Composer Atli Örvarsson Says He Used Musical Instruments That Represented Loneliness For ‘Silo’ Score – Sound & Screen TV
Composer Atli Örvarsson wrote the music for Silo, the Apple TV+ series about a post-apocalyptic society living within a giant silo so old they don’t even know who built it. For the tale, Örvasson said he thought of musical instruments that could represent loneliness.
“I tried to imagine possibly living in these conditions,” Örvarsson said during a panel conversation at Deadline’s Sound & Screen Television live-music event. “It must be incredibly lonely, incredibly isolating. I go to more traditional solo instruments like piano and solo violin.”
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Örvarsson gave some of those traditional instruments a futuristic revamp. For example, a magnetic resonator piano features in the score. Magnets give the piano strings more electronic sounds.
In addition to loneliness, Örvarsson also thought about the technical logistics of the silo setting.
“The first thing I started working on in the score was just kind of probing the tones,” Örvarsson said. “I imagined there has to be sort of a hum in the silo that’s running on a generator.”
Örvarsson joked that growing up in Iceland was as isolating as living in the silo. He wrote the score in his studio in his home country.
“The only thing was it was the summertime,” he said. “There’s no darkness at all in the summertime in Iceland. Even the night’s bright. All the initial ideas really came from being in my studio in Iceland.”
Örvarsson also began scoring the episodes before visual effects completed the vastness of the interior space. The composer worried he overcompensated.
“When I first saw the first cut there was no CGI,” he said. “So I couldn’t see that huge spiral staircase. I said, ‘Oh my God, there’s no scope to this. I have to make the music really big.’”
He reconsidered once he saw the episode finished, but ultimately feels it still works. “Maybe I didn’t need to go quite that big,” Ǒrvarsson said. “I think it helped stretching it in all directions.”
Apple has renewed Silo for a second season. Örvarsson said the music for it will feature “an evolution of themes we established in Season 1.”
Check out the panel video above.
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