don't go anywhere because when I'm scoring an episode in the beginning I have no idea if I'm going to have a place to use that theme later.

One example, I wrote a theme for Boomer and Tyrel in episode number 6 - when they are in the hold, or wherever they have their secret rendezvous - and in the end he breaks up with her? There's a love theme that I wrote for them. I thought, "Aww, this'll be cool. I can come back the next time there's a scene with them." Well, I didn't know this then, but there wouldn't be another one. So I almost got it on but it didn't go anywhere.

That said, though, in the first episode when Boomer rescues Helo, and I didn't know where they were going to go with this, I wrote this little 8 note gamelan tune and that got played in every episode. I mean, every time we go to Caprica I bring it back. That was really helpful and I made sure never to use that kind of sound when we were at the Galactica with the other Boomer. I was trying to do my best to sort of separate those two because they're obviously two different people going through two different issues.

Starbuck [also] has a theme that gets a couple of big moments.

Ultimately, thematic writing helps it just doesn't always have to be big sweeping orchestral lines or plaintive French horn passages, it can be much more subconscious, much more subliminal. And that's what I'm going for. You have a smaller palette but it's still the same bag of tricks.

JOZIC: They do that visually on the show, too. In one of the podcasts Ron Moore commented on how they wanted it raining on Caprica so that it looked drastically different from the scenes on Galactica.

McCREARY: Right.

JOZIC: With the music, are you really conscious about it when you're scoring the show?

McCREARY: Let me put it this way, I am very conscious about it [but], with that said, the differences are pretty subtle because I don't want to jar an audience. I am very careful about the sounds I pick.

If you really dig at it - and no one would ever pick up on this - every time it cuts to the establishing shot of Caprica and it says 'Cylon Occupied Caprica' across the bottom, there is one sound I use every time to take us back to Caprica. And it's the only place I ever use it - on the establishing shots. It's a subtly different sound than a lot of the other stuff. I mean, it's not like I'm doing a big gong here, but it's there and it's something that I'm very aware of and, even if no one notices it directly, I certainly like to think that it subconsciously kind of helps people go, "Oh yeah, now we're going back here." And, of course, that's the point of what that establishing shot is. It takes us off the ship and reminds people where we're going. So, when they do it I do it.

JOZIC: And do the producers notice when you do it?

McCREARY: We don't talk about it, but I don't know. If we're talking about details of the show they're usually bigger picture stuff. Also, I try not to use the word theme when I'm talking to them because, right from the get-go, as is pretty clear from the score for the mini-series that Richard and I did, they didn't want thematic writing. So, if I start saying, "Oh, here's the theme from Caprica," even though it's not a big orchestral theme, it's just the wrong word to use, you know what I mean? You don't want to go around talking about themes. And it really isn't a theme. I mean, a theme is like an 8 bar tune with an 8 bar B section - Star Wars, Superman, those are themes. These are more like motivic ideas.

A theme is more like a melodic tune, it's something that really gets stuck in your head. Like, for instance, the opening of Beethoven's Fifth - the four note thing that everyone knows. I call that a motivic idea or a motive, not a theme necessarily. It's four notes. That's all it is, you know? That's the philosophy I tried putting into Battlestar. [You take] Starbuck's little theme, or her motivic idea, and it's, like, six notes. It's not anything that gets repeated, it's a very simple little phrase that I only use with her.

So, like I said, it's pretty subliminal but it's there and I'd certainly like to think that it helps to kind of tie the show together and tie the score together.

JOZIC: It certainly does, even though it's not outwardly noticeable all the time.

McCREARY: And it shouldn't be. That's not my job. The show works so well by itself, the music should serve it.

JOZIC: What other composers or music or styles or anything influence your Battlestar scores?

McCREARY: I really don't mean to cop out on this answer but what Richard and I did on the mini-series was, obviously, a major influence. It's a direct continuation of that so you should probably ask Richard and Michael Rymer what sort of got them started. I know that Michael temped the mini-series with a lot of Peter Gabriel's "Last Temptation of Christ" and a lot of traditional taiko music.

I've listened to a lot of ethnic music form around the world. I've listened to Armenian music, Japanese music, African music and tried pulling things from that, but as far as an exact influence it's kind of hard to say because it's all been influenced after we sort of went through it in the mini-series and created the Battlestar sound. From there I've just been sort of adding to it and developing it and taking it in new directions as the show requires.

JOZIC: Is there an aspect of the Battlestar sound that is your favourite to play with?

McCREARY: The drums.

JOZIC: [laughs] I remember reading an interview, though, where you were talking about the drums driving you crazy because they kept asking for more drums.

McCREARY: Well, the drums on the mini-series were a different issue. It was a discovery process of figuring out what they wanted. Having gone through all that I feel like I've come to a really cool drum sound and the producers seem to really like it and we don't seem to have those problems anymore. Working with synth and live percussion you can create some really cool drum textures and I think it's a cool way to approach scoring.

JOZIC: Richard initially didn't like the score for the mini-series very much when it was completed. What was your reaction to it?

McCREARY: I was really happy with it. It was a tremendous amount of work amplified by the necessary experiments that had to go into it. It wasn't like we were doing a traditional orchestra score and we could just punch it out. I mean, we did massive rewrites and there was no time in the beginning. You know that 8-minute battle at the end of the mini-series, I think I scored that four different times. That part of it was frustrating but, ultimately, really rewarding and I was really happy with it.

JOZIC: That's where the 200 tracks come in, right?

McCREARY: A little bit. I think I'm doing more tracks than we did on the mini-series because on the mini-series we had other resources and less time. There was a full orchestra we had access to on the mini-series. When you have a full orchestra you don't need 200 synth parts.

JOZIC: I have to say that Battlestar has certainly developed a pretty diverse musical palette since it started out.

McCREARY: Well, that's what I love to do. I love taking on projects that let me do different things. I've scored films with a klezmer band, I've done a film where the entire band was a 1930s French jazz band, all sorts of weird things. That's what's really fun for me, getting to experiment and do all sorts of different things.

I didn't think Battlestar would be one of those gigs. It's got the set sound we did in the mini-series and I didn't think that it would give me the opportunity to do these different stylistic things but it has, so it's been kind of like icing on the cake. That's one of the things that makes my job kind of fun, is getting these kinds of challenges.

JOZIC: When a challenge like the Italian Aria comes up - when a "Hey, can you give us one of these," comes to you - do you have the background to just say, "Oh, sure, I'll be right back with that" or do you have to go and research it and dig that stuff up?

McCREARY: Most of the time…yeah. I mean, as a classically trained composer, knocking something out in the style of Mozart is, not to say easy, but I'm certainly familiar with it. I've done a lot of Rock 'n' Roll, I've done a lot of Pop, I've done Jazz, I've done all sorts of stuff. Even when I had to do that weird bossanova elevator music, I've done that before. The more weird stuff you do the more prepared you are for anything which, ultimately, is the answer to that.

But where necessary, I always do my research. I've written Celtic style music before, but I always make sure that, musically, I'm right. I want to do it right. Even with bringing in all these other ethnic influences I do a little bit of research to make sure that what I'm bringing in I'm bringing in accurately. It's obviously not exactly Japanese music because it's being combined with all these other things and it shouldn't sound, specifically, from any culture but I always try to do a certain amount of homework to insure that things are being done right.

It's also just part of the fun.

JOZIC: That's part of the fun for you?

McCREARY: Absolutely. It's because you get to do something different. In episode 9 with the background music for when they're eating dinner, they could have easily, easily found some cheap string quartet to license from somebody, but I said, "No, no, I wanna do it. It sounds like fun."

JOZIC: And it avoids the problem of running into music that might be familiar to 'Earth people'.

McCREARY: Yeah, and that's what I first said when they wanted an Italian Opera but, ultimately, everything is familiar to 'Earth people', right? Everything comes from somewhere. Completely alien music, I mean, it would just sound like a bunch of noise so you've got to draw the line somewhere.

JOZIC: Yeah, you could write in the style of Beethoven but if you're not using the 9th Symphony…

McCREARY: That was my philosophy. When I watched the temp hearing Mozart - and granted, I'm a classically trained composer - it was really distracting. They didn't care. To them, the tone of music that was set against a guy talking about killing himself was really funny - and it was - but to me, having the musical background that I have, I was kind of like, "Yeah, but this is…Western European classical music". People are familiar with it. So, to write this as similar, but still a little bit different, I think it's pretty cool and it maybe helps give the sense that these people have their own classical music, that there is an art history in their world similar to ours but not exactly the same as ours.

JOZIC: How much score do you write compared to what actually gets used on the show?

McCREARY: Pretty much everything. In fact, everything I've ever written, except for one or two cues, got used. There's not a lot of stuff that doesn't because if something doesn't get used in one episode chances are it'll get put into another one. I think, so far, there's only one piece that didn't end up anywhere but I promise you it will. [laughs]

JOZIC: A lot of shows have cues they reuse…

McCREARY: Or there'll be a library of music that they draw from if they have it.

JOZIC: Yeah, exactly.

I don't hear a lot of that going on in Galactica but I thought I would ask you anyway.

McCREARY: I keep that to an absolute minimum. That said, of course it happens a lot. Usually it's a time thing but I always make sure that the really important scenes that need original score get it and that they get the attention they need and then you don't end up having a really pivotal, powerful scene with a redundant score. At least that's certainly my effort. A lot of times, though, you just end up in a time crunch and if there's a scene that isn't coming to me I'll bring in something that got cut from another episode or that you didn't quite hear because of the sound effects. I'm pretty careful about it because I don't like that library music feel - I hear it all the time. When you're a musician you're so keyed into the music that, a lot of the time, it can tarnish your viewing experiences, but I don't like hearing music that I recognize on a really cool scene.

I've written over 5 hours of music for Battlestar Galactica, of that, 78 minutes is going to end up on a CD, that leaves a lot of music that people haven't necessarily heard a whole lot. The more music you write the cooler you can be about it.

JOZIC: The show has run for 13 episodes now. It's done, it's familiar - with both the audience and you guys - do you still get the questions about or the comparisons to the old series and the original Stu Phillips score or have you all moved past that and nobody bothers anymore?

McCREARY: Well, I'm past it, Mike. [laughs]

JOZIC: [laughs]

McCREARY: You still hear…I think that will always be the case but, ultimately, that comes down to fans wanting the old show. I really think if you put a big brass fanfare at the beginning of this show, most people would be able to look at it and go, "that doesn't fit". It's a totally different show, the tone of it is much more different and serious.

As far as the old theme, I think a lot of the fans responded positively to it being mentioned in a short piece in the mini-series but I don't think there's any plan to bring it back - and that's not just my decision. I mean, I think the producers, from the very get-go, wanted to escape that. They've worked really hard to distance themselves from certain aspects of the original show and I think the music is one of those. Not because it wasn't well composed, which it was - it was very skillfully done and was a great part of the show - but it's just a different timbre. It's the wrong tone for what we're doing now, so…

JOZIC: Well, you guys are being referred to as the greatest sci-fi show since The Twilight Zone, so I don't think you'll be living in that shadow long.

McCREARY: As far as which show is more relevant I think the contemporary audience is really reacting to this one very well. Will there always be people that are pissed off that it exists? Probably. I'm sure Star Trek: The Next Generation went through the same thing so, who knows?

That's what the DVDs are for.

JOZIC: [laughs] And reruns, yes.

McCREARY: Yeah.

JOZIC: When watching the final episode of the season, there was a reference Six made to Baltar about 'the melody of life' and it instantly made me wonder if that is going to relate to you in any way and how you might approach scoring this theme of the 'melody of life'?

McCREARY: That last scene was really an anomaly, much in the way the end of episode 10 was, but it was the chance to add this grandiose orchestral element to it. I don't think it was overbearing, it was an opportunity to genuinely write an orchestral piece and the way that scene was done it was able to hold that - it was able to keep it in check. Also, the music had to be very carefully put together to make sure it wasn't too overbearing.

JOZIC: I don't think I made that last question very clear. Essentially what I'm trying to say is that Ron Moore had expressed in one of his podcasts, I think, a desire to carry on or explore that theme and I wondered if that's maybe going to come back to you where you're going to have to create something to…

McCREARY: Ahhh…I really don't know. I really don't know what they have up their sleeves. I would imagine so, and I would certainly hope so because, on a completely musical level, that scene was a lot of fun. It certainly feels like it's going to have a lot of importance down the road, story-wise, and it is truly thematic, old-fashioned, orchestral writing, which is fun.

JOZIC: So what are you anticipating or thinking about as far as Season 2 is concerned?

McCREARY: Adapting to doing 23 episodes instead of just 13.

JOZIC: [laughs]

McCREARY: That's going to be interesting.

I'm really looking forward to it, actually. We really hit our stride by the end so I'm not worried about it. Maybe just ways to continue to develop the score and come up with some more tricks to make it sound as good as I possibly can.

I'm also just very eager to see where the story goes. That's part of the fun of working on a show that is so good that I would actually watch it even if I didn't score it. Every time I get an new episode I'm excited to see what happens next.

JOZIC: I've heard talk of the main titles changing for Season 2 to fit the overall theme of the second season. Do you know if it will be the same or different?

McCREARY: Yeah, that was always a possibility, but I honestly didn't even get the chance. They changed the MT again, before they even brought me on board. They're using an edited version of the UK Main Titles. At this point, I'm not holding my breath, because I get the impression this will keep on changing, maybe even mid-season.

JOZIC: Finally, in another interview, you were asked what the 'Additional Music by…' credit meant to your career and, at the time, you had said that you had no idea what it meant. Do you have a better idea now?

McCREARY: No, not really.

I mean, as far as my additional music credit on the mini-series and other things they are, career-wise, eclipsed by the actual credit on the show. Now, the credit itself was actually secondary to the work that I did and I think that's what got me the show, so I don't actually know.

I think it's too early to say. I'm spending so much time on the show and really trying to make sure that I do this right and make sure the music is the best that I can. I'm not really shopping around for new gigs right now.

My work with Richard made a big difference and I've also done a lot of other stuff and my philosophy is you just never know when something down the road is going to come from a gig you did yesterday. You just never know when things are going to open up. As long as you're always working and doing your best it's going to be cool.

Battlestar, I think, will be a great opportunity.