'Mad Men' Composer David Carbonara Got Seduced by Film Scoring at Berklee

David Carbonara '85 has scored all seven seasons of Mad Menwhich is in its final run on AMC for the second half of its seventh, and last, season

May 7, 2015

When David Carbonara returned to Berklee in 1983, after leaving several years prior to play in a band, he was pushing 30, had $250, and didn’t know what he wanted to do—he just knew he had to get back to Berklee to do it.

Though he loved music, he had grown tired of nightclubs and gigging as a trombonist. He figured that Berklee could offer another path: arranging, orchestrating, copying, or maybe composing.

Unsure which direction to head, Carbonara chose to pursue a film scoring major, not because he wanted to score movies or even loved film music, but because it was a major that allowed him to take classes in a variety of disciplines.

“And then, what often happens, once you get into it and you start writing music for picture, you’re seduced by the whole process. It’s an amazing feeling,” says Carbonara ‘85, during an interview in his home scoring studio in Pasadena, California.

Several years after leaving Berklee, having worked primarily as music editor whose credits include the movies Chocolat and Cider House Rules, Carbonara met Matthew Weiner, a writer for the television show Becker at the time. Carbonara gave Weiner his demo reel, which had “kind of a ‘60s lounge vibe to it” and the two kept in touch. Weiner soon started writing for the HBO show The Sopranos, and had written a pilot for a show he’d go on to call Mad Men, which begins its story in the 1960s.

“This was 2001. He gave me the pilot and said, “If they ever make my show I would love for you to score it,” Carbonara said. “And then in 2006 he calls me up and says, ‘Guess what? They’re making my show.’”

Carbonara has since scored all seven seasons of the show, which is in its final run on AMC for the second half of its seventh, and last, season. All along the way, Carbonara has been intimately involved with the making of Mad Men, attending all of Weiner’s four- to six-hour meetings in which the group goes over each episode in detail. Other than the show's theme song, which was composed by RJD2, Carbonara writes all the original music for the show. 

David Carbonara talks about Mad Men and Berklee:

Mad Men was a major success and cultural touchstone in no small part because of the appeal of its 1960s chic, a sensibility and feel that was carefully constructed by Weiner, Carbonara, and others on the show’s team.

Carbonara won an American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers award for the show, and would later win another for scoring CBS’s Vegas.

“Berklee really gave me the career,” Carbonara says. The college introduced him to music editing, which he figured he could do until he broke into film scoring, and staff in the career office told him what the union wages for a music editor were. “Without Berklee and the career office that day, I don’t think I ever would have pursued music editing, which I did pursue and had a great 12 years in New York City, working on some very large features and making a good living, simultaneously scoring a lot of little films.”

Part of the reason Carbonara was successful, he says, is because he didn’t have a backup plan. When he returned to Berklee, though he didn't know quite what his plan would be, he knew he had to pursue a career in music with no alternatives. “In my mind, if you have a plan B, that’s what you’ll do," he says. Instead, he advises, decide what you want to do and then do it. "And I bet you will be successful, because there is just no other choice."