In a superb interview conducted by StarWars.com senior editor Dan Brooks, Nicholas Britell delves deep into his influences, his own Star Wars passion and the scope he was given to interpret Star Wars: Andor into a score that is both unique yet familiar to the ears of the audience.
StarWars.com: Can you talk about bringing that blend [of instruments and techniques] into it?
Nicholas Britell: Yeah. Again, one of the fun things here was that chance to experiment. Tony is a musician as well. Tony was in a band years ago. I mean, Tony has a real sense of music. And so, it’s wonderful working with someone who has that sense. Not that it’s about the language, because I actually think a lot of time, musical terminology isn’t necessarily helpful in talking about music. But I think knowing your feelings is so important and knowing when you hear something, what do you feel? And Tony’s very good at that. He’s very good at, when he hears something, he clocks how he feels. And so if I say, ‘Oh, do you want something that feels kinda like this?’ Or, ‘Do you like this kind of a feeling?’ And he immediately will say, ‘Yeah, I dig that. Let’s follow that.’ And so that was very helpful early on when I was trying to put the palette together, because at times, I thought it was very important that we do have the ability to go into rich strings. But at the same time, perhaps, as you’ll hear, certainly in the beginning of the series, it’s also really important that we have really close mic’d individual strings at times on the cellos, for example. Hopefully you hear the bow on the strings — you hear the closeness of that. Because one word that Tony would use that I really felt a lot, especially when we’re alone with Cassian at times, there’s a sense of intimacy there. There’s a sense of contemplation. There’s a sense of loneliness at times, for sure. And I think it’s important that the music itself reflect those things. There are times where we go huge, where it’s probably the biggest sound I’ve ever created. [Laughs.] But at the same time we also go really, really tiny and close. It’s really important to, hopefully, convey those feelings, and what Cassian is going through. Because he goes through a lot, as we know.
