Keeping Score

A look at the soap job of look at the soap job of DAYSs composer/music composer/music director, director, D. Brent Nelso

- Janet Di Lauro

Behind every dramatic, happy, terrorizing or romantic daytime moment you’ll find an accompanying melody ... or horror strain.

“Music helps the story flow,” says D. Brent Nelson, who’s been co-writing the score for DAYS with Executive Producer Ken Corday for the past 25 years (and teams with Corday as co-composer for Amazon’s LADIES OF THE LAKE). “If it’s working, there’s an embellishment. It enhances what the writers and actors are trying to do in an emotional way.”

When Will Horton was about to be murdered, Nelson and Corday collaborated on eerie background music that helped the soap win a 2016 Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Music Direction and Composition for a Drama Series. “We called it the ‘Kill Will’ show,”

Nelson reveals. “And during the ‘Gabigail’ and ‘Gabby’ and Stefan story, there was a lot of thematic material that had real darkness to it. Marci Miller [Abigail] ended up playing the piano and singing ‘The Girl Within’ on camera. By that time, the audience was already familiar with the song and the musical language that was that couple. That was serendipity.”

Nelson asserts that scoring shows “is not just songwriting. You’ve got to write a song that not only fits the scene, but also presents itself in a way that the first time you hear it, you understand everything. You get the gist of it right away. There’s a transparency that communicates the message. It can’t be super-artsy. It can’t be something you have to think about.”