When I open the Zoom call with Emmy®-winning composer Siddhartha Khosla, the first thing I notice is a strange instrument in the background. The instrument, comprised of a set of polished aluminum bars suspended over a series of metal tubes, looks otherworldly.

“Oh that? That’s my vibraphone,” he informs me.

It’s just one of the dozens of instruments Khosla plays. If we were to explore his studio some more, we’d likely find dozens of guitars, violins, keyboards, drums, melodicas, and anything else you can imagine.

If you’ve listened to the music Khosla has written for any one of the hit shows he’s worked on – This Is Us, Only Murders in the Building, and Paradise to name a few – the fact that he is a multi-instrumentalist should come as no surprise to you. His scores range from minimal piano pieces to sweeping orchestral suites; as likely to draw influence from Hindi ballads of the 1960s as radio hits by R.E.M.

 Khosla sat with CreativeFuture to talk about his work, his career trajectory, and his creative process.

DAVIS READ: What was your early exposure to music like? Did you grow up in a creative household? 

SIDDHARTHA KHOSLA: I grew up in a household of immigrants who came to this country from India. My mom and dad were trying to make ends meet and live their version of the American Dream. So, it was all work, work, work for them. But in the process, they discovered that their son could sing. My mom would encourage me to sing at temple on Sundays – we were part of a Hindu community – and that’s where I first learned to sing. 

DR: Who were some of the artists you really connected with as you were growing up?

SK: When I was young, my parents sent me back to India to be raised by my grandparents while they were getting their footing here in the U.S. Between that, and all the music my parents brought with them from India, I grew up listening to old Bollywood songs from Indian films. They were Hindi songs from the 60s and 70s. I love those artists. SD Burman, RD Burman, these were great composers who wrote music for these films. Our pop star equivalents, the Lady Gagas and Olivia Deans of their day, were in Indian movies, and that’s how music spread in India.

As I was getting older in the States, my Western influences started kicking in. The first band that I ever loved was R.E.M. And then, of course, The Beatles, The Smiths, The Cure… those were some of my first influences. 

DR: At what point did music become something that you wanted to study more seriously?

SK: I don’t think there was ever a point where I decided to devote more time to it, it just happened naturally. I would sing every Sunday at temple from age seven on, and I just got progressively better at it. When I went to college, I was in an a cappella group, and I would sing in that and arrange music for our group. I learned how to write music for larger ensembles. After college, a career in music was a natural next step for me. 

DR: Was a career in music always in the back of your mind as something you wanted?

SK: I never thought it was something I would do for a living, I just knew it was the thing I was best at. You don’t always do what you’re best at – sometimes it gets relegated to hobby status. But I was lucky enough that I had important people along the way who really encouraged me to pursue music as a career. When you have that encouragement, it really propels you forward. 

DR: Before you composed for film and television, you were the frontman for a band called Goldspot. What was the experience like being a part of that group?

SK: That was great, I was really living the dream. After college, I moved to London for a little bit, and then to Los Angeles, and I had this band – Goldspot. I was the singer-songwriter for this band, and we would perform live all throughout California, and then eventually we were signed to a record deal with Mercury Records, which brought me back to London. It was great – we performed at Glastonbury, and we were one of the first bands to play the O2 Arena. The band became pretty big in India, so we got to tour there too. It was so much fun. 

Eventually, my good friend from college, Dan Fogelman, who is a big-time screenwriter and producer in Hollywood, came to me and asked me if I would compose music for his TV show. I didn’t know if I could do it, but he was one of those people in my life who really believed in me.

I was still trying to decide if I was going to keep going with the band or not. Life was kicking in – I was getting married soon, I was going to be having a kid soon. Did I really want to be on tour, making barely any money? Or, did I want to continue being a musician, but do it in a different way?

I decided to take the different route. And it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. 

DR: Before you were credited with composing for film and television, some of your Goldspot songs were featured prominently in television series, including The O.C. and How I Met Your Mother. How did that come about? Were you surprised to hear your songs featured in that way?

SK: I remember being on How I Met Your Mother and The O.C., and at that time, being featured on those shows could be huge for a band. Death Cab for Cutie and Franz Ferdinand benefited massively from being featured in that way. It never propelled us to “global stardom” exactly, but it paid the bills and familiarized people in the industry with my music. When I did transition into composing, a lot of filmmakers would recognize my music because of those shows.

DR: When you started to make that transition, how was your creative process different from what you were doing with Goldspot?

SK: You know, I never went to school for this stuff, and a lot of people working in this field do go to school for it. For me, a lot of my writing and scoring is based on instinct. It’s a scary thing to do when you’re asked to deliver 22 episodes worth of music for a television series by a specific date.

Having guys like Dan Fogelman believe in me made a huge difference. He said to me, “You know how to write themes. If you can do it in a song, you can do it in a score.” So, I took that idea and ran with it. When I would pick up a guitar, I would home in on the part of it that would get stuck in my head, and I would try to do the same thing for score. That’s basically what I’ve done. 

DR: When do you usually come on to a project? Is the show already near completion, or do you come to the project already knowing the concept and having some ideas?

SK: It really depends on the filmmaker. I have great relationships with guys like Dan Fogelman who created This Is Us and John Hoffman who created Only Murders in the Building. Those are both partnerships where they get me involved really early. During the script phase, I’m already thinking about what I want to do with the score. I did that with This Is Us, I did the same thing with Paradise. That level of collaboration allows me to think like a filmmaker.

There are other projects where the show is almost done – it’s filmed, it’s edited, it has temp score – and they just bring me on to figure out the sound of the score. (Note: temp score is placeholder music used during the editing of a film before the original score is composed.)

Still, I feel that my most successful projects come from when I’m writing the music well in advance, which gives the score an original quality. 

DR: Do you craft themes for individual characters? How do you capture their essence in a sonic form?

SK: Usually I’ll read a script, and as I read, I’ll have a voice recording running the whole time. As I progress through the script, I’ll kind of noodle along and either hum, sing, or play on the piano or guitar whatever tunes pop into my head. Then I’ll go back and I’ll say, “90% of this is horrible, but this one thing is really good.”

From there, I’ll try to write an overall theme for the show. I want to capture what the show is about, whether it’s love, loss, loneliness, etc. Once I have something I like, I’ll present that to the director and work from there. 

Once we have a general theme for the picture, I try and think of different iterations of that theme we can use for the individual characters. On Only Murders in the Building, I have the main theme, and then I have a “tragic love” theme, and a “loneliness” theme, and all the emotions that these characters experience. For Steve Martin’s character in Season 1, we wanted to give it a regal quality, so it featured a large orchestra. While for Martin Short’s character, we wanted to incorporate jazzier elements like finger snapping into the score. For Selena Gomez’s character, it was a little more atmospheric and experimental. 

DR: Is your approach different when you’re working on something like This Is Us, which carries a lot of emotional weight to it, as opposed to Only Murders, which is lighter in tone? 

SK: I have a very similar approach to both. In any situation, I want to find that banger of a theme that perfectly fits the show. And my approach is also influenced by the directors, and showrunners, and writers because they may want to accomplish different goals with the music. 

On This is Us, Dan Fogelman played me a Sufjan Stevens song that they were going to feature in the pilot, and that got me thinking about more organic, acoustic instrumentation. On Only Murders, there needed to be something sophisticated about this prewar building they were living in, so it became important that we use a live orchestra. John Hoffman would talk about, for example, the sound of the elevators in these types of buildings, and that would inform the music. 

DR: Speaking of “banger themes,” you were awarded an Emmy® for your work on Only Murders in the Building. What did it mean to you to be recognized by your peers in that way?

SK: That was shocking. I thought there was no way I was going to win. But it was an awesome experience. I had, at that point, been nominated seven or eight times, so I had kind of accepted that I wasn’t going to win one. So, it was really special. It didn’t change anything, but it was special, for sure. 

DR: Where do you turn for inspiration? Do you ever have to overcome “songwriter’s block,” if there is such a thing?

SK: There’s an animated feature coming out this year that I worked on, and I remember having writer’s block when I was composing the theme for our two main characters. In Indian music, there are these things called Ragas, which are scales. You have a set of notes that you have to use, and it’s different than your typical pentatonic scale. There are certain ragas that are performed in the early morning, like around sunrise. So, when I was struggling to compose this one theme, I got up one morning at around 4 a.m. and waited for the sun to rise. And I thought about this specific Indian raga, and I applied it to the film. By getting up super early and shaking up my usual surroundings, I was able to break through the writer’s block. 

I also find inspiration from working with people who are great at what they do. Both of the writers/producers I mentioned before are great examples of that. When a showrunner or filmmaker is really pushing to find the perfect sound to fit their vision, I find inspiration from collaborating with them.