Marvel VisionQuest | Exclusive Interview With Mick Giacchino

Following the release of the season finale of the hit Marvel series, “VisionQuest on Disney+, I recently caught up with the composer for the show, Mick Giacchino, where I asked him about the inspiration for the show, whether he used AI while creating the music since the show is themed around AI and how it compared to working on “Star Wars: Skeleton Crew”.

What was the biggest highlight working on “VisionQuest”?

Oh man, there are so many, but it’s—you know, it’s always so incredible to get to work with a live orchestra, and the folks in Vienna were just absolutely incredible, and I know Marvel has a great relationship with them there. You can write so much, and then they just take it the extra step. So that is always a pleasure of mine, but also just getting to work with these characters. I love Vision, and I love Paul Bettany and James Spader, and they’re just so much fun to watch. The show tackles so many different genres and ideas, and it’s really a fun sandbox to play in.

Did you go back and watch “WandaVision” and “Age Of Ultron” for inspiration?

Yeah, I am a huge WandaVision fan, and so, getting to continue that story was very exciting for me. So I definitely did revisit a little bit of it, but we’re also in a very different place than Vision was there. Obviously, this is the beginning of his quest for identity, but whereas that show was very much rooted in the sitcoms of the past and getting into the beginnings of his questioning with the Ship of Theseus, this I wanted to take where they started and kind of just continue from there and try to do right by Vision

Obviously AI is a massive part of the show. Did you happen to use any AI to help you create some of the music?

No, actually, there’s no AI, or at least on the music side, there was no AI whatsoever. What I did want to try to evoke this idea though organic material being processed through computers to kind of evoke Vision and how he’s kind of this hybrid. And to achieve that, I ended up working with a couple of guitar pedals that I chose to work with that I linked into my writing system, where I would write some flute lines or play some string melodies and then run them through one of them, which is a Microcosm by Hologram.  Essentially it takes the signal that you play, and it reprocesses it and splits up little pieces and will bring it back either backwards or in different octaves or at different speeds. And so you have this organic sound that’s been manipulated by this computer processing, and I ended up using that a lot all over the score, especially as ambient textures and soundscapes, which was an absolute blast to play around with.

How did working on “VisionQuest” compare to “Skeleton Crew”?

Honestly, I mean, there are similarities, and there are differences. You know, first off, there are amazing teams on both sides, Lucasfilm and Marvel; they’re some of my absolute favourite people that I’ve gotten to work with.  Both of these shows are coming into these super heavily established universes where, in, Skeleton Crew was pretty intimidating, especially just knowing that,  I mean, John Williams is the best you can get. And having to live up to that or kind of find my own version of what this world is was definitely difficult. And again, there was a little bit of that on VisionQuest as well, and there’s been so many fabulous composers over the years.  Contributing to this. I mean, come on, Alan Silvestri too. It’s just, but both shows were fun in a sense, there were a couple of moments here and there where it’s like, “All right, let’s find a way to musically link some of these characters together,”  whether it’s bringing back a motif that we’ve heard before or doing a hybrid of a couple things.  So that was a lot of fun, but it was definitely a challenge as well.

Where did the inspiration for the sound of “VisionQuest” come from?

So I knew I wanted a hybrid of orchestra and synth because, again, going back to this idea of how Vision is built from organic matter, but also is this synthezoid. And I wanted to find ways to communicate that musically. And so the show is very much a hybrid of synth and score and orchestra, but then a lot of these, again, hybrids as well where I was processing organic sounds, from the scoring stage through these effects pedals or digital effects and having them come out as beds or complements to the live recordings or complements to the synths. I just really wanted to try to find my way to make a hybrid of the two.

“VisionQuest” is out now on Disney+ and the soundtrack is also available to download on digital platforms.

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