‘Murderbot’ Composer Amanda Jones Tailored Her Score to Alexander Skarsgård’s Performance

“Murderbot,” the Apple TV series based on Martha Wells’ sci-fi novels, features a distinctive, synth-heavy score from composer Amanda Jones. For the composer, the series offered an opportunity to give her work a distinctly retro spin.

“It was a long incubation period of playing with synthy, electronic ideas, or like ’70s retro ideas,” Jones said during IndieWire’s Craft Roundtables. “It was really playful and a lot of fun.”

Jones was joined by a variety of different composers from some of the biggest shows of the past year at the composer roundtable. Also present were “Alien Earth” composer Jeff Russo, “The Madison” composer Brenton Vivian, “Spider-Noir” composer Kris Bowers & Michael Dean Parsons, “Monster: The Ed Gein Story” composer Mac Quayle, and “The Boroughs” composer John Paesano to discuss their shows and how they created scores that matched the material onscreen.

Jones explained that Alexander Skarsgaard’s central performance as the titular murderbot helped her during the composing process to shape what would become the final score. As she worked on the show, she modulated her sound to match his quirky, offbeat performance.

“Skarsgård’s performance was extraordinary and you want to leave space for powerful performance,” Jones said. “So, playing with a lot of singular ideas. Pitches, weird frequencies, and silence. Just giving him that space to be awkward and strange.”

Jones also explained that, since she composed most of her music as the show was filming, its editors eventually began cutting and editing the series to her music. This includes the show’s CG intro sequence, which was animated to her score, rather than having her score it to the animation.

“The main title was animated to what I had written, which was pretty cool,” Jones said.