You really wanted to fill the locations with more sound, obviously a sense of adventure. How did you want to go bigger with the score this time?

Well, the first most practical way is that it’s a larger orchestra than I’ve ever used before. You can hear that. That shows up in the sound. It’s worth spending that money and writing in that size. Also, we spent a lot of time making sure the score could … allow the sound design to come through.

There’s a lot of space. There’s a lot of silence in the score because [in] that vast wide open valley, it’s important to hear the sound that OJ’s hearing when he first understands that there may be something out there. Besides the really large orchestra, especially at the end when it really becomes an adventure, before that, there’s a lot of space where you’re allowed to hear the world that he’s in. I think that creates the vastness of the film as well.

Pop and R & B is very important to Jordan Peele’s movies. In this case, does any of the soundtrack influence how you follow or lead up to using them?

I know some of them. Part of the journey of music supervision is to try different songs in the film and see what’s landing. With each one of those, there’s a business negotiation that happens behind the scenes. I’m very much out of all that and not sad about it. Some songs work from day one. I think the Exuma song, which really has a vibe to it, I think that had been in from day one, at least that’s my memory.

Then other songs evolve as the film evolves. Sometimes there are scenes that have a song that then the whole scene goes away, and then that’s out. I’m always listening to what the new songs are and I’m influenced by what I hear Jordan’s choices are going to be. He has great taste in the choices he makes I must say.

He also has such a strong pace and rhythm for suspense. How’d you want to help create that sense of dread he was going for in “Nope?”

Well, we talk a lot about how much foreshadowing we’re doing, not only in the film as a whole, but also in each individual scene. He spends a lot of time building that in a scene. He tries it with music as part of a way to build the terror, but also he’s unafraid to do it completely dry. Or, to have me write a lot of music, but then scale back to just the most minimal elements of the music.

You see that in the sequence where the Park kids come and they prank Haywood because of Emerald heading off with their fake horse. The kids come to get back at them. That scene, there were versions in which there was a lot of music, but ultimately, once Jordan got the pacing of it just right, he really scaled back the music.

The first time I saw it with an audience was earlier this week and noticing how people jumped during that and how uneasy the audience was, I could tell that he got it just right. It’s fun and exciting for me, even when some of the music gets omitted, to see him finally work on where the perfect scare is in each section … of the film that’s terrifying.

Obviously, this is a sci-fi film, while the previous collaborations were horror. Musically, how does the rhythm of suspense between those two genres compare?

Well, yes, it’s a sci-fi film except that I don’t think of it as a sci-fi film. I don’t know if Jordan thinks of it as a sci-fi film. It’s absolutely got elements of that, and yes, it is. The way to score it is to think … what is the character’s experience of this? Then you compare that to what a traditional sci-fi film is, let’s say. What this film is really about is, it’s about the spectacle or what they think is in the sky and what that means. It’s a movie about how you would react in the 21st century if that happened. The characters know that it’s dangerous and they shouldn’t go there, but they’re fascinated and they can’t help it.

That’s the way in which it’s a Western. Jordan notices, I think, all of these similarities in these different genres and because he notices them in ways the rest of us wouldn’t, he’s able to write a story that somehow points that out and makes all these things relevant. He doesn’t say, “Okay, I’m making a sci-fi film.” He’s saying, “I’m making a film where we see how all these things fit together. My job is to make sure I tell the story from each of those perspectives.”

In the score, you have some adventure, there [are] some cues at the end that are out and out action-adventure music. But [there are] also the cues that are about horror and terror and suspense. There’s … cues that are really about the relationship between OJ and Emerald, who are brother and sister, and they’re very different people, but they’re bonding over this shared desire to show the world what it is they’re seeing. Rather than saying, “Okay, now I’m writing a sci-fi score,” I’m like, “Oh, I have all these different parts of this story that need to be told. How do I write cues that make us feel what the characters are feeling in those moments, and yet have it all come together as one”?