Game of Thrones theme song started in a car
[MUSIC]
Ramin, good to meet you.
Thanks for talking to us today.
Nice to meet you too.
Thanks for having me.
So, the Game of Thrones Live Experience, what's it like now that Game of Thrones is drawing slow towards the end?
What's it like to kinda go back over the history of the show in this live show?
It's been actually really fun to do, because preparing for the show, we, obviously, went all the way back to season one, and it's interesting.
You kinda forget where some of the characters had started and some of the musical themes have started, and how they have evolved now over time.
So it's been a great process to kinda sit back Really go back all the way to the beginning and see what are the very important scenes that we want to tell in this concert?
And it was actually hard to me, because there is so much material, there's so much story.
And to condense that down to a two and a half hour concert, and now with bringing this to Europe, we actually were able to add season 7 to it as well, so we had to even more condense it and see, now what do we want to play?
What do we remove and change up?
So it's been great fun to really get an overview of the whole thing.
Going back to, what you mentioned, the very very beginning, when you first sat down at a piano or with an instrument to
[MUSIC]
Kind of to first start composing the theme, what was the very first kind of thought that you had?
For the main theme?
Yeah.
It was really just trying to capture the overall mood of the show.
It was primarily, I think the main instrument of the entire show is the cello.
It's the most dominant.
Instrument, I would say.
So I knew that writing the theme, I wanted to feature the cello [UNKNOWN] at least feature it in the beginning, and then the orchestra would come in as the piece builds.
But that's really the instruments I had in mind writing it, and the initial idea, I have to say, actually came in the car.
I was actually driving, they just had showed me the visuals of the Of the beautiful main titles with the cities popping up and everything.
And then as I was driving back to my studio, that's when the melody actually started forming in my head.
Okay.
And I worked from that.
And I remember when the first episode aired, and then next day David and Dan sent me a YouTube video of the first cover that came out.
And then another one popped up and it was just beautiful to see how it inspired people around the world.
To create their versions and their style, metal version, and techno, and all these different things, and it was just flattering to see.
Yeah, how do you kind of identify the instruments, or kind of the themes that are going to go with each character?
How do you kind of symbolize their kind of character?
Yeah, that was also part of the initial conversation with David and Dan.
Because before we even started writing, we sat down.
And we discussed the scope of the show and they really had a great vision of what they wanted musically.
And they said, look, there's lots of different locations.
We really wanna enhance that musically that we're north of the wall.
We're In the desert with Daenerys and we're here with it.
So, musically I try to switch that out with instruments that besides the visual aspect, that's also an audible aspect to tell us, okay now we're here.
Or now we're with this family, we're now with this and so, that's how we jump around this.
The violin for example, we use for the Starks quite a bit The cello is the Lannisters a lot, with the Dothrakis or Khal Drogo, we had a duduk, a mini duduk.
And I could go on and on actually, every season, I add new instruments.
And we always laugh when they go in the beginning, go, what instrument haven't you used?
Is there anything new we can try out?
And go actually to season six.
In light of the seven we used a piano for the first time that was an instrument we had not used at all in six seasons and at that point it felt like, how about we try this piano which was really the language of the show but we felt that the moment was So different we thought let's really musically kind of break out of usual sound [INAUDIBLE] and try something else.
Okay, and to our final question, I want to ask if you could have written the theme to any TV show ever which TV show would you like to write a theme for?
Yeah I don't know if I would have said I would have wanted
Would've written for that.
But on the subject of TV themes, I mean there's so many great themes from the 80s, Magnum, Miami Vice.
Yeah, it's just
I think that's the beauty of a TV main title is that I always say if you are in a different room and your show comes on, you want that main title to drag you in that room.
And you're in the kitchen and you go, my show is on, I got to go in.
And that's what these themes all do.
And that's how I grew up.
And so I feel fortunate having Being able to work on something [UNKNOWN] to create things that hopefully drag into
[UNKNOWN] All right that's a great ending, thank you very much [CROSSTALK] thanks so much.
Thank you.
[MUSIC]
[MUSIC]
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