For my final project for this BOSP seminar, I decided to make a rearrangement of music from one of the most popular TV shows set in the medieval era: HBO’s Game of Thrones.
This idea came to me after visiting Carcassonne, as the city greatly reminded me of King’s Landing, the capital from Game of Thrones. Even while visiting the city, I stumbled across a joust being performed with banners of House Lannister and House Stark hung up, both of which are major factions from the show. Furthermore, Gerard’s and Sandra’s performances using the various medieval instruments inspired me to try them for myself, as I was curious to see how different they were from modern instruments. Combining these two influences, I decided to write my own arrangement of several themes from Game of Thrones for the piano and two medieval instruments, and record them to create my final project.
For most of the score that I wrote, I relied on listening to the melodies and harmonies that were already in the pieces, but there are certain parts of the accompaniment in the piano part where I borrowed from other sources that I have seen before. I also had to compensate for the flute, as it only had one octave in G; thus, there are some places where the melody is slightly shifted as the flute cannot reach the notes in the original score. I chose to shift the theme into g minor to best suit the flute, as it was very hard to play in c minor given my limited ability on the instrument.
Perhaps the hardest part of the project was piecing all the parts together, as the flute was not in tune with the other parts due to the nature of the instrument and my lack of skill. As a result, I manually shifted some notes in tune via Audacity so that the overall music is still melodic. I also chose to simply add scenes instead of movie clips of what happens, so that the audience can focus more on the music rather than the video.
Overall, I believe my final project reflects influences from the medieval traditions: from the medieval towns to the idea of making music like the troubadours. Through my creativity, I was able to learn and harmonize two medieval instruments with the modern piano, creating an arrangement of the popular show’s music that has never been seen before.
Works Cited:
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Djawadi, R. and Fu, S. (2019). Samuel Fu "The Winds of Winter" Sheet Music (Piano Solo) in C Minor - Download & Print. [online] Musicnotes.com. Available at: https://www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic/mtd.asp?ppn=MN0188730# [Accessed 27 Aug. 2019].
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Djawadi, R. and Pietschmann, P. (2019). Game of Thrones Main Theme. [online] MuseScore.com. Available at: https://musescore.com/user/17448756/scores/3536451 [Accessed 27 Aug. 2019].
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Software used: iMovie, Audacity
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All images used in the video are found via Google Images, and all copyrights of the pictures are to the respective owners of the websites.
Original Game of Thrones music themes are written by Ramin Djawadi
