Bear McCreary

“I find reading books about music is sometimes tricky, because you can't hear it. But when you read a book about filmmaking, it's a much easier thing to get across on the page.”

“Going into 'Da Vinci's Demons' I didn't know anything about renaissance music and going into 'Black Sails,' I didn't know about sea shanties and popular music from the 1700s.”

“When I was 16 years old, I had a chance meeting in Bellingham, Washington, of all places on planet Earth, with the legendary composer Elmer Bernstein. My life was never the same after that.”

“I read 'The Hobbit' and 'The Lord of the Rings' when I was in middle school. But it was the films which brought Middle Earth alive for me. Those films changed my life: I was in my early 20s when they came out, and they made me feel like a kid again.”

“I think as a composer, you need to have enough of a reputation so that people know if they give you the budget you're not going to screw it up.”

“What I want as a fan is to be able to sit down and watch 50 hours or so of the 'Rings of Power,' then... marathon the director's cut versions of the Peter Jackson films in one day, and feel a continuous experience.”

“Music is such a throughline in my family.”

“I feel like the score is a chance for an artist to exercise their voice and augment a film.”

“When you hit a string or a piece of metal or anything that vibrates, you hear the fundamental pitch that the thing is vibrating at, but you hear a series of overtones - of harmonic frequencies - that you're not exactly aware that you're hearing. And those are a series of notes that are increasingly higher than the fundamental.”

“Battlestar' could sound like whatever I wanted it to sound like, because in the science fiction environment, there are no rules.”

“Remember, a TV pilot is like an experiment. You try it out, and if it works, then they make it a series. So, the cheaper you can make the pilot the better.”

“People that don't write, whatever it is, they just assume you sit down and it magically pours out like Amaedus, and it's definitely humbling to know that it doesn't necessarily happen that way.”

“The theme is the most essential component of a new series and I spend a lot of time developing it.”

“I mean what I love more than anything is Jerry Goldsmith's 80s music and Bernard Herrmann's genre music from the 50s and 60s.”

“When I was between the ages of 5 and 8 years old, I fell in love with the music of composers like Danny Elfman, Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, Alan Silvestri, and John Williams.”

“I mean, if anything, 'Dark Void' is the bridge between 'Battlestar' and 'Human Target.'”

“The great thing about scoring sci-fi shows is that you basically get to make up the rules, because you're creating a self-contained universe; when you're doing a period piece set during the Renaissance, however, there's a strong history you have to honor.”

“I don't view the web as any other secondary medium to television or film - I just think it's another avenue.”

“I'm constantly juggling different projects. If they were all the same thing, it'd be really hard.”

“I understand fans being hesitant to embrace 'The Rings of Power.'”