Composer Mac Quayle on the Music of ‘Mr. Robot’ and ‘The People v. O.J. Simpson’ [Exclusive Interview]

Composer Mac Quayle has been involved with music since he was a child, so the news of a second Emmy nomination, this time for his work on USA’s Mr. Robot, was especially exciting.

Quayle’s first Emmy nomination was for American Horror Story: Freak Show, and he’s also done some pretty amazing work on such shows as Scream Queens and The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.

I recently had the chance to chat with Quayle about his work on Mr. Robot, The People v. O.J. Simpson, and how he got his start as a TV composer.

Quayle said the news of his second Emmy nomination was “very exciting.”

“It all just seems like a bit of dream at this point, because my music is being recognized,” Quayle said.

Initially, Quayle was interested in working on Mr. Robot for a few reasons. “They sent me the pilot and I thought it was really great. And I went and met Sam [Esmail], and he was great. And then our initial conversation was that the sound of the show should be pretty much completely electronic, and that excited me. So all of it together, I was ready to sign up,” he recalled.

“For television, it stands out,” he continued. “It looks different; it looks more like a film in the way that it’s shot.”

Quayle also commented on Mr. Robot’s unique themes as part of the reason he thinks viewers are drawn to the series.

“It deals with some topics that aren’t particularly common on television, in shows at least. You know, it’s like an anti-capitalism, anti-government, sort of like Occupy Wall Street-themed television show, which I don’t think we’ve had before,” Quayle stated.

On top of that, the music of Mr. Robot is also not that common. “A lot of shows are made using electronic instruments [but] they don’t necessarily have a totally electronic sound. There are some, but most TV shows don’t get in for the like, super synthesized sound. And I think that’s also helped the show stand out a bit.”

The process for creating the score for Mr. Robot begins with a conversation. “It’s a collaboration with the creators of the show. In this case, it’s Sam Esmail. The editors get involved in it as well, and there’s an initial conversation about ideas of what would be the right mood for a particular scene and where the music would start and stop. And then based on that, I will write my first draft.”

In addition to Mr. Robot, Quayle has worked on several other shows, including The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.

“It was one of the three shows that I worked on for Ryan Murphy — American Horror Story and Scream Queens being the other two,” Quayle explained.

“In American Horror Story and Scream Queens, music has a pretty big role. It’s bold. It really pushes the story here and there. And when we initially started working on The People v. O.J. Simpson, we were kind of following the same idea and having the music really push the story, and we got a little ways into it and realized that this was such a different type of work and that it didn’t need that. It did not need the big, bold music. It needed something more subtle. Something to just sort of support the incredible performances by the cast, and the story, and the script.”

As for how he got his start in music in the first place, it all began with the church choir.

“I’ve been doing music like since I was six years old in some form or another. I was put into the church choir at six, and [that began] sort of a long and winding road through many different musical avenues,” Quayle said.

“Scoring has been an idea of something that I would like to do for a long time, but I worked initially in New York in the music business as a record producer, dance re-mixer musician, and I never really tried my hand at scoring. And when the music industry started to show signs of decline in the early 2000s, I decided to leave New York and move to Los Angeles, and at that point started to look around at some other opportunities,” he continued.

“My first real job was working as an additional composer on the TV show Cold Case, and my scoring journey began then.”

When he’s not working, Quayle has a few favorite shows he enjoys watching, including Game of Thrones, Homeland, and The Americans. And he does his best to lose himself in the shows he watches and not think about the score, though sometimes, he can’t help himself.

“My brain is able to watch a show, or a film, or whatever, and depending on how well done it is, how engrossing, how much I’m pulled into the story, I can ignore the score. There’s a saying that I heard years ago, which is, ‘When a composer is really doing their job well, most people don’t even notice that we’re there,'” Quayle laughed.

“My wife is a cinematographer, so she of course is always paying attention to how everything is shot, and until we got together she wasn’t really paying attention to the music,” he continued. “Now she’s listening a little more. And you know, I listen too. It’s hard for me to totally shut that part of my brain off.”

Mr. Robot airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on USA.