It was driving me crazy listening to The House of the Dragon’s opening theme music, which was composed by Ramin Djawadi, and has been such an iconic musical piece for 11 seasons of shows. I knew something was different, and I thought I might have been able to pinpoint it, but I wasn’t for certain until I pulled all 11 seasons of opening themes between Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon to analyze them.
What did I discover?
I pulled the theme song from every season of GOT and HOTD to analyze them side-by-side in Logic Pro, which took some time and careful alignment. In the end, I found some immediate differences.
I was correct: they had edited the theme song. In HOTD, seasons 2 and 3 have removed the “extra” bar in several places, making it a shorter song and giving it a much more squared-off appeal. That “lingering” feeling of an extra bar at the end of a several main phrases in the song (making it feel like it had an odd time signature, but really didn’t) has been removed from seasons 2 and 3.
Surprise(s)
I also learned that season 1 of Game of Thrones uses the shorter theme, too! They either added in the extra bars for season 2 or that was the original version all along.
Also, based on the recordings I pulled from YouTube, season 2 of GOT is actually a half-step higher than any of the others, though that may have just been a YouTube quirk. I haven’t figured that out yet.
Anyone else noticed any of this?