In this series of blogs, I explore the detailed musical depths of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. For a comprehensive look at my score for the series, explore my previous blog entries here, and check out the soundtrack albums (a compilation for each season and a comprehensive album for each episode) available on all platforms.
PRODUCING “RINGS”
Astute blog readers may have noticed only fleeting mentions of the music production process in my season two entries thus far. Surprisingly, I wrote the first six and a half episodes of The Rings of Power without recording any of them! Music production for the season did not begin in full until I was nearly finished with the seventh episode, and then ran continuously every day for months. Never before in my career had I backlogged such a vast amount of fully composed but unproduced music, so I was concerned about the effect the workload would have on my team. My team rose to the occasion, and recorded and delivered the equivalent of four blockbuster motion-picture film scores in about three months, the blink of an eye.
In television scoring, it is quite common to record an episode’s score shortly after writing it. When I scored ambitious network series, such as The Walking Dead, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Human Target, or Battlestar Galactica, the absurd schedule saw me receiving an episode, writing forty minutes of orchestral music, supervising its orchestration, and conducting the orchestra and soloist sessions all in the span of a single week. This would be followed immediately by the same cycle, week after week, episode after episode, sometimes for years on end. In those cases, I would write one episode while supervising the mixing of the previous week’s, so in short, I was rarely concentrating on more than two episodes at any given time.
For streaming and premium cable series, the schedule is generally arranged so that I write an episode or two ahead of recording, forcing me to multitask a little more than I did back in my network TV days. This was true of The Rings of Power season one. For example, when I composed the score for the first season’s fourth episode, I also simultaneously supervised the orchestration of the third episode’s score, the recording of the second’s score, and the mixing of the first’s. Every conceivable aspect of music production raced ahead at all times. I recall days when I was writing music, but had a laptop on my desk open, from which I was listening to orchestra in London, choir in Vienna, and percussion in Los Angeles—all at the same time! (Music producers from Sparks & Shadows were supervising each session and would text me when any group was starting a new cue, so I could quickly pause writing, listen in, and offer feedback.)
Our schedule for delivering the second season of The Rings of Power became particularly complicated as a result of the writers’strike. The best solution we could come up with in order to give me proper time to write all eight episodes was to jam-pack all the mixes into an unbroken marathon run at the end of postproduction. I faced the Herculean task of having to deliver eight episodes of symphonic drama nonstop over the course of as many weeks. The only way to accomplish this was for me to start writing early—really early.
Aside from composing and producing various pre-recorded vocal songs for production, such as “Stone Singers” and “Old Tom Bombadil,” I began scoring footage in September of 2023. If I could stick to my goal of writing one episode per month, I would complete the last cue of The Rings of Power season two at the end of April 2024. (Keep in mind, the fastest I ever wrote an episode of this show in the first season was four weeks; most required five. I was tasked with writing every episode in season two at the maximum speed I ever wrote the first time around.) In theory, I knew it was possible. All I had to do was survive!
Over the years, my creative collective, Sparks & Shadows, has developed into a lean, mean, scoring machine. Music production for this season of The Rings of Power was supervised by my longtime partners Brian Claeys and Bailey Gordon, who oversaw the tidal wave of production details and logistics needed to record music on this scale. Most of my time working on The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is spent composing the music and creating demos that communicate my ideas. To realize my vision into recorded and mixed performances, my dedicated team at Sparks & Shadows worked diligently, around the clock.
WRITING DEMOS
My team allows me to focus on writing music. But what does that mean? I use the term “writing music” all the time in these blogs and yet I’m not sure casual fans fully understand what I mean. (Does anyone picture me sitting at the piano scratching on parchment with a feather quill?)
In the modern era, the “writing” or “composing” of music for media usually occurs in a computer, in software designed to sequence music on multiple tracks, called a “digital audio workstation” or DAW. I sequence my cues in exacting detail in my DAW (Cubase, for anyone curious) and I also leave dozens, sometimes hundreds, of text markers on the timeline for my orchestration and mixing teams, providing them additional, specific instructions.
The end result is a document that contains everything everyone needs to know about my musical and narrative intent, addressing various imperatives for different entities. Showrunners, producers, directors, studio executives, and actors require a clear audio demo to have confidence that I am fulfilling their creative vision. Orchestrators, conductors, musicians, and singers immediately understand the emotional context of the music they are asked to help create. Music editors and mixers similarly have a clear understanding of my intention, because I meticulously balance audio levels, alter EQs, apply reverb and compression, and do everything else in my power to make my mixes sound as rich and lifelike as possible. The beauty of having outstanding demos is that it empowers everyone working on this music to not only match it, but exceed it. As great as my demos sound, the final performances always, without fail, sound infinitely more emotional and impactful.
In my DAW, I sequence in a custom template filled with thousands of virtual instruments—a terrifying homunculus of more than 4,500 tracks that requires four dedicated technical employees at Sparks & Shadows to keep on the rails. It holds carefully organized sounds, ranging from the traditional tones of symphonic orchestra and choir to gamelan, floppy drives, peculiar percussion, keyboards, guitars, and the most bizarre synths imaginable. (Perhaps one day I’ll post a more detailed blog about how I sketch, sequence, and mix my music.)
LYRICS
As with season one, voices and text were integral to the score for the second season of The Rings of Power. I wanted to ensure that choir and solo singers always communicated lyrical text that is narratively, linguistically, and thematically relevant to the drama at any given moment. This ambitious goal presents many logistic challenges.
Each culture and character has their own associated fictional language, so the decision for which language to use was usually fairly obvious. We worked with Tolkien scholars who translated into the languages Tolkien created, and crafted new words from his lexicon as needed. For example, passages pertaining to Sauron were sung generally in Black Speech, the language of Mordor. Most Elves have their text sung in Quenya, a common tongue for their race. Arondir, the show’s primary Silvan Elf, has passages sung in his native language of Sindarin. The lyrics of the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm are sung in Khuzdul, while the music of Númenor is sung in their language of Adûnaic. For season two, our scholars developed and expanded upon Tolkien’s unpublished notes to devise Rhûnic, an accurate language for the mysterious lands to the east, Rhûn.
The lyric process always begins with my initial composition. In my early demos, my intention is crystal clear regarding where choirs and soloists are singing, whether or not I intend for a passage to include lyrics, and the rhythmic patterns I hope for the syllables.
As the show featured many recurring narrative ideas, my team and I gradually banked a lexicon of shorter passages and phrases useful for recurring themes. Many sequences, however, clearly needed a specific lyric crafted for them. For these, we were honored to collaborate with showrunner J.D. Payne, who has a passion, and talent, for lyric writing. I must commend J.D. for his remarkable dedication to the lyrics and the score, despite being simultaneously responsible for many other more important aspects of the show. Working with my demos, Brian and Bailey would calculate the approximate number of syllables and lines for any given set piece, and give that information to J.D., who would craft an English language poem for us.
I would be hard-pressed to pick a favorite poem from the score this season, but contenders would include “Dark Lord Rise Anew” from the season premiere, “A Lion Roars” from the sandstorm in episode two, his Entish lament “New Bark Covering Old Scars” from episode four,and the entirety of “The Sun Yet Shines.” One of my fondest memories of season two was collaborating with J.D. on the franchise’s first death metal song, “The Last Ballad of Damrod.” (J.D., if you ever want to write an entire death metal album, I’m here for it!)
English lyrics were then sent to a team led by our series’s brilliant Tolkien scholar Carl F. Hostetter. We were honored to work closely with Carl and grateful for his efforts to authentically bring the languages of J.R.R. Tolkien to life for us. Brian and Bailey then worked closely with our orchestrators to fit the lyrics into the syllabic timing in my music. (The occasional rhythm here and there had to be altered to make the lyrics work.) The final text was also sent to our series dialect coach, Leith McPherson. In order for singers to learn how to pronounce these words, Leith painstakingly recorded every syllable, speaking slowly and clearly. Singers listened to her, a note at a time, before every take, to ensure proper pronunciation.
Despite placing thousands of syllables across thousands of notes, we never encountered even a single syllable that was recorded incorrectly. This is a testament to the dedication and precision of everyone on the music team. We all were happy, even honored, to put this extra layer into the music because we felt the score to a Tolkien adaptation would not be complete without this attention to detail in the text.
ORCHESTRATION
Orchestration is a vital step in the scoring process, the bridge between the composer’s studio and the orchestral performance that the audience hears. Put simply, “orchestration” is the act of translating and transcribing the composer’s musical ideas onto paper from which a conductor can lead and musicians and singers can interpret. The amount of creative input an orchestrator provides varies, depending on how many details the composer in question puts into their writing. I am definitely near the extreme edge of “writes nearly all the details.” Nevertheless, I rely on my orchestration team, led by my longtime partners Edward Trybek, Henri Wilkinson, and Jonathan Beard, to bring their expertise to help facilitate my ideas accurately on the page.
When recording large musical ensembles, every second costs money. This means every wrong note, or every unnecessary question, wastes our precious resources. I reviewed the orchestration of every cue well in advance of recording, to catch every possible mistake or alteration I would make when conducting it. In our meetings, orchestrators and I went through every last detail, down to bow changes in the strings and fluttered grace notes in woodwind solos, often ending in philosophical discussions about whether or not the musical dynamic “quadruple-forte” has any practical meaning. This process gave me the confidence to know the music would sound exactly as I imagined it.
RECORDING
My orchestration and production teams had such a clear grasp on what I intended that there really was no compelling reason for me take precious time away from my writing. I worked out a system with my music producers to alert me when certain moments were being recorded, passages I made clear I wanted to offer feedback on during the recording session. For those, I would offer my thoughts and reaction by connecting remotely to the session at the appropriate time (because many sessions were in Europe, this would often be before dawn, but I wake up early to write anyway). Beyond those special cases, I trusted my team implicitly and completely to produce the sessions without me. There were many performances I never heard in their entirety until the mix!
This process is remarkably efficient when I’m working with ensembles and soloists I know well, and who know me. For example, Malachai Bandy started playing viola da gamba and yaylı tanbur for me on Da Vinci’s Demons back in 2013. After the various God of War scores and the first season of Rings, I rarely have any constructive comments to offer Olav Luksengård Mjelva on Hardanger fiddle, or Erik Rydvall on nyckelharpa. Paul Cartwright’s fiddle, Eric Rigler’s bagpipes, and Bruce Carver’s bodhrán have been a part of my scores as far back as Battlestar Galactica, starting twenty years ago. Vocalist Raya Yarbrough, beyond being literally my wife, started recording my music with me in 2000, as did cellist Eric Byers, when we were all three at the USC Thornton School of Music together! I rarely concern myself with monitoring sessions for these musicians because I wrote with their musical personalities in mind, and they know my style and tastes well.
I relied on my team at Sparks & Shadows for literally everything beyond the actual composition of the music itself. My hope was that this would alleviate pressure on me and perhaps let me set aside a bit more time for my personal, family, and social life. That … sort of worked. But, for the most part, I took that extra mental bandwidth my team allowed me and just applied it to writing even more music, often music that was not even required! My mind was free to wander, and of course, not all who wonder or wander are lost. With my extra time, I began to wonder …
“What if Rufus Wainwright sang the Bombadil song?”
“What if I wrote a death metal song for that troll?”
“What if Raya sang a Goldberry song for the album?”
MIXING
For the mixing team on season two, I wanted to collaborate with two engineers. I was honored to work with the legendary Simon Rhodes once again, the engineer who tracked orchestra for me on Godzilla: King of the Monsters. Simon has recorded or mixed an unfathomable number of films over the years, including some of my favorite scores by composers James Horner and John Williams! I asked Simon to do an orchestral pre-mix pass, crafting the sounds of the large ensembles. Simon, as always, did a phenomenal job.
From there, the tracks were sent to Ryan Sanchez. Ryan has been a part of the Sparks & Shadows family for the better part of a decade and has mixed many of my projects. Most notably, he recently mixed the Disney+ series Percy Jackson and the Olympians and Masters of the Universe: Revelation. I have always loved Ryan’s fierce dedication to making a project sound its best, and his unrivaled combination of work ethic and positivity. I relied on him to combine Simon’s orchestral pre-mix with the dozens upon dozens of synth and percussion pre-records, world music soloists, and solo vocals to create a punchy, bombastic, cinematic score that still resonates with emotional depth. Ryan sent me mixes to review in my own surround-sound studio, and we established real-time monitoring when needed so I could work directly with him as if I were sitting right next to him at his studio in Nashville, Tennessee. I have always been amazed at how quickly he is able to understand my intention from my demos and balance all these disparate elements together seamlessly into a unified whole that reflects my vision.
Last but not least, I was excited to invite to the mixing team my friend Forrester Savell. Forrester is a brilliant engineer from Australia, who in addition to mixing The 4:30 Movie for me, most notably mixed and mastered my monstrous cinematic metal concept album The Singularity. When I pulled a true metal band into “The Last Ballad of Damrod,” I knew I could rely on Forrester’s genre expertise to create a pulverizing track that lived both in the sonic space of a massive orchestral score as well as extreme heavy metal.
In order for this music to shine in a soundtrack-album format, there is one more engineer in the chain who has huge influence on how the music sounds for fans. My long-time creative partner Patricia Sullivan is the brilliant mastering engineer who uses her highly developed ear, and amazing analog gear at the renowned Bernie Grundman Mastering studio, to put the final polish on many of my soundtrack albums. Our first collaboration together was the fourth-season album for Battlestar Galactica fifteen years ago. Over the last two years, Pat has mastered, for The Rings of Power, our staggering output of eighteen full-length albums and four singles, with unique masters for digital releases, CDs, and vinyl releases.
Once I have approved the score music mixes, the audio goes to the dub stage. Ryan painstakingly splits out all the various elements into different audio tracks so the mixing team assembling the final episode has access to the music on a granular level and is able to reshape it as necessary. Before the episode is delivered, postproduction sends me a copy of the final audio mix so I can experience the episode in my studio in Los Angeles and offer thoughts. It is not a given on any production that a composer is invited to comment on the final mix, though it is something I have generally enjoyed throughout my career. Of course, my comments, like most people’s in the room, are just a suggestion. The series showrunners are the ones with the ultimate authorial voice, and I’m grateful they let me weigh in.
LONDON AND SAN DIEGO
After toiling away in my studio alone for the better part of a year, I was finally able to break free of my confines and join the other creatives on The Rings of Power at various events throughout the spring and summer of 2024.
First, I was thrilled to travel to London at the end of April to conduct some of the orchestral sessions for the fifth and sixth episodes. I had just barely completed scoring the season finale, “Shadow and Flame,” and would return to Los Angeles right before rehearsals began for the live concert of my solo record, The Singularity, which was launching along with its companion graphic novel in early May. (It was a busy time, to say the least!)
In London that spring, I was delighted to get some good hang time in with some of my friends on the show. Markella Kavenagh, Maxim Baldry, and Ismael Cruz Córdova all stopped by the recording sessions. Even though we don’t show footage at the recording sessions, for security reasons, I was impressed that all of them quickly and intuitively picked up on various character themes in the orchestral performances.
As I had done in 2022, I was honored to take part in the big Hall H panel at San Diego Comic-Con in 2024. I was again tasked with composing and performing an opening fanfare. This time around, I wanted to shake things up, as well as reflect upon the season’s darker tone. Instead of writing an uplifting suite of themes, I crafted a new version of “Nampat” crossbred with Sauron’s theme for male choir and taiko drummers. I felt exhilarated when I stepped out onto that stage, in front of seven thousand fans, and screamed “Death!” at the top of my lungs in Tolkien’s Black Speech.
I enjoyed meeting fans, hanging with cast and crew, and wandering the crowded streets and convention floor spotting Elves, wizards, and Dwarves. The feeling was one of joyous celebration.
A few weeks later, I returned to London to attend the glitzy series premiere at the British Film Institute’s BFI Southbank. Seeing all our hard work on the big screen and, of course, hearing the stellar audio mix radiating off that sound system, was a thrill. I was seated directly behind Daniel Weyman and got to thank him for his intimate, heartfelt vocal performance of “Old Tom Bombadil” in the season finale, when his character, the Stranger, sits at the fireplace next to Bombadil. Tom himself, Rory Kinnear, caught me in the lobby, and we laughed, realizing this was the first moment we had ever met in person, despite having worked together from a distance for nearly two years.
Perhaps my fondest memory of that trip was hanging out at the after-party. Then the after-after-party, where a handful of us closed out the night around five in the morning. I staggered outside in the predawn light and navigated past various seedy individuals, thanks entirely to Owain Arthur, who knew those London streets well and walked me back to my hotel. One can always trust in the loyalty of Dwarves!
THE TEAM
It takes a massive village in order to create a score like The Rings of Power and I am grateful to every single individual artist, technician, administrator, or assistant who contributed to help bring my music to life. To each of these people I owe a mithril coat! The following are the complete technical credits for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season two.
Score Produced by Bear McCreary
Score Mixed by Ryan Sanchez, Simon Rhodes
Score Recorded by Nick Wollage, Bernd Mazagg, Tristan Linton
Additional Score Engineers: Ben Sedano, Andrew Pomeroy
Additional Recording Engineers: Janne Huotari, Joe Pettitt, Plamen Penchev, John Richards
Scoring Coordinator: Hannah Lustine
Album Coordinators: Reed Trachy, Gabrielle Fastman
Scoring Assistants: Brian Claeys, Bailey Gordon
Tech Assistants: Pierre-André Rigoll, Dayna Ambrosio, Peter Kohrman, Alex Ruger
Assistant to the Composer: Marisa Gunzenhauser
Orchestrators: Edward Trybek, Henri Wilkinson, Jonathan Beard
Assistant Orchestrators: Benjamin Hoff, Jamie Thierman, Sean Barrett
Copyist: Andrew Harris
Assistant Copyist: Matthew Carlton
Librarians: David Foster, Phil Knights, Sugi Shin, Stefan Höll, Liam McIntyre
Music Editors: Michael Baber, Jason Smith
Supervising Dialect Coach: Leith McPherson
Translations: Carl F. Hostetter
Score Recorded at AIR Studios, London, UK; Abbey Road Studios, London, UK; Synchron Stage, Vienna, Austria; Sonic Boom Room, Los Angeles, CA; Sofia Session Studio, Sofia, Bulgaria; Trinity School, Croydon, UK; Wolfbeat Studios, Kempele, Finland
Orchestra Conducted by Cliff Masterson, Anthony Weeden, Bear McCreary
Concertmasters: Everton Nelson, Steve Morris
Orchestra Contractor: Jenny Goshawk for Isobel Griffiths Ltd.
Choir: Synchron Stage Choir
Conducted by Michał Juraszek, Gottfried Rabl
Contractor: Marton Barka
Coordinators: Josy Svajda, Elizabeth Houser
Children’s Choir: Trinity Boys Choir
Conducted by David Swinson
Bulgarian Women’s Choir: The Mystery of the Bulgarian Voices
Conducted by Dora Hristova
Coordinator: Boyana Bounkova
Screaming Men’s Choir: Mieskuoro Huutajat
Conducted by Petri Sirviö
Solo Vocal Contractor: Jasper Randall for Encompass Music Partners
Album Produced by Joe Augustine, Bear McCreary
Album Mastered by Pat Sullivan at Bernie Grundman Mastering, Los Angeles, CA
Composer Representation: Kraft-Engel Management
Featured Vocalists:
Rufus Wainwright – “Old Tom Bombadil”
Jens Kidman – “The Last Ballad of Damrod”
Benjamin Walker – “Golden Leaves”
Sophia Nomvete – “Stone Singers”
Rory Kinnear – “Old Tom Bombadil Reprise”
Daniel Weyman – “Old Tom Bombadil Reprise”
Raya Yarbrough – various
Juno Goode – various
Clydene Jackson – “Candles on the Tide”
Jessica Carroll – whispers on “Barrow-wights”
Matthew Gammie – whispers on “Barrow-wights”
Kevin Howarth – whispers on “Barrow-wights”
Dean Williamson – whispers on “Barrow-wights”
Featured Performers:
Paul Jacob Cartwright – fiddle
Olav Luksengård Mjelva – Hardanger fiddle
Erik Rydvall – nyckelharpa
Malachai Bandy – viola da gamba, yaylı tanbur
Eric Byers – cello
Eric Rigler – bagpipes, whistlesPeyo Peev – gadulka
Andrew Synowiec – guitars
Bruce Carver – bodhrán, percussion
M.B. Gordy – percussion
Gene Hoglan – drum kit (“The Last Ballad of Damrod”)
Pete Griffin – electric bass (“The Last Ballad of Damrod”)
Omer Ben-Zvi – electric guitar (“The Last Ballad of Damrod”)
I also want to give a special shout out to showrunners J.D. Payne, Patrick McKay, Lindsey Weber, Justin Doble, and all the writers, producers, cast, and crew for their endless support. The score would not be possible without the contributions of Rufus Wainwright, Jens Kidman, Jörn Weisbrodt, Rob Shallcross, Bob Bowen, Joe Augustine, Clare Buxton, Rachael Ellis, Griff Jones, Carl F. Hostetter, everyone at Kraft-Engel Management, especially Richard Kraft and Laura Engel, as well as everyone at Sparks & Shadows, and all the engineers, recording studio crew, orchestrators, musicians, soloists, and singers who helped bring this music to life.
Scoring The Rings of Power is one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities and I am just about the luckiest composer in the world to be in the position to write on it. The invaluable contributions from my team, consisting of lyrics, orchestration, administration, technical support, recording, editing, and mixing, are what make this exciting score possible.
—Bear
