Game of Thrones concert tour will include “a lot of wildfire” and other twists

Tickets for the Game of Thrones live concert tour are on sale now, and we’re still learning about what exactly fans can expect when show composer Ramin Djawadi travels around the country early in 2017. Djawadi spoke to Time about the feelings he hopes the concert will elicit.

"The idea behind this is to showcase how the music enhances those experiences for the audience. There’s some great, big exciting moments, like for example “Mesa,” which was when Daenerys frees all the slaves and people will remember that very uplifting moment, but then we will perform some of these heartbreaking moments with real musicians. That’s always very special too because when you see live musicians perform music they put their own emotion into it, and you see a violinist and how their body moves. I think that’s so powerful."

Djawadi has talked about the set-up for the concert before, but some details remain under wraps. For example, show director Curtis Adams told Rolling Stone that the concerts will feature “a lot of wildfire.” He also said it’ll include “stuff you haven’t seen yet in the [HBO] show.”

We can likely rest assured that the production staff will find a way to incorporate wildfire that doesn’t kill everyone. As for the stuff we haven’t seen, it’s anyone’s guess. Perhaps clips from Season 7? The producers will have shot much of the season by the time the concerts begin.

Back to Time, Djawadi talked about how he produces music for the series. His favorite character to write for is Daenerys—her epic scenes lend themselves to a big choir and full orchestra. Meanwhile, the hardest piece to write was the one that accompanied Hodor’s death.

"I have to watch it over and over and I’m in my own world here so I get very emotional myself. That was very hard to write because I, just like many other people, like him so much, and here I am writing the sad music on top of it."

Game of Thrones is a replete with sad moments, so much so that executive producers David Benioff and Weiss sometimes question Djawadi if one of his pieces sounds too light-hearted. “[T]hey’ll go, ‘Ramin, wait. Did we hear a major chord there? Are we being happy?’ We laughed about that because you’re right, it is so dark and there’s so many people dying left and right.”

"Arya, for example has had, even though there’s a lot of bad things that have happened in her life, but she has a couple of pieces that are very uplifting and we’re using the dulcimer for her. It’s this hammered string instrument that has a center sound and it’s kind of a pingy sound. On the latest soundtrack it’s called “Needle,” and that for example is a very uplifting piece. There have been other very emotional moments like for Season 3 I believe when John and Ygritte end up on the wall and they kiss and for the first time they look over the wall."

Finally, Djawadi talked about writing melodies for two iconic songs from the Song of Ice and Fire universe: “The Rains of Castamere” and “The Bear and the Maiden Fair.”

"[B]oth of those pieces had existing lyrics where I was sort of restricted. I had to find notes that fit to these preexisting lyrics. It’s definitely a different approach of writing a melody. For “The Rains of Castamere,” that was written before I had even started on the next season. That was something when [creators] David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] called me up in between seasons and said, “Hey we have this song. It’s going to play a very important role down the road, and we need a theme for this.” Usually I write with the visuals onscreen, but I just wrote it with the lyrics and no visuals attached yet."

We’ll bring you more on the Game of Thrones concert series as it gets closer. Until then, a final word from Djawadi:

"What’s exciting about this concert is that people will be able to see some of the instruments I’ve been using on the show, some solo instruments like for example a duduk, which is like an Armenian woodwind instrument or a dulcimer. There’s all these instruments that people might have never seen. Some of them are so specific that you can’t really use them on any other project but because it’s a fantasy world, but still very contemporary, musically we can create our own sound."