Carter Burwell, who has composed scores for Joel and Ethan Coen since 1984's Blood Simple, took the least traveled and most nontraditional path into film scoring. His journey started at Harvard, where he earned a degree in fine arts, and then moved across town, and disciplines, to MIT, to learn how computers could aid in reducing the tremendous workload involved in animation and graphics, his consuming interest at the time. Continuing his studies at the New York Institute of Technology, he discovered how computers could manipulate sound and music. Though he'd been improvising on piano since high school, music was still "just for fun."

In New York, while Burwell was playing in a band (The Same), he befriended Brian Eno, who introduced him to the music of David Hykes and The Harmonic Choir, whose unique polyphonic vocalization, like Tibetan sacred music, makes use of overtones. Having learned the concept behind overtone singing while studying signal processing, Burwell was able quickly to grasp the technique. After taking a workshop with Hykes, he found himself going on tour with the choir.

"Contemporary music performance opened my concept of what a composition was, and it made it a lot simpler when Joel and Ethan asked me to do Blood Simple," Burwell explained. "They auditioned quite a few composers and were being encouraged not to hire someone who was ignorant of the process, which was a good definition of me. But in the end, they liked the original sketches I'd done on synthesizer and piano and ended up using them in the movie."

Rather than betraying any hint of technology, most of Burwell's scores feature strong melodies with folk (Miller's Crossing) or country and western roots (Raising Arizona). "Despite all the advances in the way computers generate and analyze music, melody defies analysis and remains mysterious. The country flavor to some of my scores is Ethan's taste--I guess there must be some outlet for that in Minnesota. The Irish folk themes I used in Miller's Crossing were created to give a very dark film a little light, and reflect the inner life of Gabriel Byrne's character. The variety of subjects in Joel and Ethan's films allows me to write different types of compositions, so a number of things come my way. I did Blood Simple and Tony Perkins called me for Psycho IlL I did Raising Arizona and Joel warned me I'd get farm comedies. I got Doc Hollywood."

Carter Burwell puts much of his soul into scoring for the theater. Composing for Mabou Mines theater company, he joins other collaborators such as Philip Glass, Bob Telson, John Zorn, and Pauline Oliveros in what The New York Times has ranked "among the most influential experimental ensembles of our time."

"The Coen brothers include me early on in the film process, which is not standard," Burwell went on to say. "People borrow $100 million and look to get it back as soon as possible. Everybody is under the gun to work quickly. One of the things I love about theater is that it's more interactive, because the actors hear your score as they act in front of an audience. The preproduction process is much longer because in theater the money comes in dribs and drabs, so you have the luxury of time and you feel part of something rather than an appendage."

Hear Carter talk about melody