If You Skip the Game of Thrones intro by Ramin Djawadi, We Can't Be Friends

So, before we go any further: if you are not caught up on this season, DO NOT FEAR.

There will be absolutely no spoilers in this post. If, however, you want to flail around and fangirl with me, you can find me on Twitter! ONWARD!


Even though the entire soundtrack for this series is brilliant and we-inducing due to its beautiful simplicity and perfectly punctuated swells, today I will firmly restrain myself and focus on the intro. Let me go ahead right now and say that anyone who says they skip this intro makes me think this:

The visuals were designed by a company called Elastic, and the gorgeous, steam-punky design won them a Creative Arts Emmy in 2011. To add to that is this phenomenal cello solo - take a listen. Yes, even if you've heard it before.

For the first 9 seconds, we get this heavy drum beating, reminiscent of war drums in just about every culture that's ever gone to war. Obviously, as this entire series is centered around war and conflict, this is relevant, though not overblown. There's also some strings playing an upward arpeggio on a triplet rhythm. A triplet allows for three notes to be played in the musical space of two. To put it simply, its like smushing two notes together and adding another one. In most cases, all three notes in the triplet grouping share emphasis, but that is not always strictly true, especially in slower tempos or more swung styles, like jazz and gospel.

So the 10 second mark hits and suddenly we are awash in thick, glorious cello timbre. (Timbre refers to the overall tone of a voice or an instrument.) I love the cello. I wish I'd learned the cello as a kid and been forced to carry around an instrument 3 times my size. I'll just learn it as an adult and look less awkward but never be able to play a Dvorak cello piece. The little motif of those upwards triplets moves around rhythmically and settles into a lovely melodic solo line for the cello. When the cello hits a long note note, Djawadin sets it up so that the other strings push the tempo forward with their triplets.

I'll point out here that that driving force of the war drums continues throughout this entire intro, which is awesome. Its incredibly difficult to maintain that level of huge sound without obscuring the melodic material. This also has quite a bit to do with the sound technician, as they remaster the sound to be balanced.

At 0:42, the strings take the melodic theme from the cello. It doesn't change much at all, it just provides some contrast in the timbre and overall sound. The texture doesn't change much, as strings have a very amalgamous sound unless you write in a texture technique, of which there are many interesting forms.
This particular piece of music doesn't use much string texture technique, other than to separate the triplets to make them sound clean and not muddy.

Right at the 1 minute mark, there is a change! Suddenly we aren't hearing the main theme anymore, and yet its still familiar. Djawadin follows the same melodic arc that he set up with the main theme, but simplified it and set it over those ascending triplet passages. He repeats this idea at 1:19 in a higher register, which nicely contrasts with the opening throaty tones of the cello.

Finally, to close out the intro at 1:30, all the strings reiterate the triplet motif, while the war drums get louder and more intense. The last 4 seconds features a plucked string sound over the residual tones of the full string orchestra and the drums.

And even though you only listened to 1:40 of music, somehow you feel like you just listened to a symphony. That's likely because Djawadin utilizes techniques common in the composition of a symphony, just really compressed and simplified to appropriately fit an introduction for an epic television show. You are now fully prepared to witness this:

I'll have you all know that I fiercely resisted using my entire collection of Game of Thrones gifs. I probably could have written this entire post in gifs...though it may not have made much sense and no one would know why I think this intro is worthy of a blog post.

And on that note, this is what the Game of Thrones intro would have looked like if it was made in the 90's:

...thank goodness its 2013, am I right?