Composer Gabriel Mann on the Music of ‘Rectify’ and ‘Modern Family’ [Exclusive Interview]

Though music was always important to Gabriel Mann, becoming a composer wasn’t necessarily something he’d planned on.

Mann has composed music for several recent shows, including Rosewood, School of Rock, Modern Family, and Rectify, among others. He’s also known for writing the distinctive theme song for Modern Family.

I recently had the chance to speak with Mann about how he began his career, as well as his incredible work on Rectify and Modern Family.

“I wanted to be a doctor. And I was studying music composition, and I was pre-med at the University of Pennsylvania,” Mann said. “I had no real plans to be involved in music. I liked music a lot, and it was definitely a big part of my life, but I figured I would be a doctor because I didn’t really know that you could have a living in music. So right around like junior year, I basically started to do a little research about it because things weren’t going so well in pre-med.”

After doing some research, Mann applied to a film scoring program at USC. “Suddenly, I was in Los Angeles writing music in this program, and that was it.”

But before getting into television, Mann had another idea in mind. “I decided it would be better to be a rock star. So I did that for a while. I made five solo albums, and I interviewed and produced other artists. I did that for a long time.”

It was after returning from a tour that Mann was approached to help write a song for a TV show. “I was like, sure that sounds like a good way to actually earn some money. And so we did that, and we wrote the song for Arrested Development,” Mann said. “That was super fun. I had the best time, and we did that for like three years.”

“I really, at that point, considered myself like a song guy and not a score guy,” Mann continued. “Then I gradually got into more and more television, and started doing more scores, and at some point got my own show. And once I had my own show, which was Modern Family — that show was like a big hit. So what could I do? I had to keep doing it! And so I got some more shows, and here I am.”

Mann also shared how often he focuses on music. “I definitely hear the music on TV more than other people hear it,” he said. “When I hear music I’m considering that music. It comes to the forefront of my mind. And it’s also why, when I was in college, I was incapable of studying with music on, because the music would always come to the forefront of my mind,” Mann explained.

“Fortunately when you’re a music major, the music is your study. So when I was studying anything for that, it made a lot more sense to me. But when I was studying like, biology, and my roommate had Pearl Jam on, I just couldn’t think about what I was supposed to be studying.”

“I’m listening to music all the time,” Mann continued. “It’s also why when I drive, I don’t listen to music. I just can’t. I CAN, but then that’s all I’m doing, and I’m not really driving,” he laughed.

Mann said that the music he composes for Rectify is there to “support the story and to sometimes offer subtext to the story. There are often scenes in this show more than any other show that I’ve ever worked on where people aren’t talking. They’re just considering. They’re thinking about what has just happened, or what might be about to happen.”

“It’s just sort of helping you understand how that person feels,” he continued. “Or there are times when the music is under action.”

The decisions on what that music will actually sound like come from conversations between Mann and Rectify’s showrunner, Ray McKinnon. “[McKinnon] talks in terms of emotion, and story, and stuff like that. And then it’s up to me to sort of figure out what that means musically,” Mann said.

“Sometimes he’ll have a key word that like, I know this should be a cello. But there are other things that get harder as it goes along, because we don’t want to repeat ourselves,” he explained. “I know that as we get into this last season, it’s gonna be even more difficult.”

Mann’s work on Rectify is obviously very different from what he does on Modern Family.

“There’s a lot of music in Rectify. And it’s usually right up front, in the forefront of what you are seeing or hearing. Whereas in Modern Family there’s barely any music, and when it’s there it’s usually under dialogue of some sort,” Mann said.

“In some ways, it uses music in a very traditional way, and in some ways it’s sort of revolutionary in the fact that it has built-in music. It has a theme up front, which I call a big ‘ba dum bump.’ It’s like we have our opening joke, and then the “ba dum bump,” which is the theme, and then we get into the show,” he explained.

“It’s sort of a very classic way of opening a TV show,” Mann continued. “Then there’s practically no music. We don’t do little transitions; we don’t score scenes traditionally. We just usually provide something at the end of the episodes that are more heartwarming, and I’ll do something at the end of those. And then the other part of the job is that I do a ton of source music for that show. So any time there’s any music playing on any device, or somebody sings a song, or there’s like a cello player or a band, or there’s like a wedding — any of that stuff — I also do that.”

“Then there are other times on Modern Family where I do things I don’t do on other shows,” Mann said. “I’ll go to the set and work with the actors if there’s some musical thing that has to happen. Like Jesse [Tyler Ferguson] has to sing ‘Express Yourself’ in one episode, or like Eric [Stonestreet] sometimes has to play piano.”

For Rectify, on the other hand, his focus is on the score. “It’s such a heavy burden to write the score in the first place, there’s somebody else’s whole job it is to do those kinds of things.”

Mann stays so busy that it’s hard for him to stay caught up on his favorite shows, but he did share a few that he loves to watch. “I really like Game of Thrones, but I’m five seasons behind,” he said. “I watched all of Downton Abby. I love that show. I loved every second of it. That’s my style.”

He also named Veep as a favorite, and said he really enjoys watching Rectify. “That show is my kind of show. It’s the kind of show I like to sit down and watch. So the fact that I get to work on it is like an extra bonus.”

Rectify returns this fall to SundanceTV, and Modern Family returns this fall to ABC.