Welcome to the shortest update in the history of this website! This month there was still no time at all to dedicate to Music of Ice and Fire so I will continue uploading leitmotifs of keeps that belong to the Great Houses of Westeros.
The second keep on the list is the famed Stark keep of Winterfell, with the very recognizable “Wolf’s Howling” seemingly spelling Winterfell as the Howling descends.
That’s been all for today! There will be another one of these short leitmotifs in June’s update for another great keep. Can you guess which keep it will be?
Welcome to the latest Diary entry ever, as it had never happened that I upload one of these a full month later than I intended to. As the title says, it doesn’t matter what we have planned, life finds a way to get in the way. I had intended for 2023 to be the year when I step on the gas an write new music as never before but the absolute opposite of that seems to be true so far. In my defense, I do have some good reasons for being away from my piano, like buying, renovating, and moving into a property that is in a different city while also planning the arrival of a new heir of my own house makes it for very little time for anything else, and it’s not even over yet. There is still a lot of going back and forth between the old place and the new one to take part in the renovation, packing boxes, going to doctor’s appointments, and up until this week having to go to an office to do some actual work.
Keeps of Westeros
Having not posted anything left quite a bad taste in my mouth so even if I haven’t even sat down at the piano for the past couple of months (and probably won’t be able to do so for the next 2 or 3) I want to keep uploading some more music every month as I have done for the past 3 years. I had in mind uploading the leitmotifs for each and every one of the keeps of the major houses of Westeros last month but I never got around to it. I wish I had all of the renders and accompanying images for the themes but alas I couldn’t get around to finishing them before I to simply put the idea in the back burner where it stayed simmering ever since.
Instead of uploading them all at once something tells me it would be better to pace myself and spread them over time. So here is the leitmotif for the Red Keep of King’s Landing, a simple rising interval that I’m very satisfied with, evoking the grandeur power of House Targaryen and it’s founder Aegon the Conqueror.
That is all until next month, when I will (hopefully) upload more leitmotifs of keeps belonging to the great houses of Westeros. See you then!
Welcome to a February’s diary entry… in March! Just when I was getting ready to celebrate the third anniversary of this website life decided to throw some curved balls in my general direction and I had to put the update in the back burner for an extra week. Anyway, better late than never, here is this month’s new theme!
This year I want to upload more music belonging to characters from some Noble Houses that are not main characters, and to whet our appetite we will start with Jeor Mormont..
The Old Bear
The Old Bear is a succinct but noble theme and full of ‘northerness’. The contrabassoon begins the slow and gruff march in the low register, building up higher in the register and dynamics as the bassoon and strings join the march.
The keystone in this theme is the bear leitmotif, who those familiar with the song The Bear and the Maiden Fair from this website might recognize it as an ascending third. Now, this interval is way too common an interval to use it as the leitmotif for House Mormont, but it still takes centerstage as it piles up on itself moving up and down the minor pentatonic scale of the First Men (even if the entire theme only uses four pitches).
Something important about this theme is that it is not the Jeor as we meet him in the books. This is the him as Lord of Bear Island and head of House Mormont; it’s a lord’s theme, not a commander of the Night’s Watch theme.
A couple of entries back I talked about how I like to write themes for characters thinking about their arc progression and development, and Jeor Mormont is no different here. At some point in the future I will upload Jeor’s theme as Lord Commander, ‘The Old Black Bear’, but I liked this theme for him too much to not share it here. I hope you like it too!
There is still a diary entry for March in the making,so see you in a few weeks!
Hi there! This year the goal is to write and upload as much new music as possible and although I have only managed to finish two new themes in January, those two have been incredibly satisfying to finally see them come through.
This month’s new theme is sadly neither of those two but one I had procrastinated long enough to upload. With Rickon Stark’s theme on the website now there are only two Stark themes missing (those would be Benjen and Brandon in case you are wondering)
The Little Wolf
Rickon’s theme is the most playful of all the Stark themes, of course; very childish and a bit vexing at times as three-year olds can be. The mix of Stark and Tully is at the foreground, as is the case for Rickon’s full siblings Robb, Sansa, Arya, and Barn, but the simplicity of it allows for a lot of room for growth.
I hoped you enjoyed this little theme and I also to see you in February’s s diary entry!
Happy New Year! In this last diary entry of the year I want to share with you the other side of the Mockingbird we saw last month.
Last month I uploaded a track called the Mockingbird, Petyr Baelish’s theme as we meet him in “A Game of Thrones”. It was a theme depicting Littlefinger’s cunning and conniving persona.
The Mockingbird
This month I wanted to peel back the curtain and show you the original track that came before the Mockingbird, what I call “The Infatuated Mockingbird”.
The Infatuated Mockingbird
Maybe I’m the only one but to me Petyr’s story is a very tragic one. A young boy, barely fifteen, challenging an older an experienced fighter to a duel to win the hand of the woman he loves… and we all know how that story ended.
In my eyes Petyr Baelish died that day. The Littlefinger we know has nothing in common with Petyr except the memories of that day. It was important for me to capture that in a separate theme for Petyr, once that could evolve and corrupt it even. This is that theme that was misguided, naive and was destined to a bitter end.
The original theme is played an octave higher and the melody seems to soar with a less airy sound quality to the flute, a brighter sound. The theme plays through the lens of hindsight, full of foreshadowing and so it has a tragic mood to it. The Tully leitmotif is featured from the first bar and yet the love theme is never heard. It was writing this piece that I gained a whole new appreciation for the tragedy of Petyr Baelish.
The Infatuated Mockingbird
I hope you liked this entry’s theme and I hope to see you again in 2023 when I plan to upload as much music as I humanly can. Happy New Year everybody!
Welcome to the second to last diary of the year! Today I´m uploading a theme for a character I thought I´d never be able to write: a character too hideous to deserve any sympathy but with a tragic backstory that, at least in my eyes, deserves some pity… or perhaps not.
The Mockingbird
For the longest time Littlefinger had been a difficult theme to approach. It needed to be ambiguous but not vague, and cryptic but not mysterious. The theme needed to reflect the scheming nature of Littlefinger without being too on the nose, rather subtle, subtle enough to pass for innocent at times but always unnerving.
On top of that the theme needed to have a redeeming quality of some sort as I see Petyr as a very tragic figure. No one could deny he is a self-serving ambitious murdered, but there was a time when he was a naive boy who believed he could win the hand of his beloved in a duel.
The transformation of Petyr into Littlefinger is something I have put a lot of effort into, but today I´m only showing the latter of the two themes, closer to the character we meet in A Game of Thrones, when the reader is weary but still uncertain of the true nature of the Master of Coin.
I hope you enjoyed it and I hope to see you next month in the last diary entry of the year!
Welcome to this month’s diary, where we have two new themes to add to Houses Baratheon or Lannister, depending on your point of view. I’m of course talking about Myrcella’s and Tommen’s themes to complete the trio of siblings who bear the Stag and Lion sigil.
Both themes walk the fine line between Baratheon and Lannister, combining elements of both and balancing the leitmotifs of both houses. The Baratheon leitmotif is the first leitmotif heard in both themes but the Lannister leitmotif is clearly more abundant, I wonder why…
The Sweet Lioness
Myrcella Baratheon is beautiful as her mother but with none of her spiteful nature. Her theme plays out slowly, with long sustained notes and a softness uncommon for a Lannister
The Little Lion
Tommen is everything his brother Joffrey is not: a boy with a good heart who enjoys playing with his kittens rather than gutting them.
This is all for this entry. Rather short but to the point. You can find more details and a breakdown of these themes in the People’s portion of the book Music of Ice and Fire. I’ll see you next month with more themes from characters from great Houses!
Welcome to this month’s diary entry where we’ll have a look at Khal Drogo’s theme and how it differs from our Westerosi themes.
The Dothraki
In the Societies page there is an entry dedicated to the Dothraki culture where we breakdown the basics of their music. There we saw how the Dothraki music is very percussion driven but there wasn’t much in the melodic department except for the statement that all their melodies are based on the pentatonic modes.
Expanding on that concept we have the same 5/4 rhythm we already heard played by three instruments of Middle Eastern origin: The Tombak, The Daf, and the Riq.
The Riq is a tambourine of Egyptian origin large zills that allow for very finger playing on them.
The Tombak is a type of goblet drum of Persian origin capable of an astounding range of sounds and effects only surpassed, in my opinion, by the Indian Tabla.
The Daf is a type of frame drum, also of Persian origin, with hundreds of little metal rings attached to the frame giving it a very characteristic sound.
The three instruments combined can create a diverse yet cohesive ensemble where the different ranges of the instruments complement each other rather nicely; with the daf providing a solid bass texture, the riq adding a rich high end to the mix, while the Tombak brings it all together.
What’s a new addition to the mix is the Mongolian horse-fiddle, or Morink Khuur. This cello-like instrument made of horse hair and played by Mongolian horsemen for millennia was bound to make its way to the Dothraki theme somehow.
The Khal
The music for Khal Drogo features a full string section playing ponticello, a technique that creates a harsher sound than what we are used, accompanied by the percussive ensemble of Riq, Tombak, and Daf. The minor pentatonic scale plays in the key of F♯, a key never used in any other theme and reserved exclusively for the Dothraki and Lhazareen.
That was all for this month. I hope to see you in the next one!
Welcome to a most delayed (and perhaps a bit procrastinated) diary entry! This past month I took a very long and nice break from work, which is great, but I also happened to be very far from home and my piano. Since there was little I could do music-wise I decided to work on a project not related to A Song of Ice and Fire (which is very odd for me). I spent a few weeks working on a board game idea I had a couple of years ago and I’m incredibly pleased with it; now I just need to play it!
Coming back home last week I still had another week off before going back to work so I dusted off another idea I had but this time ASOIAF related: after having finished the current intro with the book and the table I thought it would be great to have the camera pull back and show the surroundings as we flip through the pages, but it shelved the idea for the time being… until now!
Transitions
The book now has transitions between regions where we can see a panoramic view of the area and hear the atmosphere around us. It doesn’t sound like much but it helps a lot to give the whole thing some depth. I hope you like it! And now back to writing new music; see you in the next diary entry!
Welcome to July’s diary entry for 2022. In this aestival period we dive into the water’s of the Iron Islands to find ourselves some pirate music, but first we need to ask ourselves one question…
What is pirate music?
Glad you asked, but this is a pointless question since there is not such thing as pirate music. What there is though are works of music featuring pirates, and that’s as far as one can go. Let’s have a look at one of the oldest examples of pirate music in Wagner’s ‘The Flying Dutchman’.
A time signature of 6/4, a yo-ho-ho melody in the brass, and lots of tremolo on the strings, but nothing else stands out as piraty, and yet, one cannot deny it feels incredibly appropriate.
Let’s jump forward a few years and listen to a classic tune from ‘The Secret of Monkey Island’:
The time signature is 4/4 and there aren’t really instruments as much as there are ‘roles’ but it sounds ‘piraty’, and that is yet again due to context. Something this tune has that Wagner’s didn’t is a singable quality, almost like a call and response that goes back to the sea shantys sung by sailors at sea. Here’s an example of such a shanty:
I wrote an storm shanty for the the Ironborn a few years ago to that I wish I could have performed by real singers one day, but for now virtual instruments will have to do:
Storm of steel the iron born are coming for you Yo-Ho-Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Yo-Ho-Ho-Ho
Storm of steel we take what we want ’cause with iron we pay, Yo-Ho-Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho-Ho-Ho
Storm of steel we’ll take your life, your wife, your child, Yo-Ho-Ho HO! HO! HO! HO! HO! HO! HO! HO! YO-HO-HO-HO
Storm of steel and you can hide, but not from the sea, Yo-Ho-Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! Ho! YO-HO-HO-HO-HO!
With all this context in mind let’s now take let’s take a look at house Greyjoy, specifically at Balon and Theon Greyjoy.
The Krakens
I uploaded Balon’s Greyjoy leitmotif as King of the Iron Islands some time ago. I was written in a more Wagnerian style of pirate, with lots of strings (although no brass) a 3/4 time signature and a yo-ho-ho tune.
The new theme in this diary entry is Theon Greyjoy’s theme as Ned Stark’s ward, and it couldn’t be any more different in style than Balon’s.
In fact, it is much closer in style to the jolly pirate music of ‘The Secret of Monkey Island’, and it took me a long while to finally realize that both tunes share indeed a few aspects, most notably a pickup note followed by a rest and a descending line that moves up by a second at the end.
‘The Secret of Monkey Island’ theme
Subconscious borrowing? Perhaps, but in reality the line is actually derived from Balon’s own theme and shares many more aspects with it than with the videogame tune. The right combination of playful arrogance and cockiness mixed with a bit of uncomfortable suspicion is something that took me a long time to find given I had to stay close to the Ironborn leitmotifs and the link between Balon and Theon. This being Theon’s first leitmotif the theme will grow a lot in future incarnations past the stage of jolly pirate tune and into darker settings.
That’s been all for today. I hope you join me again next month to listen to new character themes. See you then!
Music of Ice and Fire 