Song Exploder - Jeremy Zuckerman - The Legend of Korra

Episode Date: February 20, 2015

In 2005, Nickelodeon premiered an animated series called Avatar: The Last Airbender, about a young boy and his friends who have to keep peace and balance in the world. It combined fantasy and martial arts, and ran for four seasons, won an Emmy and a Peabody, and in 2012, spawned a sequel called The Legend of Korra. This time, the story was about a girl, Korra, a teenager, and just as the characters were older and the world they inhabited was older, the themes of the show matured as well. In December 2014, after 4 seasons of its own, the series and franchise aired its finale. It made headlines for the final shot of the very last scene. Composer Jeremy Zuckerman used a mix of Chinese and western instruments for the series. In this episode, he deconstructs the music he wrote that scene, reflects on its significance, and also what it felt like to close the curtain on a franchise he'd been working on over the course of twelve years of his life.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. This episode contains explicit language. In this episode, composer Jeremy Zuckerman will break down his score for the final scene of the final episode of the groundbreaking animated series The Legend of Kora. Spoilers are ahead, but honestly, as someone who's seen every episode, I don't think these spoilers will detract from how much he'll love the franchise if you've never seen it, and you decide to start after this. So, in 2005, Nickelodeon premiered an animated series called Avatar, The Last Airbender, about a young boy and his friends who have to keep peace and balance in the world. It combined fantasy and martial arts.

It ran for four seasons, won an Emmy and a Peabody, and in 2012, spawned a sequel called The Legend of Cora. This time, the story was about a girl, Cora, who was a teenager. And just as the characters were older and the world they inhabited was older, the themes of the show matured as well. In December 2014, after four seasons of its own, the series aired its fans. finale. The finale made headlines because in the very last scene, Cora and her female companion, Asami, come together as a couple romantically. Composer Jeremy Zuckerman used a mix of Chinese and Western instruments for the series. Coming up, he deconstructs the music he wrote, reflects on the significance of that scene, and also what it felt like to close the curtain on a franchise

he'd been working on over the course of 12 years of his life. Now, here's Jeremy Zuckerman on the final piece of music for The Legend of Cora. The Legend of Cora is about a teenage girl. I think she was 17 when this show starts. And Cora is this hot-headed girl, and she's kind of cocky. She sort of acts before she thinks a lot. Over the course of the show, she really develops as a person. And really, to me, the show is really about finding yourself. This is Jeremy Zuckerman.

I did the music for The Legend of Cora. Today we're going to be talking about the final cue from the finale. I knew what I wanted to do with it, because I've been wanting to develop the end credits for the whole series. That's like my favorite cue. I think of the whole series. Such a simple little thing. When Chora started, I was going,

like, I was emotionally going through some stuff. Both my parents had died. Like, my dad had died suddenly, like, in the middle of Avatar. My mom died suddenly right before Cora started. And I was just like, fuck this, man. I'm just laying my emotions out a little bit. And it made sense for me because Chora is sort of this teenager and teenagers go through some stuff.

And they feel things super deeply. And I remember, like, the end of the end credits of the Incredible Hulk, the live action series. I love that. The piano, when it would come in as he's walking away. And it was so sad. You know, and he's like going away to be alone again. And I was like, I don't know, I want to somehow tap into that a little bit for this.

All along, I'd been looking for an opportunity to extend that end credits. And I never could find one until that last scene. So then when I watched that last act, then I knew it would definitely work. I was so happy. And I think if I never extended that, it would always feel like unfinished business. So I would get body notes. It's just sort of like pages of detailed stuff in the sense of like hit this moment, support this. It's more like where there needs to be music and sometimes how it should function.

Okay, the final episode spotting notes. Transition to score for this last sequence. They will hold hands and turn to each other at the end. So we'd like to have a more romantic feel for this last sequence to support the intention that these lovely ladies are going to get together. I was totally surprised. I couldn't sleep. I was so happy.

It was like super amazing. I don't know. I just didn't think they'd go for it. I couldn't sleep. And I wanted to tell my wife, but I didn't want to ruin it for us. It was like something really amazing happens at the end of core, man. It's like really important. This was one of the only times that I did a piano demo before fleshing it out,

just to get the pacing and the feeling of it and everything. We start with this pitch percussion. And then we have these strings in the background that are just doing these really simple long notes. I wanted to keep it pretty minimal in the beginning, so we had room to grow. Also, it's a very sort of peaceful moment. You know, they're looking out in the water, and you realize they've really come a long way together. I just wanted to reflect that a bit. I'm using a technique called flageolet.

They're actually referred to as artificial harmonics. So you get these really high, ghostly sort of sounding notes, and they're very, they're noisy, you know, you get this nice sort of white noise, or it could be a really beautiful sound. We're about to go into the end credits melody. It starts with the Zhanghu, and then it goes out of the range of the Zhanghu,

so then Arhu takes over. So Arhu is a two-string Chinese instrument. Chinese instrument. There are no frets or anything. It's extremely vocal. There's a lot of sliding into notes and sliding around and it's extremely lyrical. And so the Jong-hu is just like an Ar-hoo, but it's a fifth lower. It has a lower range. Hong Wang, he's the Chinese instrumentalist on the show. He played all the Chinese instruments. Hong contacted me via LinkedIn of all things. He just said, hey, I'm a Chinese instrumentalist. I can play pretty much any Chinese instrument. I like your music. It'd be great to work together sometime.

That arpeggio part is a calimba, and for the end credits it's only calimbab, but for this, I sweetened it with some Pegasus. Pegasus is a pitch percussion metal instrument with mallets. And then there's the Glock and Spiel. It's really simple, you know, but together. And the strings now are playing the melody instead of the Zhonghu. I'm just using a trio, violin, viola, and cello, and I fit them all in the room right here, you know, the small space. So here Osami shows up And there's this thing called these

Shippers, which is this thing that I had never known about until way into this show. And it's these tweens and young adults and probably adult aviages, you know, who like five for these different relationships, these different characters getting together. And there apparently were people who wanted Kora and Asami to get together.

And so when Asami shows up, it's this moment for all these fans and it's clearly a romantic moment. The Chinese instruments left for a little bit to give us some room. And now it comes back again with it and credits melody and sort of wrapping up here. The last build. Kor and Asami are talking about how maybe they should go away together

and a kid show showing a lesbian relationship. I kind of wanted the music to reflect that. This is a historic moment. One of the first things that I wrote in the first series, the Avatar series, became like a really important, simple little theme. I wanted to come back to that for me selfishly. You know, people who had been through this show

and are thinking, oh my God, like, this whole thing that I've been through this experience, you know, I was a kid when I first started watching it. Now I'm like a teenager or a young adult or whatever. The series is coming to an end. And we've all been through it together, you know, fans, all the production, the crew, this huge chunk of life, like, had just zipped by. And then so I end on this little melody that is from the first series.

All this time has passed. And, like, I wanted them to sort of feel that time. And now here's composer Jeremy Zuckerman's final cue from the finale of The Legend of, Quora in its entirety. Visit SongExploder.net to hear more of Jeremy Zuckerman's music from The Legend of Quora. You can also watch that last scene from the finale. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out of full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh

Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabond, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Rope. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album

with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Malina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, Rishi-kesh.co. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploader.net slash live. Thanks. Coming up on the show, Warpaint breaks down their song, love is to die. You can find all the past and future episodes of SongExploder at SongExploder.net or on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you download podcasts. Find the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Song

Exploder. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia. from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary story-driven shows. Learn more at Radiotopia.fm. My name is Rishi-Kesh hereway. Thanks for listening. Radiotopia.