Silence can be a very powerful tool. Sometimes it's more powerful to leave you with nothing.
The tonality of the flute almost has a mystic element to me.
I'll say, 'I really like Daenerys,' and then I go, 'Wait, but I like the Stark theme, too, and I like the Lannister theme.' I keep jumping around. But I think that's kind of the beauty of 'Game of Thrones,' that there's so many different ones, and they're all kind of different, and they do different things.
I'm one of those artists who, if you'd let me tweak, would probably keep going and going, so it comes to the point where sometimes you just have to let go and make the decision, 'Okay, that's it.'
What's so cool about 'Light of the Seven' - and what I love about 'Game of Thrones' - is you never know what's going to happen.
After high school, I moved to the U.S. and studied music in Boston, at the Berklee College of Music.
I was born and raised in Germany, so I was classically trained. Classical has been deep in me from a totally early age. Then, as a teenager, I picked up the guitar and was really into rock music.
I always like to tweak things and push things forward.
I myself am a huge Radiohead fan.
Find your own style, whatever it is. Whatever is inside you, bring that out. I think that's when you have something unique.
When I work on a movie, I look at the script or watch the film, and I talk to my director or producers and make a plan: this is our main character; we need a theme for this plot. We need a love theme.
For me, always, the big inspiration really comes from talking with my creators, my showrunners and my producers, and seeing what is their vision for their project.
That's what I like: to kind of get up and start working right away in the morning.
With 'Westworld,' the player piano plays a very important role.
My dream that I followed and that I'm living now is that I actually always wanted to go to music college, play in a band, do a world tour, and then eventually get into film music.
I would sit at the organ and just start making up things by myself - I was maybe 7 years old, which was too young to even know how to notate music. So I never wrote anything down, but when I'd make things up, I'd memorize them.
I like to have recognizable themes and sounds that really connect to the project and that you can identify with that particular project. My goal is always, 'When that theme comes on - even if you're not in the room - you hear it and say, 'Oh my show is starting, I gotta watch.'
I always really wanted to do film scoring, largely because I hate writing lyrics. I just won't do it. I need help with the words.
I don't listen to film music at all. I don't want to be influenced.
I think a melody is a melody. And the way I usually start is I start writing my themes without even writing to picture to just try to find the tone for the movie or the TV show.
