Ahsoka composers on Easter eggs and foreshadowing Anakin Skywalker

To coincide with the finale of the latest Disney Plus Star Wars adventure, we sat down with series composers Kevin, Deana and Sean Kiner to discuss how the show’s sound fits into the wider sound of the Star Wars universe at this point in time and how it expands on the palette Kiner has been crafting since The Clone Wars.

As well as scoring Ahsoka herself in live-action, Kiner talked scoring Hayden Christensen’s Anakin Skywalker and the much-anticipated return of Grand Admiral Thrawn.

Kiner spilt the beans on how, collectively, they have learned to use John Williams’s iconic themes and motifs at the right points so as not to spoil their legacy. Kiner also discussed new themes for the show’s mysterious villains, Morgan Elspeth, Shin Hati and Baylan Skoll.

Ahsoka is a later point in the Star Wars universe than you've been before. Were the original films a reference point at all?

Kevin Kiner: I don't think so much. We did a lot with Rebels. Rebels was this really cool reboot. So, for a little history, going back to Clone Wars, when Dave Filoni and I were working with George Lucas, George was intent on not using too many of the original Star Wars themes.

So, all through Clone Wars, we stayed away from any John Williams and then when Rebels started we had just straight-up used some of the music from the TIE Fighter attack in Empire Strikes Back. That was in the first episode of Rebels. So Dave said yeah, let's go back to the John Williams score.

Sean: It's very much baked into the DNA of the Rebel sound.

Deana: It really is just cooking and John Williams's themes are the strongest spice in our arsenal. So if we overuse them, it starts to kind of like lose their potency.

Sean: We try to be very reverent about when we use it.

Deana: It makes those moments really effective. It's basically when we say this is really important. This is like, this is a moment and you really should be paying attention to it.

Thrawn has finally arrived in the show - how have you found building on his score and sound from Rebels?

Kevin: One thing that's interesting, I will say, is that when we first approached Thrawn's entrance, it was crazy organ-heavy, because that's his theme, and it was originally on the organ. That was Dave Filoni's idea and got a lot of positive fan reception. It didn't really work having that much organ in it. It's still there. But it just didn't work as well and this was where we had to take time to polish things and bounce ideas around.

I mean, it's so marvellous. We were just talking about other composers I know who kind of complain about some of the gigs they get or whatever. And it's such a dream gig to be doing Ahsoka because, one, it's marvellous material and you get to play in this unbelievable playground, but also, Dave Filoni is just a great guy to work with him in that you can make mistakes, or you can do things that that he feels aren't working and he's probably right. Without getting fired, without getting yelled at.

He's just super positive and super open and George was like that, too. You know, George really liked to hear new things and he was okay if it didn't work because he understood that you're pushing boundaries or whatever like that and I think Dave understood we were you know, swinging for the organ and he said I think that's where have to pull back on that and we did and I mean, the end result I think really kicks ass, when Thrawn comes.

Deana: We wanted to add a lot of weight to his early entrance and that's where we ended up like with the final piece of music in there - we needed to make him feel as substantial as his his character was. Initially, I think we were just playing his music and making it about the music instead of about that moment.

And that's how we got to that point where it's just like slow drawn out, like distort the chords like he's in a different state, his troopers, his army are in a different state, they've had to repair their armour with like Kintsugi. We just had to match it to the picture that we needed to accomplish.

How have you found the shift from animation to live-action?

Kevin: Ahsoka took more time to do, you know, in many ways they're similar because we use some of the same themes although we expanded them and made them relevant to Ahsoka. Ahsoka was more like doing a feature film. We wound up doing five hours of music for Ahsoka, which is insane. That's three popcorn movies pretty much.

You've scored Ahsoka from a young child to where she is now. How have you found that evolution in her sound?

I've kind of gone down some YouTube rabbit holes since Ahsoka came out because there are these crazy people who know more than anybody about the little details. I've watched some of the early Clone Wars, I completely forgot - I mean, I started in 2006 on this - and in a way, I'd forgotten how small of a girl she was.

The first theme I ever wrote for George Lucas and Dave Filoni was Ahsoka's. And that was I remember where I was, I remember what the scene was, it came out quickly, you know, it was, which to me are the better themes, you know, the ones that just naturally kind of flow, you're channelling and it's just happening.

I'd forgotten how young she was. And just looking back at that, I mean, Rosario Dawson brings her to maturity in such an elegant way. And I think our music kind of helps reflect that. And I think Sean and Deana brought an aspect of, you know, a variation on Ahsoka's theme, that that really fits meshes nicely with the maturity and the regal-ness that Rosario Dawson brings to the character.

Episode 5 features Anakin heavily and is a call back to a lot of Clone Wars events. How did you find revisiting some of those themes and characters?

Kevin: So, I think these two first just lost it because we don't really know what's coming and we kind of like it that way, we like to have it fresh, we don't read the scripts or anything we just kind of react the way the audience does.

So, when we saw especially young Ahsoka, so I think that was a great inspiration and then going back to the Clone Wars and going back to all of the different battles, and then even the Battle of Mandalore, it was a lot of stuff that was super for the geek in us and we're all geeks.

Sean: We got to dig out the old synths from the Siege of Mandalore and the final season of Clone Wars, you know, some surreptitious references to Burying the Dead made it in there.

Kevin: It's so subtle. It's hard to find.

We hear several John Williams motifs in that episode like the Force theme and Imperial March how do you approach using his themes?

Sean: That's such a huge moment when we see Hayden for the first time. So we kind of picked apart little bits of here and there are chords from Anakin theme from The Phantom Menace, when he's a boy, but then we bring in the Vader theme, to kind of foreshadow what was going to happen in episode five, where Ahsoka's going to have to face the reality of the implications of his legacy.

Kevin: One of the things I was talking about is like, let's not just repeat this theme verbatim, let's not just go, Ahsoka's theme and play it exactly. Let's reference it and John Williams is the master of this and that's where I probably learned it. Oh, he's not really playing the whole theme. He's coming in the middle then he's putting in new chords. I think that's the most elegant way to drive your themes home.

The end credits is a standout and there are several themes in it, are you able to talk us through your process there?

Sean: Kevin mentioned that we wanted to make Ahsoka's theme more mature. There's such a samurai streak throughout Ahsoka. So, we knew that we had to go into more of a samurai direction, we actually kind of tested it out in the end of Tales of the Jedi, experimenting with variations on Ahsoka's theme.

Now at the beginning of the end credits, we have that kind of Ronin motif and the low strings peddling along, and then you have her Ronin theme. It's a variation on a theme. You can hear her notes in there. But it's a variation on her and it's like her as a warrior her as a mature adult.

Deana: We initially had the approach of every episode was going to have different end credits. And then logistically, we realised that, oh, we need to reevaluate that approach, and decided upon having a main end titles sequence that was consistent for every episode. We practiced over and over, through different episodes had different ideas for the end credits that grew into this final form.

Kevin: I had forgotten all about that. It was a lot of work and at one stage we had maybe four or five end credits which caused lot of logistical problems. Plus, I think it just made more sense, just to have this kind of anchor, because every main title is different, which I think's really fun and the show is different for every main title. So we need to play that dramatically. So to have that kind of anchor at the end is cool.

Baylan and Shin are obviously very different to traditional Jedi and Si. So how did you approach scoring those two?

Sean: Baylan specifically, we made a variation of this thing called DSRA, which is a long standing sound. It comes from Gregorian monks. It’s associated with death and the ending of things. And so we made a variation of that.

We voiced it on piano using this kind of Rachmaninoff style in the piano and then played it in the orchestra, kind of heavy metal when he first showed up in that hallway. Heavy metal with DSRA. So there's a lot of, you know, there's classicism still rooted in there but it's an ancient kind of classicism mixed with, you know, more modern sensibility of rocking out.

Kevin: Baylan’s theme, Shin's theme and Morgan's theme are all new for Ahsoka and I'm really pleased with all three of those and how they turned out.

Is there anything else you'd like to cover about the score for the show?

Kevin: The score is out now.

We're really proud of it every single minute. That is, in the show, as far as I know, or very close to it is, is in the soundtrack, and there's going to be a second release after episode 8 comes out, where we do everything. I've never been involved with a soundtrack that we've been able to do that.

Deana: It feels like such a strong reflection of us as artists, you can really hear like the diversity that we try to implement in our soundscape of just like we all are coming from very different places musically.

Like we have different kinds of tastes and, and things that have been informed us growing up, but like, at the heart of it is Star Wars music, and you can really hear it more woven through the entire thing.

Sean: We've been really lucky to get to work all three of us together on this. It was a really wonderful and positive experience. You know, as afraid as we were when we first got the call. Having each other's backs, I think really made the difference so that we can make creatively courageous decisions.

Ahsoka is streaming now on Disney Plus. Sign up to Disney Plus for £7.99 a month or £79.90 per year.

Visit our Sci-Fi hub for more news and features, or find something to watch with our TV Guide and Streaming Guide.

Try Radio Times magazine today and get 10 issues for only £10, PLUS a £10 John Lewis and Partners voucher delivered to your home – subscribe now. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.