The importance of getting the score right
is to kind of present, what is the emotion that you're going to walk away with?
So it's always the hardest task and it's been the hardest task on this.
When we started talking about the role of
folk music and contemporary music, it made it more realistic.
Some of the score is Cajun based with banjos, mandolins
and it's also very Celtic based, there’s Uilleann pipes in there and the bagpipe.
And I think it's like all the singers that we're using it’s trying to not go
for the cliché fantasy route.
We're at Abbey Road Studios recording
Peter Cox singing. Coming to Abbey Road is, it's the mecca of recording.
You think about all the bands that have been here, the Beatles,
obviously, but it's the film scores, Jurassic Park and Star Wars.
Recording here really is kind of the beginning of the whole vocal side
that we started thinking about when creating the soundtrack,
especially with Rafe, we always knew from the beginning
we wanted to have a soundtrack that was a narrative vocally.
So it is kind of like an opera.
Our Native Daughters,
Rafe and I had discovered them halfway through the process of writing,
we had been listening to their music and it was just an interesting blend of
contemporary and folk and also the fact
that they're great singers and also actual instrumentalists.
And when we had their voices, we knew that was a key
element to the actual soundtrack.
I think it's a really beautifully expansive and inclusive and brave choice
that they've picked our band of four black women because so often
even in the realms of fantasy and sci fi, BIPOC folks are left out of the story.
And I love that the creators of the Wheel of Time
have chosen to shift that narrative for people that look like me
to get to be heroes and with the one power and all kinds of great things like that.
So I love that they're uplifting us and our voices and our place in the Diaspora.
It's a big deal, I don't take it lightly.
The one thing we wanted to make sure was to having the narrative
sang in Old Tongue, and that brings great challenges, a. with pronunciation,
And b. it's it's difficult to know how to actually sing it.
It was quite an unusual session
for me, being more used to working in a pop context.
Different tonalities of the music.
Challenging intervals to sing.
You just have to start again,
really in terms of the sound in your head when you start performing.
Obviously, I had some help with linguists and some recordings to get an idea
of how the language should sound.
-Okay let’s try it -We don’t know Old Tongue, okay? (laughing)
We had a lot of discussions on “OK, so what is the sound?
Are we all different dialects?
Like, how do we even like, make this work?” you know?
That's been the biggest part of the process
is like really listening to the inflection of the vowels and understanding
where the accents on the valleys should be and where to roll our tongues
and where to make a (vocal accent)
or a (rolls tongue)
sound. So we've had a lot of fun
figuring that out.
It's like when you go to the opera,
you don't understand the language, but you understand what the storyline is.
So what we've tried to do is throughout the show,
when you hear singing, it's actually related to the scene in question.
It's actually trying to follow the storyline of the show, but in Old Tongue.
The first time we nailed that opening was like, Oh my gosh,
I can really see this as a theme song like this sticks in your mind
and it makes you think of the world.
So that was the moment where I was like, Oh, we're actually kind of like doing this
really like being a part of this. This is amazing.