Why ‘A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms’ Broke One of ‘Game of Thrones’ Biggest Musical Rules

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms wastes no time letting its viewers know this isn’t just another Game of Thrones show.

In the opening scene, we meet our protagonist, Ser Duncan the Tall, his eyes full of determination as he’s about to set out on his hero’s journey, seeking out glory larger than this world might expect of a simple hedge knight.

The franchise’s iconic theme song is starting to play, the loud warrior drums about to give way to that ubiquitous melody. And then, suddenly, Ser Dunk is bent over a tree, shit exploding from his backside just after the track halts.

Music plays a key role here, as the show used the old theme as a sort of sacred cow to be sacrificed, further giving way for something else to come.

“Some of the intention on that was to say we’re doing a different thing musically here,” A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms composer Dan Romer says. “There are a lot of intentions here, but one was to say, ‘That was the old music of Game of Thrones. This is the music of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.’ “

Music has long been a crucial part of Game of Thrones’ world-building, and that’s no different for the latest offshoot, a much smaller-stakes affair than what we’ve gotten used to in our time in Westeros, the fictional continent on which GoT is set. This story doesn’t focus on the violent politics of jockeying for the Iron Throne or the world-ending threats beyond the wall in the North. Instead, it hones in on the small folk who are often caught in the cross fire or merely bearing witness to what the Great Houses are doing.

Romer says that when he first started working on the series, showrunner Ira Parker and his team had been editing a lot of it to spaghetti Western cowboy music. They liked the overall vibe it created but knew the sounds of low tremolo guitars and more modern drum kits wouldn’t work in this Middle Ages setting.

“The assignment sort of became, ‘Let’s make a Venn diagram where we have cowboy music on the left and music that could exist in Westeros on the right. What is this in-between spot?’ ” Romer says. “It was a small amount of sounds, which was exciting. It’s really exciting to have a limited palette and to kind of have bumpers around your creativity.”

The result was a bit more intimate, with swelling strings that alternate between sounding orchestral or like bluegrass fiddles, and guitars, both lute-like (with strings that are plucked), and like Willie Nelson’s infamous nylon-string classical acoustic guitar Trigger that he strums with a flatpick. “Quieter Accommodations,” arguably the most whimsical song in the Game of Thrones canon, pairs acoustic guitar with a whistle fit for a cowboy cooking his dinner by the fireside.

“Getting the emotion of whimsy was one of the main goals of this score,” Romer says. “The whistle has been around for as long as humanity. We don’t use it a lot in the score, but it does go back to that idea of being both Western and Westeros. Whistling, I think, in any genre of music becomes fair game.”

The score reflects a warmer Westeros. Some songs, like “The Luck Is Ours Alone,” are dainty and beautiful and more hopeful than one may expect out of such a violent world. Romer avoided being too referential in his score, wanting a “complete clean slate harmonically and melodically,” he says. The main theme was used only twice — once for the first- episode gag and a second time in a climactic closing moment in episode four.

“We tried to keep it to those two spots, then otherwise, let’s just see how much of a left turn we can take in the same world,” Romer says. “Obviously, it’d be hard to do like an EDM score in a Game of Thrones property, but we felt that we could take the direction of the score pretty far.”

Romer says the most challenging part of developing the music was finding the proper melody for Duncan, recalling that he sat with Parker extensively to find what felt right.

“Ira was very insistent that he didn’t want it to be something expected, and when I happened upon the first six notes, then he was like, ‘OK, I love that. Now what would you do next if this was a traditional piece of score?’ ” Romer recalls. “So I did the next six notes, and he said, ‘That’s what I don’t want. What’s the opposite of that?’ So I started doing some funny things with timing and tonality, and then we found that second phrase. The melody got to a pretty close place in that first session, and then throughout the process for the first two episodes, it got honed in.”

Beyond Romer’s soundtrack, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms further broke the GoT mold using a couple of needle drops: Kenny Dorham’s jazzy “Alone Together” and Tennessee Ernie Ford’s country-western classic “Sixteen Tons.” Those modern tracks certainly break any rules established by the Venn diagram that defined Romer’s score, but he says it still stuck the landing.

“I found out about the needle drops when I was already making the music, and I was so pumped when I saw it,” Romer says. “We’d discussed replacing the jazz needle drop at the beginning of episode six with score, but there’s nothing in this world that could hit this emotion the way it was being hit [with the needle drop]. It’s a fantastic beginning to the episode, and I’m really glad we did it.”

While the official soundtrack was of course a major lift, Romer’s diegetic background music was quite the undertaking as well. Romer says he wrote more than a dozen fiddle pieces to play across the season’s six episodes, and, by his own estimate, about half the music he made for the show was for the background scenes.

“That’s what helps create the world,” he says.

Romer and the Knight of the Seven Kingdoms team took more than their share of creative swings in developing the show. Their decisions added a refreshing layer to a franchise some argue was in need of a restart. But did he have any fears of ticking off one of the biggest and most devout fan bases in pop culture by changing its sonic identity too much?

“Of course there’s a bit of that. The original Game of Thrones score is just so incredible, but the fact that we were doing something so different from the original score made me feel a lot more comfortable and excited to experiment in that world,” Romer says. “A good franchise can experiment with different kinds of music. They can experiment with different kinds of cinematography, different kinds of storytelling. As long as it’s done with thought and care for the original material, it can be really great.”

This story first appeared in an August stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.