You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
Winter is coming.
This one will be long.
And dark things will come with it.
That's a clip from Game of Thrones,
the HBO series that premiered in April 2011 and became the most watched show in HBO's history.
This is the main title theme.
The theme was written by Emmy-nominated composer Ramin Djawadi, and in this episode,
he'll break down the different elements in this piece,
and how the themes within the show inspired his composition and his choice of instruments.
Hi, my name is Ramin Djawadi, and I'm the composer of Game of Thrones.
David Benioff and Dan Weiss are the creators of the show.
They took the book and decided to turn this into a TV show.
They sent me two episodes, the first two episodes of the first season before meeting with them.
So I watched them and of course I was blown away.
I thought it was absolutely amazing what I saw.
I already had started on the episodes and we were reviewing some music and this and that.
And then they said, oh, by the way, there's also a main title theme you have to do.