Ayla Ruby
Ramin Djawadi is behind some of the most memorable and stunning television scores in recent times. The composer, who started his career working for and with Hans Zimmer, is best known for his work on Iron Man, Game of Thrones, Westworld, and the recent Fallout. In late March of this year, Djawadi added another score to his cap with Netflix’s 3 Body Problem.
The science fiction show is the brainchild of David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo. It’s an adaptation of a massively popular book by Chinese author Liu Cixin. called The Three-Body Problem. If the names Benioff and Weiss sound familiar to you, that’s probably because of Game of Thrones, another book-to series where the writing duo also worked with Djawadi. But in 3 Body Problem’s case, the world is very different. The show is a blend of timelines from the 1960s to now, with heavy technology and science, and even a wonderful love story with Will and Jin, played by Alex Sharp and Jess Hong.
Djawadi talked about how the creators of 3 Body Problem got him on board early and how his long relationship with them was part of that. He talked about the collaborative nature of filmmaking and how, instead of strictly talking about music, they talked about the story and emotional goals of the characters. Djawadi’s approach led him to craft mesmerizing soundscapes that captured the essence of the unknown and the lurking danger, layering in a Morse code-like pattern with an unusual time signature into the score to help create tension. He talked about recording some of the music himself and how that’s a part of his composing process, sometimes even ending up as the final sound. However, Djawadi also shared that some of the orchestral elements of the 3 Body Problem were recorded in Prague with the same group he used for Game of Thrones.
Ayla Ruby: I’m super excited to talk. I love the show, but most importantly, I love the music.
Ramin Djawadi: Awesome. Great.
Ayla Ruby: So, can you talk a little bit about your journey to this project? How did you get on board? Obviously, you worked with the creators before. How did you get into the project?
Ramin Djawadi: Yeah, it was really sweet. Obviously, having worked with David and Dan for so long on Game of Thrones, they called me up quite a bit. I want to say maybe a year and a half before and said, “Ramin, we will need you in a year and a half from now. We want you to be available because, yeah, we’re doing a new project and that’s when we are thinking, we’re anticipating, we’re going into post-production. So be ready, we hope you’re available.” And I said, “Of course, I’m super excited to work with you again on something completely different.”
Ayla Ruby: Yeah, that’s awesome. This is a genre show, and what draws you to genre shows, besides your relationship with them? What do you like about them?
Ramin Djawadi: Well, what I thought was interesting is that it was obviously so completely different from Game of Thrones. Here, we had a sci-fi show… Sorry, a fantasy show, medieval-inspired fantasy show. And then here we have a sci-fi show, very futuristic, and so, obviously, that laid the groundwork for just approaching it differently with the score and trying other things, and just being different than what we had done with Game of Thrones.
Ayla Ruby: So you have a working relationship with them, but for you, music is life, right? But for them, maybe story, or television or filmmaking is life. How do you talk and translate between the two? How do you translate music to… How do you collaborate and work that way?
Ramin Djawadi: Yeah, it’s exactly what you’re saying actually. What I love in our collaboration, actually, is always that we will sit in a room together and just talk. They don’t really talk musical terms so much, they always like to and I always like to just hear about story, and characters, and relationships. And what is it that drives the story forward? What is it that we want to achieve emotionally? And then all that information, I try to gather and figure out what are the musical notes that can capture that feeling.
Ayla Ruby: What were, I guess, the emotional, not mandates, but what were the emotional themes for this season that you really wanted to hit and wanted to make sure that you were supporting with the music, story-wise?
Ramin Djawadi: Yeah, the two, and that’s what I thought was so interesting about the show is that it’s a very scientific, heavy, complex show. But what’s beautiful about this too, we have a lot of great characters. There’s a lot of emotion, actually, with the characters, including there’s a great love story as it turns out in there, actually, as well. So musically speaking, that gave me the possibilities to be abstract, and scientific, and synthesize all that futuristic stuff, and just be just a bit weird. But then with the emotional stuff, we then actually tried to really ground it with simple, and also instruments that we’re very familiar with. In this case it was piano, it was strings, it was harp. And so those two elements combined, then that’s what, yeah, that’s what led me to create the score.
Ayla Ruby: Some of the things that are maybe more cosmic or more spacey and sciencey. There’s some really different things going on with the instruments there. They feel very unfamiliar, and I think in Repent, I just kept listening, trying to figure out what… It has a very unique sound and I’d love if you could talk about that. I have many questions about the other songs as well, but Repent keeps sticking out to me.
Ramin Djawadi: Yeah, and some of it I can’t even, thinking back, I don’t even know how I came up with some of these sounds, but a lot of it was just experimentation. I was trying to, because here we are dealing with an alien race that we don’t even get to see really, other than obviously in the games sort of. But yeah, there’s so much unknown about it that I just tried to create soundscapes that also are a little bit off-putting, because obviously there’s a danger to this all. And so there’s a threat, and just simply that there’s so many unanswered questions. So it’s just that something that creates anticipation and tension. There’s this Morse Code type element to it that I thought could be interesting, where, as we are communicating with aliens and the simplistic form would be Morse Code. So I created these patterns within the score that are not literally Morse Code, so it’s not saying anything, but it’s just a representation of that, of just this irregular patterns, actually, that also create tension, but also just to have this underlying character, I guess, of communication, communicating with each other.
Ayla Ruby: And that starts really early on, right? In the main title, there’s that piano.
Ramin Djawadi: Correct, actually.
Ramin Djawadi: That baseline, actually, that’s part of it where it’s kind of irregular. There’s other pieces in the score that are even more irregular, where there’s completely no repetitive rhythm to it. But in the main title, obviously to make it a musical piece, I kept it a little bit more straight, but yeah, even there, it’s almost a little bit hard to find the downbeat, and that’s supposed to, right from the beginning, set the instability of the whole thing.
Ayla Ruby: And I could be totally wrong, music isn’t my specialty, so I think I read that the time signature for the main title was a little unusual. Is that true or is that-
Ramin Djawadi: Correct, yeah, and that’s what I was just saying. It’s the fact that the time signature is a bit more unusual-
Ramin Djawadi: … it creates a sense of instability because, especially in Western music, we’re very used to 4/4 music or 3/4 music. So here it’s the fact that it’s a little bit trickier to find, actually, where the downbeat is, goes hand in hand with the three-body problem of just the instability of everything. So yeah, that was the idea behind that.
Ayla Ruby: Oh, that makes so much sense, especially when you think about the series itself. That’s wonderful. So obviously, I have more questions about individual songs as well, but the mechanics of making the music, right, how did that come about? How did you record it? What was that process like?
Ramin Djawadi: A lot of the elements, actually, I recorded myself, like all the synthesizers, some of the instruments that I use, a lot of it I do myself. I play a lot of different instruments, so whenever I can, I like to. And that’s part of my writing process, I guess, too. It’s where, as I write, I’ll just record the instruments and that’ll be the final product. But then there were also the orchestral elements we recorded in Prague, actually, it’s the same-
Ramin Djawadi: … group that we had used on Game of Thrones. And so that’s, yeah, that’s my go-to orchestra many times.
Ayla Ruby: That’s awesome. As far as individual songs, the Origami Boat song is really pretty and interesting, and I’d love if you could talk about your vision with that and just anything about how that came about.
Ramin Djawadi: Yeah, that piece or that theme is a good example. So that’s the love theme for Will and Jin, and that’s a good example where talking with David, Dan and Alex of just setting up the storytelling of this love story. So that’s really the first time in the show because I’m trying to think, I don’t think it plays before, and if it does, it’s more hidden, but that’s the first moment] when that theme really plays, and then that carries us through his death, and all the other scenes when he tells her that he loves her,
Ramin Djawadi: Right. So that piece is a good example of the using organic elements, like piano and strings, just to focus on the emotional aspects of our character. So we’re forgetting about all the sci-fi space stuff, and this is just really more from the heart. And so that theme carries through, and including all the way to the big finale when the rocket gets sent up to space. That theme, actually, is part of that, obviously, because the relationship plays a big role in that scene as well. So it was great to be able to set that up early and then carry it through.
Ayla Ruby: As far as, okay, so you have the idea of the story from talking with the storytellers. How does it work for you, blank page to this beautiful music? What’s your typical process? What does that look like?
Ramin Djawadi: Yeah, that’s always the hardest part. It’s, like you said, sitting in front of that blank page and okay, so what do I do? And I don’t really have a formula to, it’s just, I guess, taking in of what was discussed. If possible, because eventually the music will live against visual, so I always like to have, even if it’s not a final cut, but I always like to have the visual available to me, and I just, at least, like to let it run in the background as I’m writing on the piano
Ramin Djawadi: So I can see the scene, even though I’m not really writing to the scene, but just I can see the lighting, I can see the actors, all that influences me. And then, yeah, then I’m just trying to come up with these melodies. And I would start out, many times I’ll start with a piano maybe or a string patch, just a single instrument, and then trying to come up with the melody. And then when it’s more specific to the scene, then I’ll just try to come up with a sketch to the scene. And then from there, I start to arrange the piece and add all the other elements.
Ayla Ruby: Was there anything that was really fun or a favorite for you with this soundtrack and composing everything?
Ramin Djawadi: Oh, there’s so many, actually, I have to say because the video game moments, they were all so different. So they were really cool to… Like that one scene with the army, with all the computing, where they represent the human computer brain basically. And to do that with drums, that was super fun. Obviously the main title, that’s always fun because the main title to me always needs to capture the entire mood of the show. So that one needs to have everything. In this case, it needed to have the sci-fi aspect, the tension, the emotion, everything needed to be in there. So I love writing the main titles because the visuals are usually always really cool, and, yeah, just trying to capture that in a short piece of music, it’s very challenging, but that’s a lot of fun to write.
Ayla Ruby: It’s the thing I think that sticks with people a lot, because you hear it over and over through the series and it’s like cue to what the meaning of the show is too.
Ramin Djawadi: Exactly. For me, that’s always been the… And that goes back to my childhood, because when I watched my favorite TV shows, I never… Well, at the time you couldn’t skip the main titles. There was no such thing. So but to me it was always like, oh, my show’s coming on, I’ll get ready, sit down. And so that always stuck with me, and that’s how I treat my own work today. When I work on the show, I always get excited about the main title and I always feel like, yeah, this is the calling card for the show.
Ayla Ruby: That’s awesome. Was there anything that was really challenging for this project, or anything that was really difficult to do?
Ramin Djawadi: Yeah, one scene that comes to mind is the end of the second episode when Ye decides to respond to the aliens, because that had to capture so much. That’s her decision-making of where she’s reacting. So that’s the buildup of the first two episodes of where we see how she was treated and what has happened and her life. So there’s an emotional undertone to it, but yet at the same time, there’s this big threat, the Morse Code element is in there. So everything had to be in there because obviously you look at this and you go like, “No, don’t do it, don’t answer,” but her reaction, and then she does it. And it’s a fairly long scene too. So to get that set up emotionally without overpowering, because the scene itself, just the visual, is so powerful already. So to just get that tone just right, I thought it was exciting to write, but it was definitely challenging.
Ayla Ruby: Is there anything you want people to know otherwise about the work in this project or anything you’re working on next?
Ramin Djawadi: I’m not sure if I can comment on anything that I’m working on next.
Ayla Ruby: That’s okay, I understand.
Ramin Djawadi: I guess House of the Dragon, actually, the next season, that I’m allowed to say, actually.
Ramin Djawadi: Yeah, so there’s another season coming out very soon.
Ayla Ruby: Oh, that’s awesome. Well, thank you. This has been wonderful and the music to the show is lovely, and I love all of your other work as well, so this is awesome.
Ramin Djawadi: Oh, amazing. Well, thank you so much.
Ayla Ruby: Sure. Thank you
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