Composer Aaron Zigman’s big break stemmed from the on-screen love between Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams in Nicholas Sparks’ The Notebook. While their chemistry was moving movie-goers to tears, Zigman’s score was pulling at the audience’s heartstrings. Ten years after scoring The Notebook, Zigman was approached to provide a musical landscape to Sparks’ latest film, The Best of Me.
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GRAMMY.com caught up with Zigman at the film’s premiere to discuss what it’s like to work on a Nicholas Sparks film and how his approach to scoring The Best of Me differed from his approach to scoring The Notebook.
The Notebook was one of the first big films that you scored. What was that process like?
The Notebook was the first Nicholas [Sparks] movie that I did, which was his tour de force. I had scored three films before that but The Notebook was what broke me. I was on that film for 6 months.
Tell us about scoring your second Sparks film, The Best of Me.
Difficult, inspirational, very Americana. It was fun because I was writing on set for somebody where there was a love interest so I got to think about my own personal life as I was doing it. I got to relate it. Everything I wrote I was able to relate to something personal.
There was a lot of country music in the film’s soundtrack. How did you tie that in with the score?
[There is] a lot of country [music] in the soundtrack and I kind of joined that with some of the score. And then in some of the scenes, a little Copland-esque. I was just trying to be supportive of the characters without stepping on some of the toes. Leaving some room for the dialogue.
Tell me about the sessions in the studio. What instruments did you record with?
I used an untraditional combo as a simile for bluegrass – two violins, one cello, a percussionist and a piano playing the melody. The piano was inspired by kind of an Elton John-ish type of feel. That is what separated my score from the traditional blue grass concept which is usually guitars, mandolins, bass, and percussion. The piano is that distinction.
How much of the film did you see before you began work on the score?
I saw the entire film before I began. I was on set when it was shooting. So I met the director, Michael Hoffman, early on and I love his work.
What were the main differences in scoring the two Nicholas Sparks films, The Best Of Me versus The Notebook?
It was night and day, a 180. The difference is the time period. The Notebook was periodesque. It has a very turn of the century romantic element to it. And then I kind of modernized it by fusing jazz colors underneath to give it a little bit of dirt. If you tried to write a modern emotional score to The Notebook, that would have just sacked it out and made it horrific, too cheesy. You’ll hear an old saxophone or an old trumpet that somehow comes out of the cue. I tried to use really interesting palates of colors for The Notebook. And Nick was very adamant about five major themes, a lot of character development. In The Best Of Me ... there was a lot of that [as well].
In The Best Of Me, the challenge was we’re flashing back but we’re flashing back from 2014 to 1985/1984. So it’s a flashback maybe in pop music but not in film music. That was the challenge, to come up with something that Michael was happy with. This was my first time with Michael and I love some of the films that he’s done — The Emperor’s Club, I love that. And One Fine Day I think is one of the best dialogues.
Did you go back and brush up on your ‘80s music to get into that mind frame when creating this score?
Well, I’ve got a pretty good pedigree in pop music. I actually produced one of the pop tunes in the movie, the second end title. It’s called “Crossroads.” I had the most fun writing the straighter Americana stuff and the bluegrass-ish stuff. Michael made a reference early on to Appalachia Waltz, which is a record with Yo-Yo Ma but it’s kind of an organized bluegrass movement. Bluegrass is very improvised. So what I did was write a real kind of theme, with this type of bluegrass-ish feel, that happens five, six, seven times in the movie. It’s basically James Marsden’s character’s theme. It’s older Dawson and younger Dawson. And I came up with a little piano riff. I was kind of thinking about Elton John a little bit in that. So I was fusing a mountainish quality with bluegrass. It was pretty interesting because you don’t hear piano with bluegrass. You don’t sit out in the grass in Kentucky or wherever you are and there isn’t a big grand piano. But there’s a lot of piano in this movie.
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