The White Lotus doesn't work without the eerie mystery that rests under the surface of every encounter between characters on the popular HBO series. And in order for an audience to completely lean into the suspense, they have to be fully grounded in it. That's where composer Cristobal Tapai de Veer comes in. In the latest episode of The Breakdown, the creator of that haunting The White Lotus theme song, “Renaissance," talks to Rolling Stone about stirring up emotions through music and why imperfections can actually make his compositions even better.
"I heard lots of people saying that they felt anxious about the show, about the music —tense and whatnot," Tapia de Veer explains. "But they still like it and they can stop listening to it." Earlier this year, the composer tested the limits of just how much of an ear-worm "Renaissance" could be when he teamed up with Tiësto for the first-ever official remix of the theme song. Seeing the way people latched onto the song, despite him having rushed to complete it in the midst of multiple other projects, revived Tapia de Veer's love for it.
"I heard lots of people saying that they felt anxious about the show, about the music —tense and whatnot," Tapia de Veer explains. "But they still like it and they can stop listening to it." Earlier this year, the composer tested the limits of just how much of an ear-worm "Renaissance" could be when he teamed up with Tiësto for the first-ever official remix of the theme song. Seeing the way people latched onto the song, despite him having rushed to complete it in the midst of multiple other projects, revived Tapia de Veer's love for it.
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MusicTranscript
00:00 People always ask, are those birds?
00:02 All the screaming and it's all the singer. It's the end of the track and she's laughing and it's you know pitch super high but
00:11 It's a singer. Yeah
00:14 Hi, this is Cristo. Welcome to my studio. This is the breakdown and today we're breaking down
00:20 the White Lotus theme, Renaissance
00:24 So
00:26 Here we are up north of Montreal
00:35 This is the Laurentians. It's very pretty
00:40 Rural, I don't have neighbors really so we're in the woods. I'm a city person normally, but maybe 10 or
00:48 7 years ago. I started coming here and renting places and working in nature and it felt great
00:55 I felt more focused and I just really love being in nature now
00:59 I've been living here. I bought this place. I've become a caveman. I suppose I just really love
01:07 working in the woods and
01:10 sometimes going into the city
01:13 getting the vibe but then walking away and coming back here so I can really
01:18 concentrate on nature and music mainly. I grew up going to the countryside
01:24 with nature in Chile, which is very different from here
01:28 but still I
01:31 was always very attracted to
01:33 the sounds, any sounds that animals make and birds in particular. Here you get a big amount of
01:42 fascinating range of birds and there is one particular bird that I really love
01:47 It's the Hermit Thrush. People call it the genius musician bird because it does all these
01:53 arpeggios and amazing melodies. It's like it goes into these figures
01:59 And then it answers itself
02:07 It's very fast but when you record it and you slow it down
02:11 you can hear all the notes as if it's a symphony and slow it down. For us
02:17 we are so slow humans. We can grab the notes when it's pitched down and it really feels like
02:23 And it goes like that and it's just crazy because it feels like an incredible composition
02:33 And it's always evolving. So it's kind of jazzy at the same time. So I kind of experiment recording all kinds of
02:40 sounds. I suppose it does influence me a lot even when I'm not doing
02:46 crazy sounds or recording animals or anything like that, but it does influence me in the same way that
02:53 you know studying
02:56 classical music did influence me, although I'm not
03:02 using it in a conscious way because I'm not making classical music, but it's all there. So I suppose
03:08 it's all part of the of the palette
03:12 So season one
03:14 was a bit of a rush because they called me very late and
03:19 I had maybe about a month. I had one conversation with Mike and
03:27 after that I was on my own
03:30 jamming in my studio with everything that I had there, all the percussions,
03:36 the flutes and whatnot. I went straight for
03:40 for percussions and tribal sounds
03:43 it's all very
03:46 instinctive at that point because
03:48 with
03:51 you know, we didn't have much time. I went with what I felt about the script and about my conversation with Mike
03:59 and it felt like I didn't, I did
04:02 have to
04:04 somehow be savage about the music
04:08 going into tribal sounds
04:11 percussions and all that. With time I started realizing why I went into that because it's not about Hawaii, about
04:20 local music
04:22 it's not about anything like that. It just feels like
04:26 somehow the tourists could be savages
04:32 You could be confused because it's like tourists get into a wild place and this is a vibe
04:39 you hear animals and tribal things and whatnot, but maybe the music is not about
04:46 Hawaii, maybe it's not about it. It's about these people that are acting like savages
04:51 maybe the music is mocking them sometimes. I suppose there's
04:55 so many things that could be happening, but I wasn't really thinking
05:01 about that, like making plans about that because
05:05 like I said, we didn't have time so all this stuff it somehow started making sense afterwards
05:14 and they did like the music
05:16 in the end I started sending this stuff for the mix and whatnot and
05:22 luckily it did work because if it didn't then we didn't have the time for me to do another score or anything like that. So
05:33 we were lucky and
05:36 Mike was into it
05:39 I
05:41 think at the beginning, although I think the editor Heather Persons, she helped a lot
05:47 making things happen like for example the
05:52 the first season's theme is pretty
05:56 it felt pretty radical
05:59 compared to what they were thinking initially
06:03 like they had this track, this temp track with these images for the theme for the titles
06:10 sequence and it was very
06:12 loungy, it was very soft, sexy
06:17 and then I sent this stuff that it's people screaming and
06:23 suffocating and all of that stuff
06:27 so it wasn't the easiest
06:29 proposition but happily it did work out and
06:34 interestingly
06:37 the feedback from people reflected that I heard lots of people saying that they felt anxious
06:44 about the show, about the music
06:46 tense and whatnot, but they still like it and they can't stop listening to it and this and that
06:55 so I think it's an interesting thing that you can somehow push people a
07:00 little bit and they still appreciate that and getting into that beat so
07:07 yeah, that's
07:09 it's a bit chaotic for me to try to remember how this happened because it was very fast
07:14 but it's something like that
07:17 there was some schedule conflicts for me, so I had several projects going on and I thought I couldn't do the second season
07:25 so
07:28 we told them that, they asked if I could at least
07:31 do the theme, so do an adaptation to this new location
07:36 and
07:37 Mike wanted to have some
07:39 little, you know, Renaissance
07:42 elements, vibes, Italian opera and this and that so I went straight for certain sounds that are just
07:49 cliche sounds, the little harp and
07:53 little opera. I was trying to do an intro that is not
07:58 like the first season, that is something completely, it has nothing to do, so it's like a mock-up of
08:05 some kind of Italian opera or something like that, that evokes an Italian
08:12 vibe, so
08:14 once I had this intro
08:18 with these
08:20 strings, harp, the goal was to
08:23 get into somehow the theme
08:27 what we recognize as the White Lotus theme, which for me is the voices, so those voices
08:35 those Ulululu, Ululatin voices or whatever you call them, we start building from scratch from that moment until the end
08:43 and then I tried to keep some elements from the Italian intro into this and
08:51 they start disappearing until we get to this club anthem
08:56 so at that point I guess we were at, you know, some kind of after-hours partying
09:03 we're not anymore at these ruins with somebody playing the harp, you know, in a nice shot or something like that
09:10 and we go into this, you know, club beat. The thing is that I did that really fast and
09:20 I couldn't send it to
09:22 Mike because I was tripping when I did it
09:26 but afterwards I started thinking about the sounds, about the production and this and that and I started criticizing
09:33 and I thought okay, this is not very good
09:35 this I need to change this, it sounds too clean or whatever
09:41 for some reason I just hid it and I never sent it and it took me maybe a month
09:46 and I thought I was not going to send it and just forget about it, but then
09:54 for some reason I thought
09:57 whatever, I'm just gonna send this to Mike and see what happens
10:03 and they loved it and I received an email back
10:07 and it was perfect for them and all of that
10:11 so I was really surprised and then
10:14 you know, I somehow started to appreciate
10:19 this theme again and I realized, you know, when this came out and it became such a big thing
10:27 and this, you know, Tiësto doing a remix and it's all over the place
10:32 I realized that
10:34 this is something I'm still learning is that, you know, you do something really fast
10:40 and your feeling is right, you have this gut feeling that this is, you're tripping, you're dancing and blah blah
10:46 but this is a very short moment and then afterwards when you start criticizing
10:51 and if you take the time to perfect it and start betterizing or whatever
10:56 then it's like you start strangling
10:59 the tune somehow and
11:03 it starts, you start losing
11:06 elements, you think it's better
11:09 for example, if I say I would prefer, you know, a dirty beat instead of this, you know, super clean kick, whatever
11:17 but these are ideas that don't, it doesn't mean much I realized
11:25 and when I see people tripping I thought
11:28 maybe it's great that I didn't touch this track at all, I didn't make it better
11:34 because maybe it would be lifeless if I did
11:38 I don't know if I can even take credit for this track in a way because it's so fast
11:43 it's something like this and then you become somebody else
11:47 it's like you're going to a place and you do something and then
11:51 it takes a life of its own and somehow you have to let it live and see what happens
11:57 but this, I think it takes a long time to get to a point where you can let stuff live
12:06 and just, you know, not try to perfect everything and
12:10 and I'm just wrong to even judge what I did so
12:16 but anyhow, I'm happy it went out and
12:20 you know, into the world and it has a life now
12:24 so do you see the wave happening there?
12:36 so this is the whole recording
12:38 which is a bit higher than this, something like that
12:46 (the wave is coming from the other side)
12:48 so this is the whole track
12:53 and now she's talking there
12:56 so I put the whole track without edits
12:59 so she's laughing and she's talking in between and all that
13:02 I put this in the sampler
13:04 and this is Stephanie Osorio
13:06 she lives in Montreal but she's from Colombia
13:10 and I asked her to do this
13:15 (imitates the wave)
13:17 for one long note like this one you see here
13:20 so she did that
13:22 and so this whole chunk I put into a sampler that I can play here
13:30 and then I'm playing the notes with the pitch wheel
13:39 which in this case is this ribbon here
13:42 which you use to change the pitch
13:45 like this
13:49 so normally you would tend to play the notes on a keyboard
13:55 but here it sounds a little bit wavy
14:01 and I didn't like that so I did it with the ribbon here instead
14:05 like this
14:08 (imitates the wave)
14:10 so as you can hear it's all off tune and everything
14:16 because I don't know what I'm doing here
14:18 you see there's very little space
14:20 so I had to put tapes here and here
14:24 until the pitch sounds right to me
14:27 so I somehow need to practice this to get it right
14:34 but the thing is by doing it this way with the random pitch
14:39 is that every time I'm hitting a note it's not exact
14:44 so it's closer to what a person would normally do
14:48 and there's little details like that
14:54 that I feel you can't really sing it
14:58 I mean people they know it but when they try to sing it it's like
15:01 (imitates the wave)
15:03 it's kind of a little bit too hard to
15:07 it's not really human the way it's done
15:10 but it does feel very much like a person
15:13 it doesn't feel like auto-tune or a vocoder
15:18 or a robotic thing or anything like that
15:21 it's very much like a very organic
15:25 just very weird person I suppose or creature
15:29 and to me that's what's interesting about this
15:32 so if we listen to the harmonies
15:36 which keep building
15:40 those are all mistakes by playing with the pitch
15:50 (imitates the wave)
15:53 (imitates the wave)
15:56 (imitates the wave)
16:24 so all the little screams, the laughing in between the notes
16:27 and all that stuff
16:30 to me makes the track a lot more interesting
16:34 or more alive
16:37 for me that's what turns me on to work in something like that
16:41 and the rest, the beat and what not
16:46 it's almost like an afterthought in a way
16:50 you know when you listen to sometimes Latin American pop
16:54 or African pop let's say
16:58 you take a song from the radio from Zimbabwe or something like that
17:01 you listen to the production
17:04 to me I feel always refreshing that the sounds
17:07 it's like someone took a Yamaha keyboard
17:13 and then went to some preset vibraphone or whatever
17:17 and that's it, that's the sound for this part
17:20 and then some other presets for this and that
17:23 there's not a lot of research in the production
17:28 it's about the vibe and lots of it comes from the vocal
17:32 and the writing in the music
17:35 so I suppose in a way I was working
17:39 in that sense where I'm not spending a week
17:43 trying to do the right distortion, saturation
17:47 for the transient of the kick drum and stuff like that
17:50 this was really like this sound, this sound, this and that
17:54 and now I can concentrate on the vocals
17:57 which are making to me the structure
18:01 the journey of this song that is important
18:04 because this build up
18:07 with the club anthem and everything
18:10 it really is about the form more than anything
18:13 that is happening at one particular moment
18:17 I wanted to feel like we're always reaching a new plateau
18:21 and even towards the end it becomes extreme
18:24 it's like every chord we hit seems like it's a new chord
18:27 but it's not, it's like the song could finish here
18:31 but it doesn't and then it could finish here but it doesn't
18:34 so I was kind of chasing this energy
18:38 and to me once again it's all in the voices
18:42 where that energy comes from
18:45 so to me this sounds like some crazy robot
18:51 the intervals are too large
18:54 and if it was a person maybe
18:57 of course a virtuoso would do this nice
19:00 but playing it like this it just doesn't sound good
19:03 so I needed to stay in a small space for the intervals
19:07 and to be able to play it here
19:10 in two movements like this
19:13 so it's basically...
19:16 it's like "ok, I like this"
19:22 and that's it
19:25 I ended up with...
19:28 and then the other harmonies, every harmony is different
19:31 but I don't even remember what's the first harmony we hear
19:34 or the first theme
19:37 but I suppose I could have started with any of those melodies
19:42 and some of them sound like that
19:45 and some of them don't sound like that tune
19:49 but in any case I felt maybe familiar with the...
19:59 there's something about that that almost sounds like a Latin American
20:03 you know, dancing track
20:06 so in my mind I never went to "ok, is this stuff from 200 million years ago?"
20:13 if your knowledge is Metallica
20:16 and you recognize something from Metallica here
20:19 that you could actually
20:22 because I was a fan of Metallica
20:25 then you're going to tell me "ok, you took this from Metallica
20:28 but this is just what you know
20:31 this is because you know that"
20:34 so every person told me "ok, this band, did you take this from this animals band?"
20:37 or whatever, I don't even know that band
20:40 so I suppose you're jamming with what's in your head
20:46 and something comes out that is yours
20:56 I think that's how art works
20:59 because otherwise art will die
21:02 if nobody took over something and made their own version
21:05 and keep going into the future with that
21:08 then everything would die, right?
21:11 so I suppose you just can jam with what's in your head
21:14 and pick whatever is there
21:17 but this, yeah, this I wasn't...
21:20 it never came to my mind
21:23 "I'm going to do some version of that
21:26 because of the witches, because of Satan"
21:29 I don't know what, no, it wasn't like that
21:32 but once again, like I said before
21:35 you could be thinking about the funeral march
21:38 I mean, if this is your culture, you would think of that
21:50 but if your culture is Star Wars
21:53 and you say "oh, he copied Star Wars"
21:56 maybe not, you know?
21:59 anyways, it's Nirvana, so who cares?
22:02 so this sound, when you listen in solo
22:15 I don't know if you would think of this song
22:18 when you listen to this like that
22:21 but if you listen to the track
22:24 I think that synth is one of the elements
22:41 one of the people working in the back
22:44 that you don't even know they exist
22:47 and this is something so important
22:50 emotionally for me, that slight bend
22:53 in this synth is very dramatic
22:56 there's a certain darkness to it
22:59 it's one of the elements that make this
23:02 not feel only like a club beat
23:05 that everything is going well
23:08 maybe, I think, I'm trying to put this together right now
23:11 it's just a sound I like
23:14 it sounds somehow like a voice
23:17 it sounds like Blade Runner all of a sudden
23:23 it's kind of scary actually when you listen alone
23:31 it's eerie, so you don't expect this to be
23:34 in a club track, I suppose
23:37 let's see what else is there
23:40 I don't know
23:43 I don't know
23:46 I don't know
23:49 [Music]
24:16 every time I put something in solo
24:19 it feels like there's some really dramatic thing going on
24:22 it's weird because to me this track is something like
24:25 you're just jumping around in a club
24:28 but I'm listening to this and it's kind of
24:31 almost sad or nostalgic
24:34 this is just a melotron
24:37 which is what the Beatles used
24:43 strawberry fields, kind of flutes
24:46 and this is normally
24:49 it's like a big instrument which has tapes
24:52 in it, like if you will
24:55 like cassettes, every note is a tape that starts
24:58 rolling and you have this sound
25:01 so this is a voice choir
25:04 and every note is just a tape
25:07 and there's the voices recorded there
25:10 and that's why it sounds, it has this texture
25:13 which is kind of unreal
25:16 which is what I like for this at least
25:19 and these are some strings
25:22 the beat of the strings is only the docking from the kick
25:34 so the kick is taking away
25:37 the strings, every time it kicks the strings go away
25:40 and then they come back, so this is the classic sound of
25:43 dance music, the pumping
25:46 so I took just one note
25:49 like this
25:52 and the next one you see
25:55 is another chunk
25:58 and it's just pitched, I pitch blocks like this
26:01 I think I'm kind of realizing this while we're listening
26:04 to this, how dramatic the elements
26:07 are, maybe this is why
26:10 people connect with it
26:13 I'm not sure but it could be that
26:16 because the tune is not dark
26:19 there's some kind of euphoria going on
26:22 maybe it's that
26:25 there's a darkness that comes with drugs
26:28 I suppose in there, you have a souvenir
26:31 of being in a club really wasted now, I don't know
26:34 but there's
26:37 something weird in the sense that you don't think of
26:40 this as a dark song but the elements
26:43 are dark
26:46 I just discovered this now, I did this show called
26:49 Utopia, the British version
26:52 it was one of the first times
26:55 I was working on this and I think the music is
26:58 really playful to the point
27:01 you could be thinking why is a show about the end
27:04 of the world maybe
27:07 has this playful music, like funny music
27:10 but it's kind of like this a little bit
27:13 if you start really listening
27:16 there's something dark going on
27:19 in between the notes
27:22 in between the lines I suppose
27:25 I love that Mike White leaves
27:28 some things in the dark and he doesn't answer
27:31 all the questions that we have about the characters
27:34 and I mean even at the end
27:37 of the show
27:40 it's not clear what was actually going to happen
27:43 before the big
27:46 shooting happens, we didn't have proof
27:49 who is really evil
27:52 what's going on
27:55 and I kind of like that every character
27:58 seems to switch from a place where
28:01 I really like this person now
28:04 and all of a sudden they do something that is really ugly
28:07 it's like oh my god, what is that
28:10 it feels real, it feels like real people
28:13 real relations
28:16 it feels less like
28:19 superheroes or I don't know
28:22 I really like the way he does that
28:25 some painters have told me that people don't want to be
28:28 painted the way they are
28:31 or the way the artist sees it, they're going to criticise
28:34 yeah but my nose, it doesn't really look like that or something like that
28:37 you have a deformed vision
28:40 that you want to look a certain way
28:43 sometimes artists can be really
28:46 radical and paint something that
28:49 oh trust me, I know
28:52 it feels good here, this opera
29:05 opera
29:08 opera
29:11 opera
29:14 opera
29:17 opera
29:20 opera
29:23 opera
29:26 opera
29:29 (upbeat music)
29:32 [BLANK_AUDIO]