Composer Hannes De Maeyer On Scoring The Couple Next Door

The Couple Next Door composer Hannes De Maeyer reveals how he created unique sounds within the score and details playing with vocals.

Hannes De Maeyer is one of Belgium’s most versatile composers, best known for his collaboration withdirector duo Adil El Arbi & Bilall Fallah (Rebel, Gangsta, Black) and from his original music to ITV primetime drama Professor T and psychological thriller series The Couple Next Door. His scores range from pure electronic to impressive symphonic instrumentation.

In this interview, he reveals how he created unique sounds within the score and details playing with vocals. Hannes De Maeyer also shares a fun fact about working with his wife on this project and her crush on the lead actor, Sam Heughan.

Hannes De Maeyer Originally Worked On This Series A While Back

Tessa Smith: The Couple Next Door is already available overseas in its entirety, but is just now coming to the United States. What is it like to have something you worked on a while ago resurface like this?

Hannes De Maeyer: Yeah. I must say the first interviews and preparations for the interviews was like, oh yeah, what did I write? What were the themes? What did I do? Because yeah, normally it’s closer to the creation process. But on the other hand, it’s always nice to relive the premiere. It really feels like a new premiere and like it’s the first time it happened, although it isn’t.

Tessa Smith: What intrigued you about The Couple Next Door when you first started working on it?

Hannes De Maeyer: I think what intrigued me the most was the script, but also what I tried to do with the music. Which is what you see on the outside is not what there is on the inside. On the outside, everything seems pretty and normal and beautiful, but on the inside, there’s some danger lurking and some craziness. So that drew me to the story. And then also, how can I implement that in the music? And going nuts, definitely towards the end, without getting too much into the story. That was really fun.

With The Thriller Genre, The Score Can Be “Over The Top”

Tessa Smith: Within the thriller genre, like with this series, the score helps to hint at things to come. What was it like for you to get to play with that?

Hannes De Maeyer: Exactly. I read a few scripts, but I didn’t read the last two or three episodes right away. Of course I had talks with the director, so it’s not that I was completely in the dark, but there were still some surprises for me as well, which is nice as a composer. So the first time you see it, you can play, or compose, from the experience like a viewer would. It was also fun to start little themes or little music that I can use again at a later point in the series, and then try to change it along the way.

Manipulate it a little bit as you get more into the story. That’s a cool thing about, not only in this series but writing music. You can manipulate the viewers a little bit. For example, if you have a scene where somebody is running, like for the beginning of the series, if you add some romantic music on that, although she looks distressed when you put a piano or a solo violin, and it’s really lyrical, the audience starts to think. That’s the interesting thing about music. You can do so much to guide the audience. That’s what I like about making music for series. 

In a thriller, sometimes you can go a little bit over the top with swells and jumpscare people a bit. I like the search of finding nice and interesting sounds, maybe even more than a romantic score or something like that. Another interesting sound I used on the score is playing an acoustic guitar with a violin bow. I’m not a guitarist also, but when I use it in this series with a bow, it’s, again, the imperfect perfection. When you play it with a bow and you add a lot of pressure, it’s a really interesting texture and sound. I didn’t try to make it beautiful or perfect because sometimes the pitches may be a little bit off. It was really nice to have that kind of vibe. I used it to emphasize, or add to, the bases and the melodies. It’s a sound that probably when you hear it, you think, what’s that?

Hannes De Maeyer’s Wife’s Vocals Are Used In The Score

Tessa Smith: When you are working on a series like this, do you go episode by episode?

Hannes De Maeyer: Yes. But for this story, it was interesting because the story gets weirder and the characters get crazy. So it was more of a natural process for me to go with the story and change the music accordingly. So I started the first one, but then a little bit more in the second, because what I did a lot in this score was twisting sounds. So I was starting with a normal sound, but then with plugins or distortion, I mangled the sounds and made it strange. So the idea was mostly to start from acoustic sounds, or you think it’s acoustic, because there’s a lot of vocals in the score. The use of voice, but in all sorts of ways.

There’s two singers, actually one is my wife, maybe that is a fun fact. She’s not a professional singer, but she has a nice voice and she can sing. The imperfect thing about her singing or voice is perfect for this. The fun thing about asking my wife to sing was she’s a huge Sam Heughan fan because of Outlander. She has a hidden crush on Sam. It’s strange to say as a husband, but it’s true. So I thought it was a really fun idea to let her sing in one of the episodes where the sexual tension between two characters, Evie and Danny, come together in a fruitful way. I find it funny to let my wife sing that scene.

There’s a lot of dream sequences in the series. For the music, I thought it would be fun to make music that always sounds a little bit off and you don’t quite know, is it a real instrument? Sometimes I use a voice, but it’s not a real voice. It’s a sampled voice. But it sounds pretty close to the real thing. Same with using guitars. There are real guitars in the score, but sometimes in the dream sequences, I would use a sample guitar so that subconsciously you hear it and there’s something off.

The other singer I worked with, her name is Billie Leyers. She’s a Belgian singer, but I asked her not only to sing the melodies but also to make weird sounds with her mouth and her voice. Then I imported it into my sequencer or my sampler and made an instrument of it. When you play it lower, it stretches the sound. That was a request from the director. He wanted a lot of voices, but I found it interesting to not only use the voice as singing but also as a tool in completely different ways.

The Couple Next Door premiered on January 17 on STARZ. The finale will be available on February 21.

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About The Couple Next Door

The 6-part series tells the story of a young couple that develops a fast friendship with their new neighbors when they move to a quaint and quiet suburb, but the relationship soon takes some unexpected and sinister turns.

The Couple Next Door premiered on January 17 on STARZ.