‘Fallout' Composer Ramin Djawadi Breaks Down the ‘Brotherhood of Steel' Theme Song | Behind the Song

I'm Ramin Javadi and I'm going to take you through one of the pieces from Fallout, the creator of the shows of Jonah Nolan, who I've worked with in the past. We met on Batman Begins. We did a show called Personal of Interest, and we're all together. So I was very excited when he approached me about his, his new show Fallout. The show's based on very well known video game. There's a lot of songs in the game. And then the, the score is this Moody ambient vibe, I guess you could say. And, and so that's definitely a, a starting point for us that we wanted to capture as well. It's this post apocalyptic setting in the future, but however, it's the visuals of a stuck in the 50s. The songs in there are from that era actually. So there's a lot of those songs and then the score kind of blends in and out of these moments. The great juxtaposition because it's an overall pretty dark show, but there's also a lot of humor in it. It was great that at the time when I came in that a lot of material already ready to be shown to me. So I got an early cut of, like I said, maybe the 1st 20 minutes of the first episode. The first episode is a great introduction of our three main characters. There's Lucy, who lives in the vault, starts out, at least for her, she's this innocent person. And then there is Maximus, who is with the Brotherhood of Steel, so his journey gets set up. And then there is the ghoul, which is a character that is more of like a gunslinger. I guess you can say. I researched what the initial soundscape was for the game, and that was definitely the starting point that the mood of the show. The three characters that I just mentioned, they were new. So that was really my focus. So that was the thematic elements that I focused on to create for this series. Before I even start to write any notes, I said with Jonah Nolan and then Geneva and Graham, the showrunners, and we just sent in a room together and just brainstormed. And then they kind of talked me through the show. And that was really my starting point, trying to capture each individual because they couldn't be any more different. What are the instruments, what's the mood and all that that I needed to capture. So once I had that information, then I would sit down and then try to figure out how to put that into musical notes. The Brotherhood of Steel theme is what I have behind me here. Starts out kind of ambient, just to set the tone, because the environment with the Brotherhood is a little bit uneasy. Actually. There's a little bit of tension that's almost threatening, you can say. So we have this low bed little rattle here give this pitch that doesn't really stay the same. It kind of that it creates this tension a little bit. And even that that rattle that we heard, that's like a percussive little, like almost like a shake. But even that's actually done by a synthesizer actually, that's not an actual percussive instrument. And then if I jump forward a little bit, that's the moment when Maximus gets his branding on his neck. It's actually played on these vocals that I pitched down. It's very uneasy. And so I thought some vocals could be cool. So that I think that comes in around here. And then the melody continues. You could say it's almost like a religious feel, but I didn't want it to be a traditional church choir or something like that. So I thought to use these kind of vocals and then pitch them down. It just gives it a more of a darker feel. So I thought that could be a good tone. There's these distortion sounding guitars that also add to the bed, but it's almost sounds like a, a low, again, a low pitch slide guitar or something where it's like you can't really define the pitch, but it just kind of slides in as they have their missions that they go on and they have all the technology and they have these powerful suits. So then the theme actually repeats and French horns actually to bring this heroism into it. And now the as we can hear the bass is also starting to move. So now the harmonies actually open up a bit more. And then the next section, the percussion comes in these suits that they have this armoured suit. It's very powerful, but also very clunky to having this militaristic rhythm to it. I thought could be could be a good match with these. When we see them walking, it's just they're so tall and thick. So even without playing any melodic elements, just playing that kind of militaristic marching rhythm could be just a, a signature sound for them. And then the melody continues. This is another section, you could call it maybe AC, the C-section. And then here we get the theme again, but now bigger with percussion and the harmonies. So we hear the melody again and and then the piece finishes out with actually it's the first time we hear strings to just again enhance the emotion to build the piece. They don't do that much other than just to help expand the piece. They're actually these ascending lines and they're distorted too, as you can hear that it's kind of goes more with the guitars. So these strings are synthetic as well, but they're not supposed to sound like real strings. Actually, it's once they get to this helicopter type vehicle that the noise of the rotators were sold out. So they have elements actually that would cut through. So that's the thick percussive element, and then these more elongated notes, that's something that will carry on top of the big sound because that's definitely rain and helicopter sounds. And also are very challenging actually with music. Always when I wrote it, the cut wasn't finished. I think I just didn't really have an ending at the time, maybe for the scene. So, so like this, you could see the pieces just kind of vamping and, and and and place the melody, but it doesn't didn't have this additional element to it. If I just solo it again, just more harmonies, I guess to the ending that I think it's harmonically, it kind of leads you more to to a definitive ending, I guess you can say. So I tried to stay away from any online chatter really. I have had a lot of friends reach out and say they watch the show and they're really into it and they're excited about it. Even people that did not know the game, there was such a buzz about it that people said like, oh, I want to, I want to check this out. I want to see what this is all about. So people were very positive about it. I feel like a show like this, anything can happen. I mean, it's, you know, it's the the way the ending is set up and is a lot of a lot of ways can go. So I'm, I'm, I'm just going to sit back and, and I always like to surprise myself actually when once I get a script or once I get an episode to see what's happening.