In chapter 11 of the successful Disney plus series “The Mandalorian”, our hero meets other beings of his ethnicity who decide to attack an imperial ship for the purposes of the plot. Ludwig Göransson, in charge of composing the music for the series, creates a work to represent this group of Mandalorians during the battles that they will fight in this chapter. Work that will be varied according to the needs of the scene. To begin with, the theme will have 2 elements that will not change if you import the scene. The first would be the use of an electronic sound similar to a drum “hi hat”, which connects us a bit to all the technology they use to fight (especially the thrusters in the back), whose movement varies according to the intensity of the scene. The second element is a motif in Phrygian C # mode
C # - D - E - F # - G # - A - B - C #
And yes, although the motif only uses the notes C # - F # - G # - A (which is insufficient to determine the Phrygian mode) for a moment in harmony it uses the note D which is the characteristic note of the Phrygian mode in this key. And this effect is very interesting since in the other variations of the Work, it does not use the characteristic note at any time because somehow I already install in your perception the way the motif is.
The music in this particular scene has 2 variants that caught my attention, the first is that here the time signature is 7/4 (in the first version it was 4/4), and this caught my attention, since in the scene is given 2 surprise attacks separated by 14 pulses. It is obvious that if I continued with a 4/4 time signature the motive would be 2 beats late, and if I wanted to force the motive in 2 beats earlier, it would sound somewhat forced. And as we know the great relationship between music and mathematics 14 between 2 gives us 7, if I create cycles of 7 musically everything fits.
Before moving on to the second detail, I would like to tell you that the measures with a 7/4 indicator are basically combinations of a 3/4 measure with a 4/4 measure (in general), and it strikes me that in this battle they face each other. 3 stormtroopers against 4 Mandalorians. I couldn’t confirm that Ludwig Göransson decided to use the 7/4 time signature because of this situation but I don’t want to miss that detail as I see a great job on the part of the composer.
The second detail is the adaptation of the musical motif of the Mandalorians to this new time signature, without losing its naturalness:
C # - (C #) - F # - A - G # - (C #)
In parentheses I have put the sounds it makes to be able to adapt the melody to the new measure, rescuing leaving the A - G # which is the most characteristic of the motif. Finally I would recommend that you watch this chapter called the “Heiress” and pay attention to the action scenes and musical variants that are exposed there.
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Social Media Author: Pablo Bobadilla Rider
