A person’s voice sings silently, evoking human or inhuman feelings based on the actions we witness on the screen.

This is the case in two long streaming series, done in very different ways, but keeping a similar goal in mind: Aaron May and David Ridley’s “Adolescent” music, and “Monster: The Story of Lyle and Erik Menendez”, made up of the father team of Thomas and Julia Newman. Both air on Netflix.

For "puberty", a four-hour story that tells the story of a 13-year-old British boy accused of murdering a female classmate, the documentary-style shooting requires "so sensitive, so explicitly so" to require any score. “You don’t want to realize that undermining realism.”

One of their main options is the voice of Emilia Holliday, a young actress who plays the victim Katie Leonard. "We never heard her speak throughout the series," May noted. "We saw her pictures and we felt her presence in the story, but she had no voice."

In May, director Philip Barantini discovered Emilia was a "sharp singer." "Her voice has this beautiful pubertal vulnerability. It's so perfect, the sound, so perfect for the school, perfect for scores. By expressing her voice in music, her character will haunt the whole story."
This selection also informs the remaining scores. "We're just thinking about these sounds and breathing," Ridley said. They chose a bass recorder ("a very interesting instrument that buzzed") and a very old Victorian pump organ.

They also recorded a 35-singed children's choir, originally for the performance of Sting's song "Fragile", but also performed many vocal exercises that were useful in the score. "The topics you hear at the beginning of each episode, there are voices, but there are a lot of chats from elementary school students behind it. It's just being there and alive," Ridley said.

Also unexpected, but in a disturbing way, is the use of sound in "Monsters", especially in episode 2, when Menendez Brothers Shotgun shot their parents to death, then revisit the scene a few hours later. Against the horrifying image of the bleeding corpse in the living room, we hear a female singer sing the word "buzz" again and again in the sound of a quiet piano and synthesizer.

"Thomas Newman explains, "That was Julia's idea, and it was something she wrote very quickly, and it's an introduction to a wider piano piece." It somehow introduces what he calls "the deep psychological or emotional subtext behind the murder. What I get from this subject is an emotional hunger."

How do performers react? "Like anything surprising, it hits you like cold water," Thomas said. "Something seductive." Julia Newman confirmed it was her own voice, and later renditions of "Haha," "shhh" and other sound textures that occasionally appear in nine
Hour miniseries.

The composer (after the second collaboration, after the 2024 FX miniseries Hatred) strives to avoid any bias. "We don't want to have any idea of ​​what we think is an introvert or unscrupulous," Thomas added. "We're really playing a role when we see it." Julia added, "The characters also have a great sense of style and humor," and the music plays a role in it.

"Just because the show is suitable for a real crime architecture, that doesn't mean it has to be these soft drones... there's a lot of room to play with style and feel, not just weird or sympathetic," she said. They invited musician friends to add guitars and woodwinds to complement their keyboards and synthesizers.