‘ sequenceLord of the Rings: Rings of Power‘ already aired all episodes Beyond being watched on Prime Video (and scrutinized by fans), the result left room for other aspects of the production, such as the music, to stand out.
While the series’ main title is by legendary composer Howard Shore, who had already composed the music for Peter Jackson’s trilogy of films twenty years ago, which kickstarted each episode and became the most well-known theme, the series from Amazon is ‘Battlestar Galactica’, among others. , ‘Black Sails’, ‘Outlander’ and ‘The Walking Dead’, the composer known for the soundtrack of the films Bear McCreary, guaranteed the musical prestige of all images.
The commercial strategy of its introduction has been leading: each episode has an album available to fans that collects topics related to the events that took place during that hour of filming. At the end of the season, the ‘noble’ soundtrack for the series, which is a recap of eight episodes, was released, but fans of Tolkien or music have the option to listen to the songs. Eight hours of topics on ‘Rings of Power’.
It was McCreary himself who wanted to tell the details of this soundtrack’s composition, from its commission to its worldwide distribution, and he did so through several entries on his website that promise to keep the production process fed with more anecdotes and curiosity. of the series.
These the five most interesting anecdotes The musical production described by the composer:
security
After receiving the commission, the composer was unable to comment to his family or friends about what he was working on, given the confidentiality and confidentiality conditions that marked the series’ commercial strategy, only his wife Raya knew. “Even in the safety of my own home, I didn’t dare say the words ‘Lord of the Rings’ out loud for fear of my little daughter Sonatine repeating it at school. At dinner, my wife and I talked in code,” she explains.
After some initial contacts at the end of 2020, he was allowed to join the project in the summer of 2021. He continued to live in Los Angeles while the entire crew was already working on filming in New Zealand.
17 musical themes
A television series has up to seven musical themes, two of which are deeper. “Rings of Power has 17.” While reading the scripts and discussing the structure of the show with the ‘showrunners’, I’ve come up with a list of the most vital themes that I think are essential and include special character themes for Galadriel. , Elrond, Sauron, Nori, Stranger, Durin IV, Bronwyn and Arondir, Halbrand, Elendil and Isildur, Adar and Orcs and Mystics”, but he also composed themes related to places: Valinor, Khazad-Dum, Númenor and the Harfoots people, their own have your theme. “Also the Rings of Power,” he adds.
Human thigh bone?
McReary also separated the themes of different cultures in the series from different instruments. Compositions associated with the people of Númenor were inspired by the easternmost regions of Europe and Asia Minor. duduk, an Armenian wind instrument or string drum, a traditional Turkish stringed instrument, while the themes of the hairy scenes are accompanied by Celtic instruments such as Irish and Scottish bagpipes.
music designed for orcs, animal bones, horns, and even a human thigh boneThe Stranger’s is about Balinese gamelan music.
And the record came
“For each part, we recorded a four-day symphony orchestra in London, either at Sir George Martin’s iconic AIR Studios or in London. legendary Abbey Road Studios”, says McCreary, “also three to four days of choir and boys’ choirs at the Synchron Stage in Vienna, Austria, and various solo instrumentalists in Los Angeles, New York, Norway and Sweden, a process that takes about seven days.”
Covid restrictions took lives. The orchestra could not perform the compositions at the same time: on the one hand, string players met and recorded, then wind instruments, percussion, soloist and choir held separate sessions, which greatly complicated the logistics. And many didn’t even know they were playing for the ‘Rings of Power’ soundtrack.
‘Tolken’ languages
The weight of the choirs is very important in the soundtrack and their management has been difficult. Themes are created using five languages invented by Tolkien: two Elvish languages, Sindarin and Quenya, a Dwarf language, Khuzdûl, the language of Númenor, Adûnaic, and the language of the orcs and Sauron called the black tongue. “While it’s possible for our linguists to come up with new words in any of these languages using Tolkien’s devised rules, I tried to use real words that Tolkien himself imagined,” says McReary.
The side issue is how it sounds: a dialect coach, Leith McPherson, recorded a slow-pronounced audio track that was used mainly by choirs and singers alike.