The film's original music segments consist of solo jazz percussion performances alongside a number of well known classical music pieces. With
Mahler and
Tchaikovsky among others, most of the composers featured are part of the standard classical repertoire, but Iñárritu did not regard the choice of pieces as important, saying "I think all those classical pieces are, in a way, great, but honestly if I would have put (in) another good classical piece it would be the same film". Nonetheless, the choice of classical music pieces was strongly oriented to highly melodic scores taken predominantly from the 19th and 20th century classical repertoire (Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Ravel). Iñárritu stated that the classical components come from the world of the play, citing the radio in Riggan's room and the show itself as two sources of the music. The drum sections comprise the majority of the score however, and were composed by
Antonio Sánchez. Iñárritu explained the choice by saying they helped to structure scenes, and that "The drums, for me, was a great way to find the rhythm of the film... In comedy, rhythm is king, and not having the tools of editing to determine time and space, I knew I needed something to help me find the internal rhythm of the film." He also wanted a score that "wouldn't cater to an audience's expectations", which the drums, being more abstract, provided. The official soundtrack was released on October 14, 2014. composed and recorded the score for the film. Iñárritu contacted friend and jazz drummer Antonio Sánchez in January 2013, inviting him to compose the score for the film. His reaction to writing a soundtrack using only drums was similar to Lubezki's thoughts of shooting the movie like a single shot: "It was a scary proposition because I had no point of reference of how to achieve this. There's no other movie I know that has a score like this." Sánchez had also not worked on a film before, Iñárritu was looking for the opposite approach however, preferring spontaneity and improvisation. Following this, a week before principal photography, he and Iñárritu went to a studio to record some demos. During these sessions the director would first talk him through the scene, then while Sánchez was improvising guide him by raising his hand to indicate an event such as a character opening a door or by describing the rhythm with verbal sounds. They recorded around seventy demos, and once filming was complete, spliced them into the rough cut. This was a new experience for Sánchez who until this point, had guided his improvisations in response to "the sound and energy" around him. Here, he was using a scene to guide him, and said the biggest challenge of the soundtrack was "adapting what I do to a moving image, a story line, and dialogue." Iñárritu wanted to include a drummer in the film from the beginning, saying "I wanted [Sánchez] to become a character in his own film, and have the play become a play of a play." The drummer recommended his friend
Nate Smith, but did not decide on the music to play beforehand, resulting in Smith improvising during the shoots. This meant Sánchez had to learn and match him exactly during the recordings in Los Angeles, noting "Alejandro was very specific and he would watch the clip over and over again to make sure that you could not tell that it was not him that was actually producing the sound. Never in my life have I had to do that." The process was not aided by a different method of recording for the scene outside of St. James Theatre featuring Smith. The drums were moved out onto the street, and people carrying mics a block away would walk towards and past Sánchez as he was playing, to coordinate the sound and image of the film without the need for post-production effects. ==Best Original Score disqualification==