Composer For The Mandalorian Talks About His Sound
While not yet equalling the iconic nature of John William’s Star Wars themes, The Mandalorian’s soundtrack immediately etched its sound into fans’ minds.
For Ludwig Göransson, tasked with the score of The Mandalorian, that uniqueness was mission one.
“I just started thinking a lot about going back to how I remembered ‘Star Wars,’ and the impact it had with me as a little kid,” Göransson recently told Variety.
“I bought a set of recorders, these little woodwind recorders that everyone played when they were a kid. I wanted to take a step away from screens and computers. That’s the way I used to write music when I was a kid. I was just alone in my studio with all these instruments. I wanted to recreate that feeling.”
Ludwig did just that – and the sound of The Mandalorian is a big part of the show. And, perhaps, sets it apart from many, many productions.
Have a watch and listen:
At first, the song sounds fairly simple. However, the complexity of the score becomes more apparent as you listen – just like the complexity of The Mandalorian becomes apparent as you watch.
“In my head, when I’m thinking about writing music for ‘Star Wars,’ I set the bar very high,” the composer explained. “The music needs to be advanced and clever. From the get-go, I was like, ‘Well, this is too simple.’ But the more I listened to it, I played it over and over again and then starting off with the flute, it inspired me to go over to the drums and play this drum rhythm. That made me inspired to go to the piano, play the piano. So a whole song came out of just this idea, and that’s when I figured it out, the flute is just the intro. It’s not the whole song. It’s just a little intro. It was like a puzzle coming together.”
And in the end, the sound of The Mandalorian is a big piece of why the Star Wars live-action show works so well.
Watch Göransson’s full interview with Variety below: