'Shōgun' Composer Breaks Down the Dramatic Main Title Theme

Variety

Atticus & Leopold Ross composed the title theme of FX's hit show 'Shōgun.' Leopold dives into every instrument utilized to make the dramatic and harrowing piece.

Transcript

00:00I'm Leopold Ross. I'm sitting here in my brother Atticus Ross' studio,

00:04and I'm going to take you through the main title theme of Shogun,

00:07which we created along with our collaborator, Nick Chuba.

00:22We received an email from a friend who we had worked with previously.

00:28It was just, hey, I'm working on this show.

00:31It's called Shogun. Do you guys want to do it?

00:35Composing the score for Shogun was a process that took over two and a half years.

00:42During that time, we worked closely with our arranger, Taro Ishida.

00:46He is an expert in gagaku music,

00:49which is the period authentic music of the time in which Shogun is set.

00:54We sent a bunch of very impressionistic sketches to Justin.

00:59One of those sketches was Nick Chuba, my collaborator, playing what's called a nose flute.

01:24Justin really felt that that was evocative and of the world.

01:38Then it became a case of building from here and turning this into a theme

01:45that encapsulated the world of Shogun and matched the kind of epic scale of the visuals.

01:51The first thing that comes in to join the nose flute is a bamboo flute that's called the shakuhachi.

01:57It has a kind of a rich sound in its lower register.

02:21Our initial recording sessions with Taro were,

02:24let's get an understanding of how you guys combine traditionally and how you phrase things in a typical way.

02:36So a lot of it was about understanding how they do things and exploring the way they express things traditionally.

02:45So once we've had the nose flute and the shakuhachi, then the hichirichi enters.

02:52The hichirichi is a very small, raspy reed instrument that really became one of the signature sounds of Shogun

03:00because the way that it reacted with our processing put it in this kind of indescribable world

03:07where it's not ancient and it's not modern and it's not eastern and it's not western.

03:12It's just existing between the lines.

03:15So this is the hichirichi along with everything else.

03:46We then added the kokyu, which is a bowed instrument.

03:51It's playing sustained and it's also playing tremolo.

04:16We worked both with Taro Ishida and another drum specific collaborator in Los Angeles called Shoji Kameda

04:26who has an ensemble called the On Ensemble.

04:29And we built up this propulsive groove.

04:45The most challenging part of the song production-wise was how do we get from this grand, beautiful,

05:14swelling feeling into this end section which is more about intensity and brutality and danger.

05:24The thing that really helped us bridge that was the Buddhist monks completely down to Taro Ishida.

05:32He just happened to mention as we were working on sessions,

05:36hey, there's a group of Buddhist monks who are doing a festival at their temple this weekend.

05:42He got their permission to record what was their rehearsal for their festival.

05:47It was very much just off the cuff.

05:50So yeah, this is the Buddhist monks and when we got the recordings back from Taro,

05:56we were digging through them and we found this phrase and it just really helped us transition from the beauty to the brutality.

06:12So yeah, they help us bridge and then we get this big bending riff which kind of gives us a feeling of danger.

06:28What we tend to do is build a chain of effects and then experiment with different players playing into that chain at the same time.

06:49So as we get to the climax of the track, the big counter guitar line enters.

07:18I'm just going to solo this to see if it sounds interesting or not.

07:49So adding that rhythm gave us a really nice kind of outro because we've taken the piece to that point to level 10,

08:02but then it's like we hit you with another blow and get it up to 12.

08:26I mean, I felt immensely proud watching the series back and connected on such a wide level.

08:35We thought it was going to be like a niche art piece.

08:39You know what I mean? We weren't expecting it to turn into this monster.

08:44It's just an honor to be involved in a project where the level of craftsmanship across the whole production is at such a high bar.

08:56And it pushed us because we wanted to be at that bar.

08:59It's just a humbling and amazing feeling.

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