Maester’s Ludwig Diary

April 2023 – The best-laid plans…

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…

February 2022 – The Old Bear

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…

January 2023 – The Little Wolf

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…

December 2022 – The Other Mockingbird

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…

November 2022 – The Mockingbird

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…

October 2022 – The Lions of the Stag

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…

September 2022 – The Khal

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…

August 2022 – Summer Break

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…

July 2022 – Pirate Music

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…

June 2022 – All the Great Houses

Hello and welcome to Maester Ludwig’s diary entry for June! This one is long overdue (and a couple of days later than I wanted) but after a long drought of new music the time has finally come to have all the Great Houses all Westeros represented in the book. House Arryn The leitmotif for House…

May 2022 – Finally

Welcome to the diary update for May 2022! Ever since October I have been working on the transition to video format for the website. It has taken longer than I wanted (and expected) but it’s finally over! From the dozens of pages with text, images, and audio, to only four pages: People, Societies, Places, and…

April 2022 – The People’s Book

Hello and welcome to April’s diary entry! This month I switched jobs so I had a bit less time and bit more stress than usual so I was a bit slow in finishing the pages for the characters’ chapter of the book. In any case, and just as it was the case with the cultures…

March 2022 – Fresh from the scribe

Spring is here and so is a new diary! This one will be as brief as it is massive: Long gone are the days of boring pages! Using a similar template to the one created for character themes I have reformatted the entire section dedicated to Cultures and Religions to create one continuous video. In…

February 2022 – Good Things Come To Those Who Wait

Welcome to a much, much anticipated updated of Music of Ice and Fire! After many months of hard work the time has finally come to see whether the wait has paid off and to celebrate this website’s second anniversary! The ”Book” Look Back in October I simply had had enough of the website not looking…

January 2022 – The Grind Continues

Welcome to this month’s diary entry, where I tell you all about what I wish I had ready for this month’s update but I actually don’t! Now seriously, it’s been a crazy month trying to update all the music I had to the book format I showcased last month trying to meet my self-imposed deadline…

December 2021 – A New Look

Welcome to the last of this year’s updates! As I announced last month I started the process of creating a new format for the website where every single piece of music will get a video with a detailed breakdown of the music and a text description to better understand the reasoning behind it. I really…

November 2021 – Books and Maps

Welcome to November’s update which itself is an update of last month’s update (riveting, I know). Jokes aside, I had wanted to work on music for the past couple of months but the thought of finding a neat way of displaying the material is taking up all my energy. So, without further ado, let’s take…

October 2021 – The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

Welcome to this month’s update where I talk about webiste improvements and Shireen Baratheon’s new theme! For the past couple of weeks I have been embroiled in a fight against the software gods to come up with a nicer way of displaying content on the website. The results? The Good So for the longest time…

September 2021 – The end of Summer

Hello and welcome to another diary entry! This month I had to clear my backlog of pending issues which I couldn’t postpone any longer so I had to put Music of Ice and Fire on the back burner for a few weeks. Therefore, nothing too fancy for this month’s update, just the inclusion of House…

August 2021 – The Lion is Stag’s Clothing

Summer is in full swing and Maester’s Ludwig’s diary comes hot from the press! This month I’m finally uploading the Joffrey leitmotif I had intended for a couple of months back plus some of more Iron Throne music. Let’s dig in! The Lion in Stag’s Clothing To start with a bang, here is Joffrey’s leitmotif…

July 2021 – Direwolves

Welcome to July’s Diary entry! Summer is in full swing but the direwolves are doing just fine, as House Stark is getting a good update. The Direwolves While all main characters of House Stark have were uploaded a long time ago now it’s time for the secondary characters we didn’t get to meet on the…

June 2021 – Dragons

Welcome to June’s diary entry! This month’s update is quite significant for the website, as House Targaryen hadn’t seen an update since the release of the website. Without further ado, let’s talk about dragons. The House of the Dragon House Targaryen is the largest house in the A Song of Ice and Fire universe in…

May 2021 – Housekeeping

Hello and welcome to June’s diary entry! This month I made substantial progress advancing many of the musical fronts where progress had come to a halt a long time ago, but at the same time I also experienced technical difficulties that bogged me down and eventually stopped me in my tracks for many days. In…

April 2021 – Writing is Rewriting (Part 2)

Welcome to this month’s diary entry. I had planned to post this entry last Saturday but life got in the way somehow, and I even had to cut some material that was going to make it into this month’s diary. Still, there is some interesting I want to show you this month and it has…

March 2021 – The Ironborn

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.…

February 2021 – 1st Anniversary

Welcome to the Diary entry for February 2021 when Music of Ice and Fire celebrates its first anniversary, or the closest thing to an anniversary, since there won’t be another February 29th until 2024. The website, as it stands today contains 1 hour of music split into 39 tracks, all available in the Library. 18…

January 2021 – Deadlines

“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.”Douglas Adams Welcome to the first diary entry for 2021! As the quote above suggests, my deadline for this month flew right by me. I had planned for this month’s entry to be all about knighthood and the kingsguards, tying it all…

December 2020 – Picking up where I left it

Welcome to the last diary entry of the year! Last month I talked about changing course and focusing more on non-character music for a while. Writing for locations, societies, objects, and concepts is turning out to be harder than I thought but progress is being made, though such is my luck that right now it…

November 2020 – Not just characters

Welcome to November’s diary entry! For some time now, I have had the feeling that to write music for characters has been getting harder and harder. After a whole year working on House Stark, Targaryen, Baratheon, Lannister, Tully, Martell, Tyrell, Greyjoy… I am convinced I need to take a step back and let the creative…

Octber 2020 – Leitmotif Family Trees

Welcome to October’s diary entry. This month has been a very difficult one in the writing department. With every step I have taken forward I seem to have, somehow, ended up two steps back from where I started. Every little bit of music is scrutinized for consistency against an ever increasing amount of music, as…

September 2020 – Writing is Rewriting

Hello and welcome to September’s diary entry. This month’s update will be on the briefer side as there are some bigger updates simmering in the back-burner that need more time to finish cooking. With that said, this month House Tyrell has been updated with Margaery Tyrell’s leitmotif and House Lannister with Tyrion Lannister’s leitmotif.  One…

August 2020 – Instrumentation

Welcome to Ausgust’s diary entry. Plenty of new music has been uploaded to the website this month that won’t be covered here as it would make this entry way too long, so you can check for yourself the themes for Arya Stark and Bran Stark over at House Stark’s page; Stannis Baratheon’s theme which has…

July 2020 – Website update 1.2

Welcome to July’s diary entry. This month there has been a lot of effort into beautifying the webiste, expanding onto other platforms and of course new music. A nicer browsing experience Last month there was a significant overhaul of the website in terms of tracks but now it was time for a more obvious overhaul…

June 2020 – Website update 1.1

Welcome to June’s entry of my diary. This month’s update has been massive but it fly under the radar of most people since it involves very little new music. How is that possible? Well, with some very minor exceptions, all the audio tracks and accompanying images have been remade to better suit the tonality framework…

May 2020 – It’s all about the leitmotifs (2)

Welcome to May’s diary entry. This week I’m publishing the page of House Tully with two tracks from Catelyn, but the real course is an expanded discussion on leitmotifs after the appetizer from last month’s update, as I want to delve into the importance leitmotifs will have in the music of the project, especially Notes…

April 2020 – It’s all about the leitmotifs

Welcome to April’s update. This month is dedicated to leitmotifs of great houses of Westeros. After last month’s quiz I received some feedback asking how on Earth was anyone suppose to guess what each track referred to what character based on a brief and cryptic title. Yes, I must admit that I underestimated how new…

March 2020 – A Music Quiz of Ice and Fire

For the second update to the website I had in mind a mix of writing and new music in equal parts. Now, with the current situation most people are (wisely) choosing to stay at home and find whatever means of entertainment they can, so I asked myself if there was anything I could do to…

February 2020 – Inception of the Project

Welcome to Music of Ice and Fire. I’m Maester Ludwig and I’m here to break the 4th wall and talk a bit about this project, how it came about and what to expect. It all began a few years ago when a friend asked my opinion on a particular musical theme that served as the…