The Black Piper is a collective of musicians, composers, and sound designers that take stories and give them a new breath of life through music. The group has been successfully providing soundtracks to many books that are being eaten up by fans of the series. Read on with us and see what all creative director, Ian Riley had to say when they talked with BareBones Ent.
BBE: For people just hearing about you. How would you best describe The Black Piper?
TBP: The Black Piper is a group of creatives (composers, sound designers, and writers) with expertise in every stage of the production of Hollywood movie soundtracks. We bring our favorite stories to life through the magic of music, connecting fans to their favorite worlds and characters on a deep, emotional level.
Or more simply: we are a cinematic band who create soundtracks for stories.
BBE: Are there some things that people may have heard you in?
TBP: We are fortunate enough to work with artists and producers that collectively have been involved with hundreds of feature films across all sorts of genres. A few of our composers, for example, contributed music to Wish Dragon and Pig, while our music preparers have been involved in such franchises as Star Wars, Star Trek, Fantastic Beasts, X-Men, and many others.
The Black Piper as a studio has worked with best-selling authors like Brandon Sanderson and Brent Weeks to create officially-licensed book scores for their epic fantasy series. You can listen to our two albums, Kaladin and The Black Prism, on just about every major digital platform.
BBE: You are currently working on releasing a project called The Black Prism. What exactly is that?
TBP: The Black Prism is what we call a “book score,” which is an album of music that correlates directly to important and evocative scenes from an epic fantasy novel, The Black Prism, by Brent Weeks, much like a movie soundtrack correlates to specific moments in a film. What sets these projects apart is our partnership with the authors themselves to contextualize and connect the music we’re creating to the themes, characters, and narrative elements within the story. We work with the author and their agent(s) to provide samples, drafts, and proofs for feedback and approval, ensuring that the end product is as authentic as it is original.
BBE: What different challenges do you face writing a soundtrack to a book as opposed to a game or song?
TBP: Anytime you have an opportunity to write music that accompanies other media, there is always a balancing act between supporting expectations that already exist in the visual and subverting those expectations in unique and compelling ways through the music. Unique to writing a book score is that, instead of an external visual element that comes from a team of visual artists, we are instead corroborating with an internal visual element in the form of the reader’s imagination.
In some ways this can be even more challenging, as the ways we imagine things when we read a story almost automatically become our default assumptions about the fiction – think about how many times a book has been adapted into a movie and we’ve looked at the main character and thought, “That’s not what they’re supposed to look like…!” As musicians, we’re navigating that same space, but in a medium that is much less often explored.
Yet even with those considerations in mind, you can imagine how much freedom writing a score for a book also affords: we’re tapping into the collective imagination of readers all around the world, and music has such a unique ability to weave its way through these sorts of cognitive spaces that we often find that our listeners are convinced that we somehow knew exactly what they were thinking when they read a chapter, or precisely how they imagined a character. This adaptability, this ability to amplify imagination is a unique power of music.
BBE: How did this project come around?
TBP: This project is one that our studio has been coordinating with Weeks and his team for a few years, but the project really got its legs under it when we entered official preproduction late last year (2022).
After the success of Kaladin, the team started sending out feelers to see what sort of response fans of The Black Prism might have (knowing that few fandoms rival that of Sanderon). We were encouraged not only by the interest of folks who were fans of Weeks and hadn’t heard of The Black Piper before, but even more so by the number of supporters from the Kaladin campaign that wanted to continue their support of “the next project from The Black Piper.” If this project has taught us anything it’s how much our own Black Piper community means to us.
The Black Prism is part of Weeks’ Lightbringer Saga, a five-book series that explores hope, bravery, friendship, love, and loss, and has all of the ingredients of the types of fiction we love to read. Pair with that an interesting and intricate magic system, complex and compelling world building, and relatable characters and it was obvious that this was a property that checked all of the boxes for us as readers, as storytellers, and as a studio.
As fans of The Black Prism, we were excited to begin work on the project, and with a successful crowdfunding campaign began official production in early 2023.
BBE: Is there a way for people to preorder or how can people hear this album when it releases?
TBP: The album is available now on almost every digital platform, including Amazon, Apple Music, and Spotify!
BBE: What do you hope people pull from the, The Black Prism album?
TBP: Ultimately, I hope that our listeners take from their experience a sense of optimism, and knowledge that there is beauty in persevering through trials, and a reminder that we never struggle alone. The Black Prism is the first in a series of stories that explore all kinds of themes, and we hope that the music that we are able to share deepens both those experiences, and your enjoyment of them.
BBE: What would be your dream project to create a soundtrack for or do music on?
TBP: There’s plenty of properties that I, or any member of the team could list off that would be exciting to work on because of our own love for the franchise and its characters, but as a studio I think I would say that the projects that we are most excited about are those that are most excited about us.
Working with an author who wants to collaborate to create something amazing is always going to provide the best experience to our team, and most important, to the community of listeners that support us.
BBE: What is the best way for fans to keep up with your work and news?
TBP: Absolutely – the best way to find out about current and future projects is to visit at www.theblackpiper.com and to sign up for our newsletter.
BBE: Anything else you would like to add?
TBP: At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we’re constantly amazed by the loyal support we receive from our community – we couldn’t do what we do with them.
Thanks so much for the opportunity to share a bit about what’s new at The Black Piper, and I look forward to sharing what’s coming next, soon!
