BRENT
NELSON

For Brent, composing is instinct. It’s less about calculation, more about intuition. “I’ll sit at the piano and it’s almost like the music is already there,” he says. “If I go the wrong way, I hear it immediately. Then I just follow where it wants to go.”

That instinct has guided Brent through more than 8,000 episodes of Days of Our Lives, where his music has shaped the emotional undercurrent of one of television’s longest-running dramas for nearly four decades. A multiple Emmy Award-winning composer (1993, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020), he has built a dynamic and evolving musical language that moves seamlessly between intimacy, tension, romance, and suspense.

“It’s part of the storytelling,” he says. “Sometimes it’s the thing that connects everything.”

On Days of Our Lives, storytelling rarely unfolds in a straight line, and neither does the music. An episode can move from danger to heartbreak to tenderness within minutes, requiring a score that guides those shifts without calling attention to itself.

“You’re going from something dark and intense into something soft and emotional, and it has to feel natural,” Brent explains. “Those transitions, that’s where the real work is.”

Over time, he began approaching major storylines as distinct musical worlds, developing what he calls a “sound print” for each arc.

“For certain stories, we’d ask, ‘what does this feel like that we haven’t done before?’” he says. “And we’d build something completely new for it.”

That approach has led to a wide range of sonic palettes: from intimate piano and acoustic textures to electronic layers, live choir, and full orchestral recordings. For the Beyond Salem spinoffs, Brent leaned into a more stylized, cinematic tone, creating music that felt intentionally distinct from the flagship series.

Some of his most meaningful work has come from moments where music and story align in unexpected ways. Brent recalls writing a song from the imagined perspective of someone grieving the loss of a lifelong partner, without any specific scene in mind.

“I just immersed myself in that feeling,” he says. “What would that actually feel like?”

Years later, when a central character’s death unfolded on screen, the song found its place in a farewell montage. After the episode aired, a viewer reached out to him.

“She had just lost someone, and she said that song captured exactly how she felt,” Brent says. “That’s when it really hits you…it connected.”

Brent’s path to composing was shaped by curiosity and persistence. As a teenager, he focused on songwriting, spending years pursuing record deals before realizing the path wasn’t sustainable.

“I did that for a long time,” he says. “But eventually it felt like, this isn’t where I’m meant to be.”

The turning point came while watching the film Body Double, when the score revealed a new possibility.

“I remember thinking, this is it. This is where music and storytelling come together and I want to do this.”

He shifted his focus to composition, studying formally while continuing to develop the technical skills he had built out of necessity: recording, engineering, sound mixing and producing. That combination proved critical as the industry began moving toward home studio production.

His early years on Days of Our Lives were hands-on and fast-paced, as he learned to score in real time and respond to performance and pacing instinctively.

“You had to understand the rhythm of the scene right away,” he says. “You were reacting to what was happening in front of you.”

Today, his process is more refined, but still rooted in that same responsiveness.

“The picture is my collaborator,” he explains. “It tells you what it needs and what it doesn’t.”

That sensitivity has deepened over time.

“I think I’m more emotionally connected to the performances now,” he says. “I’m more immersed in the storytelling than I used to be.”

Even after decades of work, Brent continues to evolve by experimenting with new sounds, refining his process, and pushing his own creative instincts.

“I’ll go back and listen to something I wrote and think, how did I come up with that?” he says. “Sometimes you don’t even realize what you’ve done until later.”

What keeps him engaged is the same thing that drew him in from the beginning.

“It’s the storytelling,” he says. “That’s what still excites me. Everyone’s bringing their best, and you want to rise to that.”

After nearly 40 years, the process remains unchanged at its core: an act of imagination, shaped by experience.

“You’re just taking what you hear in your head,” Brent says, “and finding a way to bring it to life.”