“SurrealEstate” Exclusive: Spencer Creaghan Talks Landing Series Composer Gig, Soundtrack’s Release, & Breaks Down His Favorite Pieces
Near the end of episode 2 on SYFY’s SurrealEstate, Luke Roman (Tim Rozon) turns down an invitation from his agency’s newest recruit Susan Ireland (Sarah Levy) to have dinner with her and her mom. “Keep your family time; it’s important,” he tells her. “I never realized how important until my dad died. Now I know.” And prior to the series premiere, Rozon revealed that his character is able to communicate with the dead.
So at the very end when Luke is playing miniature golf, try to picture that scene without music. Luke prepares his swing, and seemingly out of nowhere, another golf ball rolls into him. Without music, we’d just find that random golf ball an odd occurrence. However, with music, the slight and soft sound of the piano keys right when the golf ball hits Luke’s shoes had us immediately in tears — and we instantly knew Luke was joined by his late father. That’s the power of music. We not only loved the music in that emotional scene but throughout that entire episode, we noticed how much we were loving the score.
“Spencer Creaghan is one of the cornerstones of our show,” SurrealEstate creator and showrunner George R. Olson tells us about the paranormal series’ composer. “He worked so hard to understand our elusive tone — it’s so tough to musically transition from horror to humor to sorrow and longing. Spencer does it so gracefully that it looks easy. He is such a great storyteller. He writes these lovely melodies and makes us all sound so good. I feel very fortunate to catch this amazing talent on his way up.”
In an exclusive interview with PopWire, composer Spencer Creaghan discusses what it’s like working on the SYFY spooktacular, the amazing praise he’s been receiving about his music, and also about the highly-requested series soundtrack.
Prior to boarding the SYFY series, the award-winning composer had worked with the team from Blue Ice Pictures (Samantha Levine & Armand Leo) on a holiday horror film. When learning that Blue Ice was behind SurrealEstate, Creaghan’s agent messaged the team and found out they were considering him to score the show.
“The music supervisor spoke with me about what they were thinking about doing with the music, and I wrote them a piece of music that I thought fit, and it turned out to be the main title of the show,” Spencer tells us. “They liked what I gave them and I had a great meeting with George and [Executive Producer Danishka Esterhazy] and the rest was history. It’s really what we wanted to do thematically and musically and we kind of were on the same page on a lot of where we wanted to take the direction of the music. Thankfully, it only got better and richer from there.”
Composing music for the show is Creaghan’s first major gig working for a cable network series and says that it’s been a “pretty incredible experience” from beginning to end. “Excuse the pun, but it’s pretty surreal,” he says. “Everyone has been really welcoming and kind and incredible to work with. I remember coming in and everyone told me that TV gets easier as you go, but the first few episodes can be tough. They weren’t wrong, but also I just found everyone in the production was incredibly patient and wonderful and kind that we all just had a great working experience. When you’re working every day of the week and long hours most days, it’s nice to know that the team is supporting you because it makes the journey just better.”
Support for Spencer extended beyond the end of production on the series and into the airing of the season of the show on SYFY. Not only have fans been praising their love for his music on social media, but the cast and creators of the show have shown their love for it as well. He says the outpouring of love for the music from everyone has been quite humbling. “Every week I watch most episodes with my partner and every week I’m sitting here being like I can’t believe that this is happening, but also can’t believe how welcoming it’s been to just be welcomed by everybody.
“It’s been really nice to have them welcome me in and say nice things about the music,” he continues. “[We get the cast and fans] praising everybody, and to get the same comments back is just really nice. I don’t know what else to say besides it’s been really humbling and I’m very grateful to be working with everybody and that they’re recognizing and liking my music. It’s nice to be part of that family.”
When watching the series weekly, Spencer says that for almost every episode, he’s thinking about what he could’ve done better in the scenes when it comes to his music. However, he says he tries to push that thinking aside and enjoy the show for what it is. “I’m pretty proud with the vast majority of the score, but you always watch them back thinking I could’ve done this better,” he shares. “I think that every artist to the end of time will look back at their work and think I could’ve done this better. So it’s great that people are watching it and saying the music’s amazing. I guess I did a good job with this one.”
Before pitching his music and landing the job as composer for the show, Spencer was able to read the scripts for the first few episodes. One of those episodes was “For Sale By Owner,” written by Ramona Barckert, directed by Danishka Esterhazy, and guest starring Melanie Scrofano as Harper North. Harper’s music box played a very big role in that episode, whose melody, when played backwards, freed Harper’s grandmother Samantha, which ultimately freed Harper from being stuck at their family cabin.
“There’s a moment where Granny Sam is humming back a melody from the music box, and that was the melody that came to my head when I was reading [that script],” Creaghan explains. “I kept thinking, ‘Aw, man. I hope I get this show because I’m already thinking of more music besides just the main title.’ I remember in the meeting with George and Danishka, I mentioned, ‘So if you like this music, I also have a music box melody ready to go as well, and I’d be happy to play it for you later down the line.’ They liked that one also.
“What’s cool about that music box melody is it works frontways and backwards and that was kind of done by accident, kind of like on purpose. I was excited about that episode because we knew that melody was going to be playing a big role, so that music box melody plays in the vast majority of the score. I think that’s one of the first moments where I knew that we had a real chance of being incredibly thematic. This TV show has a lot of themes and that was one episode that I’m very happy with just how that music box melody weaves its way through the score.”
That music box melody made its way onto the official SurrealEstate soundtrack. After fans begged and pleaded online for a release for weeks, Spencer got an email the morning of August 12 from producer Samantha Levine at Blue Ice that SYFY had given their approval for a soundtrack. “I was so excited because it was months of asking SYFY and trying to see if we can do this,” he says. “SYFY was like, ‘Yes, but we’re not entirely certain yet,’ and I was like, ‘Sure, yeah. Just let me know.’ And then we got the email that people were excited about the music, and they were excited to release the soundtrack. I was like, ‘Amazing!’
“Everyone on the team seems to be proud of the music and where it’s come. It’s something I’m very excited about and I’m very pleased that SYFY is letting us do this. I’m incredibly grateful because no network is obligated to, but the fact that they want to, I’m really honored by that. I want to very much thank SYFY for allowing us to release it. The plan is to do two soundtracks — Volume 1 includes the music from episode 1 until episode 5, and then Volume 2 later down the line, which will include the music from episode 6 to episode 10.”
Of all the 32 tracks on the album, many of which are his favorites, the composer says that the one he goes back to a lot is a piece near the end of the soundtrack called “The Horseman & the Fireball” (track 29). “It’s the moment that plays when Susan does her big fireball reveal to help the sailors at the end of episode 4. I’m really proud of that piece; it’s a big action piece and it’s very loud and epic, and it includes a lot of my influences that I brought in from music that I listen to, including film music, metal, folk music, all that.
“It also includes a lot of developments on the themes which we had heard up until that point,” he adds. “It begins with an action variation of the ‘Countdown to Witching Hour‘ theme (track 4). That motif is played on exciting harp and strings and then it slowly moves into the choirs that were used for the sailors, and that turns into our action riff. It then combines with the Roman riff, and then that slowly introduces Susan’s theme. Then from Susan’s theme as she’s beginning to become a bit of a superhero, we play a large epic version of the secret powers theme, which is first introduced with Lauren back in episode 1 when she raises the doll. After all the dust clears, we get a very luscious version of Susan’s theme.”
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Creaghan shares that the fact SYFY let him do thematic continuity like this was something he was very excited about and something he had wanted to do very early on. “George, Danishka, Sam — we all wanted this Lord of the Rings, Star Wars-style thematic score, and I think ‘The Horseman and the Fireball’ is one of the best examples of why that kind of scoring can be very effective. I still think to this day, it will probably be one of my favorite pieces.”
Along with the Susan Ireland theme (track 8), which happens to be our favorite piece on the album (we’ve had it on repeat since the soundtrack’s release — and on repeat playing in the background as I write this piece), we’re also enjoying the full version of the SurrealEstate theme song (track 1). “That was written based on a couple of the scripts that I’ve read and written based on a brief that I got from the music supervisor way back last August (2020). The words that they kept on using were, ‘We want it to be exciting, suspenseful, ancient, fun, and like a team.’
“I wanted to include a couple of other little extra elements besides just orchestra and the band, and I thought about door knocking, creaking doors, and doorbells,” Creaghan explains. “Like what if the piece was almost like something is trying to get in and what if that something could be whatever the imagination made it out to be? It could be a monster, it could be a ghost, it could be a person in the house trying to escape, or maybe Luke Roman trying to get in and save the day. It could be a lot of different types of things, and so to help make that more aware, I decided to add in door knocking and door creaking, and also a doorbell.
“Each of those [DOM DOM’s] was supposed to be almost like a knocking like somebody’s trying to enter into the house. We really wanted the music to have a lot of those elements to make it feel like it could be ancient and monstrous, but also what would the music sound of a realtor be like? So we included strings, guitars, bass, drums, vocals, and theremin and a couple of older medieval instruments, and all of them came together to create that sound that we all like, and a lot of those elements found their way into the score and thankfully George really loved it, and we ended up making it the main title.”
At a runtime of less than two minutes, Creaghan says that the full version of the theme song feels a lot longer than it actually is, and is one of those pieces that pulls you right in. The full theme is so good, he reveals that they were actually going to use it in the official trailer for the series. “We did make a version [of the trailer with the full theme], and all of us loved it, but it didn’t make it past whatever one of the levels was, so it wasn’t picked in the end,” he says. “We are hoping that one day [if we get a season renewal] we’ll be able to include it into either the show or the trailer, or something. We all do really love it. Even the smaller version, though, I think gets people excited. Almost every week I get somebody commenting that the main title theme gets them pumped.”
If you haven’t yet streamed or purchased Volume 1 yet, what are you waiting for? Spencer Creaghan says that all of the pieces that everyone’s been talking about so far (from the first half of the season) is included in the soundtrack. “The rap piece, the batting cage music, the music with Luke and his father, the piece of music with Luke and his mother, all the action pieces, especially the one at the end of episode 2 where Luke is heading to go fight the LRG, that piece I’ve been hearing lots of good comments about, all the fun Latin music, all of that made its way onto the soundtrack and we’re very excited by all of that. If you have a favorite piece from the season, I think you’ll find it on there.”
SurrealEstate: Volume 1 (Original SYFY Series Soundtrack) by Spencer Creaghan is now available on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and all other major music platforms.
SurrealEstate airs Fridays at 10pm on SYFY.