Hi, I'm Ludwig Göransson, and this is The Breakdown. Another interesting part about this whole process was when I was working with when I was we were almost finishing the movie and Chris was like. Can you do something for the entitles and I was again, let me just write a piece within titles and. I try to do something that we already heard and to score. But it never, never felt good enough for the experience I just had watching the movie, because movies like every time I see it, I was like my my jaws dropped down on the floor. And so I was like, we need a new voice because I feel like into enclaves, we still need to feel like we're on this ride. We I still want to feel like you're experienced this and you just want to have fun. And so I suggested to Chris, like, what if we bring in a new artistic voice in the end credits? And I specifically mentioned Travis Scott because I think his voice kind of sounds like it's from the future. And Chris was very excited about that idea. So we invited Travis Scott to come see the movie. He was probably one of the first people in the world to see it, and he immediately got it. And like his reaction was exactly, exactly what Chris was looking for. And they hit it off. And I sent Travis Scott part of the film score and the truck's in place. When he jumped when the protagonist jumps on the fire truck, I sent him that piece of music. And Travis wrote a song to that beat, and we put it into the end credits and he was perfect. He was incredible and it was actually so good. So me and Chris and we took a snippet of Travis voice and placed it out on top of the protagonists theme throughout the movie. And that was kind of the last piece missing piece of the puzzle that we just did, it was almost like we inverted ourselves and went back into the movie again. But the first time you see the first time you hear a part of protagonist's theme, you also hear Travis voice in there. So you hear it like a playwright. So that's that's that's actually the intro for the plan to move forward a little bit, we come into this sound, this there's this guitar sound that keeps repeating throughout the movie and I'm throughout the movie. It's in different variations. It's in guitars and strings. And I thought, this is just two notes. But I thought this the movement and the phrasing of these two notes is interesting because you can't completely tell if it's forward or reverse or inverted. So this is how that sounds. After that, we're reaching the middle section of the track, which is. When the protagonist sees these other armed men running into the building with gas tanks. And it sounds like this. And there's a lot of elements going on here, and you can't really tell what it is and what sound it is, but what's happening is that it's actually it's guitars again. And how I manipulated these, it's almost sounds like alarms. It's very effective. And it sounds like it's like almost like a, you know, what do you have? Like when you when you try to wake you up in the morning like a clock, you know. Yeah. Time to wake up. But I guess it's telling the audience, hey, guys, time to wake. This shit is about to go down. And so how I made that sound is is through. It's through this guitar I just played it super loose on my guitar, played a trauma like this, anyone can play like this. I put a distortion on. And then I put my cap and movement plug in on it and plug in movement so you get a little movement on it. It's like moving around a little bit and then it's just a delay and a reverb. And so it's kind of you and you wouldn't really tell you can't really tell that it's a guitar and have these marching drums like these snares that I put under it to kind of make it give it some more movement. And something that was fun to add on these snares was like this like stunt everything that had. I'm just playing random notes on my keyboard. Just it's like a stutter effect on these snares and just it just kind of it sounds like it sounds a little cool. And, uh. But then you basically have just a beat with with eight weights and a kick drum and these snares. And I put another synth arpeggio on that. That I'm controlling for a little. And and I made it also like, that's cool, but then if you if you can add a couple of different shapes to their pedroso, so it's not just five notes that goes on. Repeat the whole time. You make it a little bit more interesting. So it's like I have like three different arpeggios going on. So to create some more movement in the arpeggio, so this kind of takes you all the way up to the protagonist theme and the protagonist theme is basically just this guitar melody. Let me play the melody and. That's it. It could be interesting to hear. Uh, OK, so this is brass and strings. Playing the protagonist, the extended version of is the protagonist theme and there and the way you're hearing it now is I. I wrote down the melody backwards and then record it and then reverse it again. And you're going to hear it now, I know, and also it's worth mentioning that this recording was made during the pandemic. So we actually had record all the musicians in their houses by themselves and then put them together in a room, the recordings. And that was that took a lot of time, extra time. And also, if they if you're recording an orchestra and they're all doing it at different times. Doing revisions and me having notes. Well, that's just an extra week of another recording. So this was a businessperson three. This is probably two months off, but this is the results. That's the that's the extended version of the protagonist theme. When the melody so when the protagonist's theme kicks in for the first time. This is how it sounds. That and the courts is also pretty, it's pretty it's pretty simple, it's like. And that seems like a slight change, there's a lot of sites and instruments to kind of make it feel like you're your. And I was pushing you a little bit, and I like that effect. And it felt like it is really it works very well with John David Washington, like kind of like how he moves. He's so athletic and like. Yes, so much energy. Like, I never seen some I mean, in that last battle, like when he's running and like I just that visual of that is so cool. And just to write music that this is so fun. So we have this pad, these chords playing under the theme. So, yeah, that's the courts. And then after that, we go into we go into this. So that goes back and then it goes into this other section that I think is really cool. And so what's what? So here we're in the same rhythmic progression that we were in the beginning, which is how I feel like like four bars of three and one, bar four. So it's like it's this one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, four. And it's kind of like it's very rhythmic voice. It's it's, um, kind of makes me want to buy. And I play guitar on this, too. Let me let me actually play it for you. OK, so, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh. OK, so. Let me play this guitar rhythm. Uh, this goes like this. And this is an eight string guitar. Uh, towards, uh, signature model, and I like eight string guitars because it gives you these two extra lower and lower, lower additions, lower additions and. I know I just gives you more dynamic and more range to play with. Um, so here's this next section. So the it goes like this. A place like. Yes, little baby. Uh, so together it's like, uh. Yeah, on one of the first conversations I had with Chris. I was talking about one of the first things I ever did as a kid that made me feel like I was producing music, was sitting by the radio and sitting by the volume knob and going like this. And that's a technique that is kind of you can't really do that anymore because there's no volume knobs, like kids don't have volume knobs on their phones, they don't have stereos at home. Everything is is click it up or down on the remote. So that whole analog feeling of sitting there and being able to control music like that, I thought as when I was a kid, I thought, this is so fun and interesting, you know, probably drove my parents nuts, but I didn't do that often. OK, but, uh, and also, you know, when you scroll between radio stations, so that was always in the back of my mind, like, how how can we use that effect of going up and down with volume like that and. Another thing that I did was I was I was I was thinking back to probably the first piece of reverse music that I ever heard and. It was blackened by Metallica. It's the intro to and Justice for All and. I was like I had listened to that in years, so I was like I went back to my studio, I was like, oh, I need to listen to that again. And I put it on. And I remember as a kid, I could never I never really figured out what it was. I thought I didn't understand. I didn't fully understand that it was backwards. Um. I loved it, I thought it was really cool and also it kind of sounded different to any melody that they would write. So I went home and I put up. I Googled it. I put it up on YouTube like blank and rehearsed intro. And someone had to take in the blank intro and reversed it. And I could hear how it actually how they actually made it, how they actually played the melody. And then and I heard it in its original form. And I was like, oh, this is completely different this now. This sounds like Metallica. So I had I was kind of inspired by that and I was like, but. I wanted to be able to write something that sounded that there was the similar to that, so so I just wrote a piece of it, like a 30 second guitar. Uh, Omeish or guitar, martial arts, black, and you can say and. It sounded like this. There's like five different guitar harmonies, there's five different sense elements in there. I thought that was cool and then I reversed it and when to reverse it, it's not like this. OK, it takes so that's reversed, and then I was like, OK, what if we record the reversed version? But I notated four strings. So I wrote it down for a string ensemble to play the reverse version, but, you know, when they play it, they'll play. Reading it down normal, so so it's not going to sound reverse now, so we recorded that with a full, full orchestra string orchestra out here in L.A.. It's beautiful and it's beautiful and. OK, and what does this have to do with the movie, you might ask? OK, well, uh. I put these. This string recording in in one of the modulars in that I have behind me is I have a huge synth track and there's a module called the Nebula and and it was like especially a special version of an antibody. And he also helped me tweak it a little bit, because it's a technique that we use for this to you to do to to make this sound is very. It's it's very precise, so I took this sound and. I was like, wow, what if we can kind of go back and use those waves like we do up and down on a volume knob and just use the cords in a more space that way? And this is that sounds like. So it's those chords stretched out and manipulated with volume knob like that. And that's the theme for eating meal and do you also hear it in different iterations in the movie, you hear it like this, which is kind of like more of the guitar, distorted guitar sound. And but then you also hear it with the string sounds. And this is how this is Neil's theme in an industry iteration. That's part that's that's the first half, but. So it's an interesting way how you come to ideas sometimes, right? It's like. You know, you take a lot of turns just. To come to this idea, and it's that's what's so fun about my job, or I think being creative in in in any kind of way is like you go you go on this whole journey and you come back to this, you know, it's going through your life or my childhood. And, you know, that's how it's played like here. That's the first time when you see Protagonist and Neil and then in the very end, these chords come back. But it's all weird like. Big instrumentation and things, yeah, reverse guitars, and he was playing reverse drums, and so you get more out of this.
