Composer Will Bates on the Music of Hulu’s ‘The Path’ [Exclusive Interview]

Will Bates has always had an interest in the relationship between music and screen.

Currently, Bates is the composer for Hulu’s new original series, The Path, starring Aaron Paul, Michelle Monaghan, and Hugh Dancy.

I had the chance to speak with Bates about creating the powerful music we hear on The Path, as well as his work on Syfy’s The Magicians.

When Bates read the script for The Path, he knew right way that he wanted to be a part of it. “I was introduced to the project by Mike Cahill, who directed the pilot and the second episode. He and I had done a lot of work in the past. I scored a lot of his movies. And he introduced me to the show and to Jessica [Goldberg] and Jason [Katims],” Bates said.

“I read the script and I just loved it so much, and I just knew that Mike was going to do such an amazing job on it. He let me know who the cast was going to be, and it sounded so exciting. Really, the script just kind of jumped out at me.”

One of the things Bates said he really enjoys about working on the show is the creative freedom. “Really they kind of let me run with it, which gave me a lot of freedom to experiment.”

Bates also explained that capturing the emotion on The Path through music meant a blend a various styles.

“My first conversations with the producers were really about this idea that there would be quite an experimental, electronic element to the score, and then a very human, very real organic quality as well. So it’s almost like blending electronica with more traditional instrumentation. The traditional instruments are very raw in the same way that the characters emotions are very exposed, it seems like. And there’s a lot of visceral, raw emotion. So to me, that kind of translates into instruments that were played very almost aggressively.”

“It was a really fun adventure to embark on, and like I said, they really just let me kind of go for it,” Bates continued.

“The music has a very interesting role in the show. There’s a lot of subtext in the script, and there’s a lot going on, and the performances are so strong, I feel like it can just kind of exist in another realm.”

One of the things that made this particular experience unique for Bates was that he began scoring the show very early on. “I started scoring the pilot while Mike was shooting it,” he said.

In fact, Bates wrote the score for the opening scene of the pilot just before it was shot.

“I remember the day that Mike was shooting that scene. He was like, ‘I’ve got this idea. What if we do this big swell when she rises to the top of that hill? I’ve got this idea visually what I’m going to do.’ I quickly wrote something the night before he was going to shoot it, and he was listening to it on his headphones while he was shooting, which is kind of rad.”

Though it was a tough choice, Bates said his favorite episode to score so far was “Breaking and Entering” (Season 1 Episode 6).

“It really delves into the father / son relationship, and it’s very emotional. Aaron is just so amazing in this particular episode – he’s always amazing – but this one episode where his relationship with Hawk is really kind of uncovered, and there’s a lot of interesting score that I had to do for that.”

In addition to scoring The Path, Bates also scored the new Syfy series, The Magicians. “That was also an amazing project and really fun for me,” Bates said.

“There’s basically three worlds in The Magicians. There’s the real world — like New York City, then there’s Brakebilles, which is where they go to college – which is this magical university, and then there’s Fillory, which is this Narnia-esque kind of other dimension. And each of those three worlds has a very specific palate, so that was really fun.”

Bates also described what it was like working on both series at the same time, which he said was like switching back and forth between left brain and right brain.

Scoring music is something Bates said that he’s always wanted to do, and that television has become a natural transition from film. “I’ve always wanted to score movies ever since I was a kid. I think I sang the whole of Star Wars to my parents when I was five or six years old,” Bates laughed. “Then my dad went out and bought me a violin, which I then tortured them with for ten years.”

After that, Bates started playing the saxophone, and later discovered techno. From there, he found an interest in all sorts of genres.

Those interests, and obsession with scores, made becoming a composer for film and television an obvious choice for Bates.

“That’s just something I’ve always been drawn to — the relationship of sound to picture. And I think because of my crazy background of all these different genres, and the diversity of it, it made it very easy for me to jump into the world of score writing.”

The Path is currently available for streaming on Hulu, with a new episode airing each Wednesday.