Amazon's ambitious series The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power is a new story based in part on the appendices to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings novels, as well as his other work including The Silmarillion. Developed by showrunners Patrick McKay and J.D. Payne, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power does include characters seen in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, such as Galadriel and Elrond.

One of the key players bringing The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power to life is composer Bear McCreary. McCreary is well-known for his wide array of film and television work, his credits including Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Although Howard Shore (who worked on all the Peter Jackson The Lord of the Rings films) composed the main theme for The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power, McCreary has crafted music to suit the massive scope and scale of the show.

Related: Valar & Eldar Explained In The Rings Of Power

Bear McCreary spoke with Screen Rant about his composition process, creating music as varied as the show's story, and being a fan of The Lord of the Rings.

Bear McCreary On The Rings of Power

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Screen Rant: You've been a fan of The Lord of the Rings for most of your life. How did it feel when the opportunity to work on The Rings of Power first came up? Was it a dream, or was there a pressure to do right by something that you loved?

Bear McCreary: That's a great way of framing it. It was both. Most of all, it was just a dream come true. I have always loved sci-fi/fantasy and horror, and in many ways, The Lord of the Rings was one of the most profound fictional universes in my life as a kid reading the books, and especially when Peter Jackson's films came out. I love the idea of being able to contribute music to this universe that means so much to me.

In of the pressure, the pressure really was sort of just to get it right for myself. As a fan of The Lord of the Rings, I want this series to be everything it possibly can be. And if everything goes well, I want to be able to binge-watch this show in the future and then go right into the Peter Jackson trilogy thereafter and feel a sense of continuity and a sense of connection. In many ways, writing something that I would like as a longtime very musically-picky fan was the biggest pressure. It didn't even occur to me until these recent weeks how many other people would be listening to the music that I wrote.

The music and the show really nail the Peter Jackson tone, but how do you balance writing music that honors Howard Shore's work, fits this new time period, and has your voice as well?

Bear McCreary: In a way, I didn't spend a lot of energy worrying about that. Howard Shore's writing, and writing like it - meaning, big, symphonic, melodic, classical Hollywood scores - are the kind of scores I grew up on. I grew up avidly consuming movie music, and it was Jerry Goldsmith, and John Williams, and Basil Poledouris, and James Horner. Danny Elfman, Nino Rota, Ennio Morricone; these were my rockstars. They were my popstars. They were everything. And indeed, that's the tradition that Howard Shore drew from when he wrote The Lord of the Rings.

In a way, I was just trying to find a way, using some very specific colors that Howard Shore used... because as a fan of those movies, I knew intrinsically what I would want to hear. There's a sound with the elves, there's a sound with the dwarves, and there's a sound with the hobbits, who are Harfoots in our story, that I wanted to preserve. I don't want to rock the boat, I'm not here to unpleasantly surprise you. As a fan, I know what I want that to sound like, and it's probably what you want it to sound like.

I kind of had some faith that if I trusted my own instincts and followed the fan guidelines that I had in my own heart, when I filtered all that through my own voice, it would work out. And at the end of the day, I can't really write music in the style of someone else. I'm not good enough to do that. I just have my own voice to speak with. So I was kind of hoping that when I wrote something that I felt captured that spirit, that it would also have a sense of uniqueness and identity that I'm bringing to it simply because it's coming through me.

Something that is really special about this show is how much time we spend with its different cultures and groups. Can you talk about some of the instruments or techniques you used to set them apart?

Bear McCreary: Absolutely. Setting apart the different cultures in Middle-Earth might have been the biggest challenge I faced when scoring The Rings of Power. There is a foundational layer of orchestra and choir that you're going to hear that plays across the entire score. However, there are also six cultural musical languages that I had to write in to represent different cultures, and then different character within those cultures. In a way, I had to come up with six different scores, complete with their own soloists, their own musical language, [and] their own identity, and weave them all together.

You have the music for the elves - and yes, I know there are multiple kinds of elves. Don't worry, we're going to get there later. But for season one, there was a vibe for the elves and a musical language for them as a monolithic culture. The dwarves, low men in the Southlands, high men in Númenor. You have the Harfoots, and you have the orcs. And in each one of those, I'm using really cool specialty instruments, and even writing multiple themes within those languages for different characters from that place.

For Númenor, I used Middle Eastern instruments. For the Harfoots, I used West African balafons combined with Celtic instrumentation. For the dwarves, I used deep male vocals singing in Khuzdul. For the elves, I used ethereal, light, airy vocal textures. For the orcs, I used drums and woodwinds made from bone. There were antlers and femur bones, and all these very strange conch shells and Aztec death whistles that all create this screaming, weird, otherworldly texture. It was really fun.

How did you find all of these instruments? Were these things that you had in a collection, or did you search out new instruments?

Bear McCreary: I always search out players and ask them what else they can bring to the table. Actually, for each of these I went out and found a lot of people I'd worked with in the past. I've just been very fortunate to always be able to find interesting musicians. When doing a show like God of War, I got to know a whole bunch of Nordic and Scandinavian instrumentalists, and so on and so forth. I just kind of accumulate this collection of incredibly talented people.

In a way, with having to bring in all these different colors for The Lord of the Rings, in some cases I went to people that I knew, and in other cases I went in search of interesting instruments trying to find sounds that could inspire me, and bring new people into the fold. But most of the players on The Lord of the Rings are people that I had worked with in the past. It really was like putting the band back together. It's almost like it took every musician I've ever known over the last twenty years to come together to be able to create a score as massive as The Rings of Power.

I also read that you began composing the music for this based on just the scripts, before you had any footage. Do you prefer that way of working, or was it difficult to then fit your music to the picture?

Bear McCreary: My preference is to always have footage, because I'm a very visual writer. I respond to visual stimuli. But in this case, it was different. There were a couple episodes cut together, but I also am so familiar with the story, with the tone, that I wanted to write not only for the events that would happen this season, but plan ahead for what would happen in later seasons.

For example, if I'm writing a scene for Elendil and Isildur, as a casual fan I suspect I know where this story is going. And as someone who has seen the movies, you probably suspect, and I'm more hardcore than a casual fan. So, I spoke with the showrunners at length about these two characters. "Are they going to go where I think they're going to go? And what might that sound like?" So, in many ways, I was writing a theme for them that would work for this season, but that also had what I knew I would need down the line.

In a way, there's no way to wait for the footage with a story this massive. I really wanted to separate myself from the footage and try to write music that stood on its own and was really symphonic and told a big story. And then as the footage came in, I started applying it, and found very, very often that my first impulse for a theme would work beautifully against footage. And in many ways, I think some of the boldness of the music is because I didn't write it all looking at the footage. When we come into Númenor, when we come into Khazad Dûm, these were pieces that began as symphonic works in my head. Then, when the footage came in, I thought, "I'll take that theme and just put it right there. What happens?"

And that is really cool, you know? I mean, I think as a composer for film, I am very frequently deferential to the drama. My motto is, "Do no harm." My goal is that you don't notice the music. I want you to just disappear into the story that you're watching. And that is true with The Lord of the Rings as well, but there's also a sense with The Lord of the Rings that the music is a character in and of itself. I think that that obviously predates The Rings of Power. People bring that expectation because of what Howard Shore did.

The music in the animated adaptations was prominent, even then. It's always been known that music - I think, coming from the text itself, the way Tolkien wrote songs into the text - every person that's ever adapted this material has felt that there is music involved. I really wanted to honor that, and write music that maybe didn't sit in the background as much as some other modern film and television scores would. So, I was really grateful that the experiment worked, and that that was the idea that I wanted to put forth, and the showrunners agreed and encouraged me and pushed me even further. And so far it seems like fans are responding to that, and that feels pretty good.

Durin IV preparing to smash rocks in The Rings of Power

I think the Khazad Dûm cue is such a great example of that because it's very forward and memorable but gives such a sense of place. That track also relies heavily on vocals, which you mentioned were in Khuzdul. Are you writing lyrics in English that are then translated? How does getting the vocals into your pieces work?

Bear McCreary: That's a great question. I took the vocal text very seriously, as did everyone else on the team. As I wrote, I would start off with a collection of words and phrases. I say a collection, but it was really a dictionary of words in phrases in the various languages. There were five predominant languages that are canonical, meaning Tolkien would agree that these words mean these things. The rules are clear enough that it is possible to make new words in the style of all these languages, [but] I avoided that at all costs. So, the downside is, in some of these cases, there's a lot of lyrical repetition. Black Speech and Khuzdul in particular don't have a lot of words. But I actually kind of thought that was a strength, not a weakness, [because] you'd hear certain ideas come to the forefront of the choir over and over.

So, I was involved in placing that text and in deciding what language would be used in which scene, and I would start with some phrases and ideas. My team at Sparks and Shadows, in particular a composer named Brian Claeys, helped me out by getting the text to fit the music. So he would work with me back and forth if we needed to add some text. Then the showrunner, J.D. Payne, would weigh in. This is a guy who is supposed to be writing scripts for the next season, supervising cuts, supervising the effects, and he is taking an hour out of his day to catch little errors. And he would catch them! He would say, "This phrase is really more of a Sindarin thing, and we should be in Quenya here. I think it's important that we don't put the wrong Elvish word out on this scene." I think that tells you the level of dedication that the showrunners themselves have in getting all these details correct.

And then, lastly, we worked with Leith Mherson, a dialect coach. She would take the last at it. Once the text was in place, she would pronounce it, and record her voice speaking it phonetically, slowly, syllable by syllable, so that the choirs and soloists that would be singing these would listen and practice each syllable. So you can imagine that for a detail that is in the background of a cue in a television show, there was this whole operation that took four or five people what would have added up to be dozens, if not a hundred hours of work, just to make sure that that text is accurate.

And meanwhile, we're still making the deadlines. I still have to write nine hours of music. It's not like that's the only thing we're focusing on. But I think that's a testament to how much everybody cares. And if fans start to notice that there is text all over the place, and I've already seen some people translating some of the text, it makes me feel like all that hard work paid off.

The Rings of Power is the most expensive TV show that's ever been made. Did that budget spill over in any way to the music? Are these larger ensembles than you're used to working with, or did it affect how much time you had?

Bear McCreary: Ultimately, it didn't really affect me that much. Yes, we got to work with as large an ensemble as we needed, and this show needs a massive ensemble. And we got to work with that ensemble every episode. We did not use a very common trick in television - one that I've used all the time - which is to feature a large group in certain episodes, and then scale back in other episodes in order to compensate financially. So that was pretty exciting. No matter what scene you're watching, whether it is a gigantic battle in the opening prologue, or it's Galadriel and Elrond talking to each other at a monument, you have a huge symphonic orchestra. It never scales down. It is always really wide and substantial, even when it's small and intimate. I loved that. That was a treat, and that does just require the largest music budget that I've ever heard of going into the music production for a show.

But otherwise, when I say it didn't affect me, it really didn't. Because at the end of the day, my job is just telling a story. I have to sit here and write music that has an emotional impact on the audience and communicate to them what they should be feeling. That doesn't change if I have a hundred-piece orchestra and forty-voice choir, or if I'm doing it with a solo piano and a cello. I did a movie called Child's Play where I recorded it with toys. It really doesn't matter to me, because at the end of the day, those are just colors, and the fundamental job is the same. But I will say that Amazon Studios put a lot of production value into the music. I'm grateful to them because they gave me and my music team the resources to realize the music that was coming out of my head. It's one thing to be able to write it, but to be able to fully translate it into a live recording that sounds as cinematic and pristine as what we all want it to sound like... that is a financial commitment, and Amazon knew what to do, so that is very exciting.

Unrelated to The Lord of the Rings, The Walking Dead is ending this year after eleven seasons. As the show was one of the first really huge projects that you worked on, how does that feel?

Bear McCreary: It was incredible. The Walking Dead was absolutely one of the early breaks I got in my career that put me on a bigger pop culture radar. Coming out of Battlestar Galactica, which was a bit of a cult phenomenon, The Walking Dead got a much wider viewership. I just conducted the final episode a few weeks ago here in Los Angeles with a big orchestra. We just went all-out for the last episode, and went really big. And I was sitting up there on the podium thinking, "Wow. I've been on this show for a dozen years." It's been a dozen years of my life, and it's finally coming to an end, and it's a really exciting finale.

I don't know how many times in my career I will work on a gripping genre drama that will take a dozen years of my life. That may never happen again. So it was nice to kind of take stock of that moment when I was up there on the podium, and say goodbye to this show that's been a part of my life for a long, long time. I'm excited for fans to see what we came up with.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power Synopsis

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Prime Video's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power brings to screens for the very first time the heroic legends of the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth's history. This epic drama is set thousands of years before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and will take viewers back to an era in which great powers were forged, kingdoms rose to glory and fell to ruin, unlikely heroes were tested, hope hung by the finest of threads, and the greatest villain that ever flowed from Tolkien’s pen threatened to cover all the world in darkness.

Beginning in a time of relative peace, the series follows an ensemble cast of characters, both familiar and new, as they confront the long-feared re-emergence of evil to Middle-earth. From the darkest depths of the Misty Mountains, to the majestic forests of the elf-capital of Lindon, to the breathtaking island kingdom of Númenor, to the furthest reaches of the map, these kingdoms and characters will carve out legacies that live on long after they are gone.

Check out our interviews with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power cast at SDCC 2022, as well as with stars:

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New episodes of The Lord of the Rings: Rings of Power drop every Friday on Amazon Prime Video, and Bear McCreary's music for the show can be heard now on streaming platforms.