The music of The Mandalorian is already creating a stir- in a very positive way – and composer, the Oscar winning Ludwig Goransson discusses that music and how it very much fits in as part of the story.
Are the end titles the same every week?
I can’t give away any spoilers but for the first three episodes they’re the same.
Was that a major piece to write for The Mandalorian?
So the end titles was kind of the first thing I wrote for the show before I even saw footage. Just by reading the script and by seeing the artwork a year ago when I first met with Jon, I started writing. I went back to my studio and closed myself off for a month and said I want to take a step away from the computer because I wanted to kind of connect with my inner child. I just wanted to play instruments myself. I bought these recorders and I started to improvise. Every instrument led me to another instrument so I start with recorders, I made up that melody that you hear in The Mandalorian. And then I went onto the drums, onto the piano, to the guitar so I created five songs. The first song I did is what basically ended up in the end titles. I just re-orchestrated it a little bit.
Is when not to score just as important as when to score?
Absolutely. I think that was one of the best things about Star Wars was spotting when do you determine when the music comes in and when it comes out? That’s a discussion that Dave Filoni, he knows Star Wars so well, and also Jon, that was always an important discussion we had about where the music should come in and where it shouldn’t come in and where to leave breaths and where to leave the pauses. Something that’s different about this show than any other Star Wars shows is that the main character has a helmet on. So you don’t see any facial expressions. So what the music needs to do is to reveal what the character is feeling in the show. The music is basically the character’s facial expression.
