Ramin Djawadi on composing the Game of Thrones theme song and the music of Season 5

As television dramas sought to challenge the scope and scale of cinema, the music accompanying them has risen in prominence. Lost had Michael Giacchino, Battlestar Galactica had Bear McCreary, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer had Christophe Beck. Game of Thrones is lucky to have the brilliant mind of Ramin Djawadi scoring its most epic (and most intimate) moments.

There’s perhaps no better or more easily recognizable piece of music from Thrones than the theme song. In a recent episode of the Song Exploder podcast, Djawadi breaks down how each element of the song came together. He opens by talking about how the producers asked for a main title theme, a rarity in today’s television, and about capturing the feeling of a journey in the music. The opening bars start in a minor key and switch to the major key, Djawadi’s way of capturing the show’s “backstabbing and conspiracy.” The solo cello and solo violin coming together for the melody line implies the possibility of characters meeting, “the paths they might take,” and how they might eventually intersect with each other. The B-section is meant to build a sense of adventure, escalating with the choir, which is made up of 20 female voices. There’s some fun talk after the discussion about some of the various cover versions of the theme that started appearing almost immediately after the tune was unveiled—the “Peter Dinklage” version and the South Park wiener version are singled out for discussion.

“Creatively, there’s no limits,” Djawadi says towards the end of the podcast, and that spirit seems to have carried him through the fifth season, as detailed in a follow-up interview with Vanity Fair. For one thing, Djawadi intentionally avoided using sounds solely from one region of the real world to represent a new place, such as Dorne or Braavos, in George R.R. Martin’s fictional world. By blending music from various parts of our world when creating his music, Djawadi avoids tying any particular region of Westeros or Essos with any particular region of Earth, thereby keeping the show immersed in its own fantasy universe.

Djawadi is also a fan of not letting the music interfere with the storytelling. He talks about trying not to tip off Mossador’s beheading by Daenerys (“you just have to find the sweet spot to stay in the unknown”) and openly discusses not overpowering the viewer with music when talking about Shireen’s sacrifice scene:

I don’t need to overpower with music. I think that’s what’s nice [with] scenes like this—the music flows and you don’t have to force it. Because it’s already like you’re seeing it or hearing it, like with the sound effects, [which is] already so powerful in and of itself. I think that’s something that Game of Thrones does really well. That just makes my job a lot easier.

All told, it seems Djawdi that is of one mind with the producers. As with the writing of the epic Hardhome battle sequence this year, Djawadi looks for “the smaller theme… within the big picture of the whole thing.” Of course, that episode ends with the Night’s King raising the dead to the sounds of utter silence. This intense attention to detail is what makes Djawadi, who is scoring the upcoming Warcraft film and continues to work on the outstanding CBS series Person of Interest, a fine composer.

• Published on 06/24/2015 at 11:00 AM CDT
• Last updated on 06/24/2015 at 11:29 AM CDT