March 2021 – The Ironborn – Music of Ice and Fire

Welcome to the Diary entry for March 2021! The time has finally come for House Greyjoy to join the roster of noble Westerosi houses and for the Ironborn to be included as one of the musical cultures of Westeros!

What is dead may never die

House Greyjoy shouldn’t be too difficult to write music for. After all, it is not larger than most other houses and all their members can be seen as stereotypical raiding Vikings, so writing some pirate-like music should do the trick, right? The reality is that House Greyjoy is proving to be more difficult than most other houses. One reason for that could be that there are four Greyjoy POV characters thus making them and the Lannisters contend for the title of second largest house by number of POVs.

And let me tell you that POV characters are way more difficult to write music for than non POV characters, as knowing exactly the train of thought of a character means having to write both music that is coherent from both the outside and inside perspective one has as a reader. I love writing music for characters like Loras or Oberyn since whatever might happen inside their heads is unknown to us, thus making it far easier to simply write music that matches our outside perception of them (this being that both are awesome). However, writing music that matches whatever our outside perception of Theon is with his internal monologue is, at least for me, a daunting task. And therein lies the problem. Theon’s character arc is so extreme that in order to write the most fitting music to it I need to plan in detail his entire leitmotif development before I can even consider working on other Greyjoy characters. And of course, this is a huge drawback since I have had leitmotif ideas for Balon, Victarion and Euron for years but I have never wanted to commit to any of them for fear that I would need to change them eventually.

As of late I have been feeling more confident about my ideas regarding the Greyjoys, with some ideas being finally cemented while others have been discarded wholesale. And perhaps I’m finally feeling more confident about Theon’s leitmotif and its development than ever before, because today I decided to upload the Ironborn music page I had written a year ago and a leitmotif for Balon Greyjoy I had come up almost two years ago. Hopefully I get to fill out the Greyjoy family tree in a timely manner, although I suspect Theon will still be the last one to finally take shape. In the meantime, I leave you with the Balon Greyjoy, the King Kraken.