COMPOSER INTERVIEW WITH HENNING NUGEL

Posted on February 14, 2017February 14, 2017 by marketing

Allow us to introduce you to our composer Henning Nugel. He has a sweet spot for the sample libraries on the market and reveals how he works with them in his daily composer business.

Sample Libraries can be a big help especially for time critical projects. There are a lot of great libraries on the market, but not every library speeds up your workflow. Maybe you can imagine yourself in a similar situation as Henning. Read the personal interview with Henning and learn more about his daily work.

Henning Nugel

(The Settlers, Sacred 3, Risen 3: Titan Lords)

“Under a rough deadline I am really happy about every library that can be played with ease and furthermore sounds brilliant and by that saves me precious time. ”

TO BE CREATIVE ON POINT IS NOT ALWAYS EASY. EVERYBODY KNOWS THE SITUATION WHEN YOU ARE SITTING IN FRONT OF A WHITE SHEET OF PAPER TRYING TO FIND THE RIGHT BEGINNING AND THE RIGHT IDEA. HAVE YOU EVER EXPERIENCED YOURSELF IN SUCH A SITUATION AND HOW DO YOU MANAGE TO FIND THE BEGINNING?

“I think everybody knows such days when you have to work to get your own creative juices into motion. In such cases it is helpful to be inspired by virtual instruments / sample libraries. Sometimes a patch can be enough to trigger a new idea, which I can refine and work on.”

HOW DO YOU MANAGE TO FIND THE RIGHT WORKFLOW? DO YOU HAVE ANY RITUALS OR METHODS THAT HELP YOU TO GET INTO THE SPIRIT OF A THEME?

“The project information and spotting files I receive from customers are usually sufficient to get some general ideas for the project and to define my musical journey. I arrange the combination of instruments that I would like to use for the whole project or individual tracks. All the real instruments and microphones are placed in a semicircle behind me and on my work rig I additionally load the respective sample libraries into my template. At that moment I mostly have a musical idea in mind that I record and elaborate on.”

HOW CAN SAMPLE LIBRARIES SUPPORT YOU IN YOUR DAILY WORK? SURE, THEY ARE HELPFUL FOR TIME CRITICAL PROJECTS, BUT ARE THERE ANY OTHER BENEFITS?

“Besides the time saving the cost factor is not to be underestimated. With the help of current sample libraries you can simulate the sound of a real orchestra quite realistically. Today’s sample libraries are recorded in superb sounding and often very popular studios and concert halls. So you save the costs for a good orchestra and also the costs for the location rent and technicians. Even if the music will be finally recorded with a real orchestra or solo musicians an already great sounding sample library mockup will give the customer a detailed preview of the music which usually helps a lot.”

HOW DO YOU RATE THE QUALITY OF SAMPLE LIBRARIES IN COMPARISON TO LIVE RECORDINGS?

“The current sample libraries are generally well recorded and programmed. For a layman the results that you as a composer can achieve in the box are often difficult to distinguish from an actual live recording. Nevertheless the human aspect and the feeling that real musicians breathe into the music are missing sometimes. Working only with sample libraries can make a composition sound cold, artificial and sterile. If there is time I always try to record one or two live instruments to warm up the whole thing. A real orchestra recording with a good orchestra is obviously the best choice, but it’s also a budget matter.”

WHAT DOES YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH A NEW LIBRARY LOOK LIKE? WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO YOU AND WHAT IS NECESSARY FOR YOU WHILE TESTING THE NEW PRODUCT?

“I am equipped with the most of the regular orchestra libraries. So I often search for libraries which inspire me soundwise and with which I can achieve my aims quickly. If a library requires me to program for hours and hours to compose a realistic and clear sounding line I directly rule it out. Under a rough deadline I am really happy about every library that can be played with ease and furthermore sounds brilliant and by that saves me precious time.”

HOW DO YOU JUDGE YOUR OWN COMPOSITION? WHICH FACTORS PLAY A ROLE?

“In general the customers judge the composition. I always aim to get as close as possible to their vision and in the best case to exceed their expectations.”

IS IT POSSIBLE THAT YOU RECOGNIZE THAT YOU FOLLOW THE WRONG DIRECTION WHILE COMPOSING? HOW DO YOU REACT?

“This does not happen very often, but in such cases I radically delete everything and just start over again”

HOW DO YOU HANDLE CUSTOMER’S CRITIC IF HE/SHE HAS GOT ANOTHER VIEW ON THE RESULT AS YOU HAVE?

“The customer is king and knows what is best for the project. Sometimes misunderstandings occur or the composition is too ambitioned and misses the mark. If nothing was right I compose a new track from scratch. But usually I am on the right track and I only have to adjust certain passages. This includes technical changes like formats and sound improvements, but also deleting or adding musical parts. But as of now we of the Dynamedion team have always satisfied our customers.”
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Henning Nugel

Hope you enjoyed reading the interview. Stay tuned for some more interviews with our award-winning composers, get to know them and profit from their experience. We try our best to support you in all concerns.

See you soon, your Dynamedion-Team

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HITMAN – LANDSLIDE

Posted on February 2, 2017February 2, 2017 by marketing

Dynamedion worked on the third bonus mission with our favorite agent 47.

The creators of HITMAN (SQUARE ENIX / IO INTERACTIVE) released their third bonus mission titled „Landslide“ with additional music composition, music production, lyric writing and vocal recordings by Dynamedion.

After our last blog post highlighting our work for the Bangkok episode (click here to learn more), the “Landslide” Bonus episode takes us back to Sapienza (Italia).

The three songs performed by virtual band “The Class” in the Bangkok episode (“Are We Stars” • “Shine A Light” • “Gun Show”) were written by our Senior Sound Designer and Project Manager Felix Diekhake and produced by Christian Hartung.

For “Landslide”, Felix had the pleasure to compose three songs together with Dynamedion’s lead composer Tilman Sillescu, who also accounts for the music production and vocal recordings. It is always exciting to plunge into new cultures and compose country-specific tracks to see them come to life.

“Landslide” takes you back to Sapienza where locals have gathered for the Festival del Paese. Your target is Marco Abbiati, a wealthy businessman-turned-politician who is returning to his hometown to run for mayor. Now it’s time to choose: whether to use brute force or orchestrate a genuine masterpiece of assassination to checkmate your subject.

The early evening event in the piazza is attended by an Italian band. Conny Kollet lends her beautiful voice to the band’s lead singer as you can hear in the video below. Now, Felix and Conny give us some deep insights into our work:

“As avid readers of our website know, we did a lot of custom tracks for HITMAN, among them tracks for “THE CLASS” (Bangkok episode), Moroccan HipHop and Pop for the Marrakesh episode (plus a bit of Swedish baroque), house music for a fashion show in Paris and uplifting J-Pop to jump around to on a dance pad in a mountaintop hospital on Hokkaido.

Some of the first music we ever did for HITMAN however is only just now being released: three Italian pop tracks written by Tilman Sillescu and yours truly featuring vocals by the wonderful Conny Kollet will provide the musical entertainment at the Sapienza Festival del Paese in the “Landslide” bonus episode – so now we know why they asked us to arrange the tracks to sound like a live band with keyboard drum track 🙂

Writing these tracks was huge fun. We listened to a lot of 70s and 80s Italian music to get in the mood: Adriano Celentano, Patty Pravo, Biagio Antonacci etc.… lots of beautiful melodies that stick in my head to this day.

What I enjoyed most was that the assignment allowed us to be totally unabashed about becoming a *ahum* little corny here and there – or rather, to pull out all the stops on kitsch.
I sketched out rough versions of the tracks that were already laden with every wonderful pop cliché I could think of, then I handed them over to Tilman to improve the song writing and arrangement and do the final production – and he went and sprinkled on even more cliché beauty. The 1980s have left more of an impression on us than I thought, it seems… we alternated between ‘Man, this is beautiful’ and falling over laughing.

Once we had the tracks and lyrics down we brought in Conny, who is both a trained classical singer (as evidenced in a huge number of game soundtracks from Dynamedion) and a skilled live artist in her own right. She really channeled her inner Diva on these tracks and she interpreted them with tremendous energy and impeccable feeling. I absolutely love the final result and I can’t wait to walk through sunny Sapienza with our tracks blasting over the PA.

By the way: two other Italian tracks we wrote, featuring the great Salvino, were already used in the original Sapienza episode – if you’ve missed out on assassinating people to the sound of 80s Italian pop so far, be sure to check it out.”
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Felix Diekhake

“I really enjoyed working on these songs and it was great to sing Italian again. Felix and Tilman did a great groundwork, so the cooperation with the two of them was funny and constructive. Although the songs are a little bit cheesy, I really love to listen to them again and again.”

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Conny Kollet

Enjoy watching the Reveal Trailer of the latest bonus mission “Landslide” with vocals by Conny Kollet:

MAPLESTORY WITH ORCHESTRA RECORDINGS BY DYNAMEDION

Posted on February 1, 2017February 1, 2017 by marketing

Enter a colorful game world and celebrate MapleStory’s 5000^th day’s anniversary with us.

South-Korean developer and publisher NEXON released a row of amazingly inspiring videos of the orchestra recordings for the 5000th day’s anniversary of their highly successful game MapleStory – which were produced by DYNAMEDION in Budapest / Hungary.

Together with NEXON we travelled to Budapest and recorded several tracks for the MapleStory universe. Most of them were remakes of the amazing songs from the MapleStory world. The remakes were done by the artist group “ASTERIA“ and the singer “EUNTO“. “ASTERIA” belongs to NEXON’S game music label “NECORD”, which stands for “NEXON Records”.

The songs will be used in-game for a short period to celebrate the 5000th day’s anniversary. This DYNAMEDION live ORCHESTRA RECORDING SESSION was not just like any other: we recorded 11 symphonic MapleStory scores with a gigantic ensemble of 88 musicians, all recorded in sections. Recording strings, brass and woodwinds separately gave maximum flexibility in the mixing process.

MapleStory is a free MMORPG that is highly successful on the international market. The player experiences an epic adventure as a mighty hero and teams up with other online players to conquer perilous dungeons and to defeat terrifying enemies. As it’s an RPG, players can interact with other players around the world on many levels like chatting, trading and playing mini games within the steadily growing community.

The whole ORCHESTRA RECORDING SESSION experience was filmed by the NEXON video team. As you can see in the videos further below, they did a fantastic job! Enjoy watching the behind-the-scenes material and listen to the sweet melodies and lush arrangements. Visit NECORD’S YouTube channel to see more performances of pieces from the MapleStory world.

Recording Impressions

The fantastic MapleStory anniversary edition music isn’t meant to be heard only in the game itself: if you love these MapleStory recordings as much as we do, you can download the digital album here.

It was a huge pleasure to dive into the colorful musical world of MapleStory and we are happy we had the chance to be part of this beautiful NEXON project.

See you soon, your Dynamedion-Team

COMPOSER INTERVIEW WITH TILMAN SILLESCU

Posted on January 17, 2017January 17, 2017 by marketing

Get to know the composers behind Dynamedion. We are kicking off this series with Tilman Sillescu, our lead composer who told us some insights about his work and how to handle every task.

You might have read our articles over at SONUSCORE on how to deal with the blank page syndrome, the process of creative creation and how to deal with client’s feedback. These were distilled versions of the interviews we held with 5 of our most renowned composers to cover these three essential topics for working composers. Thinking about your questions and worries, we concluded that sharing the individual interviews could help you even more on your path to becoming the best composer you are capable of becoming, which is why we decided to publish the insights our composers shared for you here on our blog.

The longstanding experience our composers have has taught them to overcome hurdles in their daily business that every composer knows. Given time they learned not to be too uptight about these things. While reading the personal, direct and uncut interview you will come to get to know our composers behind Dynamedion and gain valuable insights into their workflow and creative process.

For starters and seasoned veterans alike this interview series will hold ideas and insights that can help you take your music to the next level. Our composers share useful tips and tricks how to manage every task. Now, enjoy reading the interview with Tilman’s personal and honest thoughts.

Tilman Sillescu

(Total War: Warhammer, Mortal Combat, Ryse: Son of Rome, Crysis2)

“I will never do that well-known ‘messing around with notes’ that the famous film composer John Barry criticized on some modern composers. My compositions are based on a single, compelling musical idea that I elaborate on with great care.”

TO BE CREATIVE ON POINT IS NOT ALWAYS EASY. EVERYBODY KNOWS THE SITUATION WHEN YOU ARE SITTING IN FRONT OF A WHITE SHEET OF PAPER TRYING TO FIND THE RIGHT BEGINNING AND THE RIGHT IDEA. HAVE YOU EVER EXPERIENCED YOURSELF IN SUCH A SITUATION AND HOW DO YOU MANAGE TO FIND THE BEGINNING?

“While composing game music, I like to be inspired by pictures and I ask my client to send me some video captures or screenshots of the game. This helps me to create a kind of first musical idea in my head. If I don’t get an idea in spite of pictures, I sometimes switch off the computer and try to mentally plunge into the situation. This works really well: the more I am able to dive emotionally into the game, the sooner I get an idea.

If everything goes wrong and I haven’t any idea, I sometimes let myself be inspired by movie soundtracks which have a similar setting. But you have to be careful to not “use” too much reference in your own composition – you should only get a first impression how to manage the task. I am glad that this is not necessary most of the time, usually ideas come to my mind easily. It’s a process that isn’t easy to describe, it happens automatically.”

IF YOU GOT THE CHANCE TO GIVE YOUR 15 YEARS YOUNGER SELF AN ADVICE – WHAT WOULD YOU SAY?

“I would say: ‘You are on the right way, boy – relax and try to enjoy it.'”

HOW DO YOU MANAGE TO FIND THE RIGHT WORKFLOW? DO YOU HAVE ANY RITUALS OR METHODS THAT HELP YOU TO GET INTO THE SPIRIT OF A THEME?

“When I have an idea I start working on it on the computer and try to make a sketch that is meaningful. If there is enough time, I take a break from the idea and check out if I still like the composition on the next day. If yes, then I start to elaborate on it carefully and send a first rough version to the audio director or developer.”

HOW CAN SAMPLE LIBRARIES SUPPORT YOU IN YOUR DAILY WORK? SURE, THEY ARE HELPFUL FOR TIME CRITICAL PROJECTS, BUT ARE THERE ANY OTHER BENEFITS?

“There are a lot of fantastic libraries on the market and with the help of these you can program/ install the music very vividly – that inspires me again and again. Mostly I create a layout first and in the next step my music will be recorded live – then it comes “to life”. But I have to admit that I also use libraries to pimp my live sounds afterwards, as it is done in many Hollywood studios. There are some frequencies mainly in the bass sections which aren’t easy to catch in live recordings. But for me it is still important to have as many live performances from musicians recorded as possible in my compositions.”

HOW DO YOU RATE THE QUALITY OF SAMPLE LIBRARIES IN COMPARISON TO LIVE RECORDINGS?

“The sound quality of top-libraries is often very high. Especially the live orchestral tracks are recorded in great sounding halls and scoring stages. What most libraries haven’t achieved, in spite of legato-tools, is the soul that a musician or an orchestra breathes into the composition by playing a melody or a musical phrase live. The emotion and musical bows can only be created if you don’t simply play separate notes, but rather whole, coherent phrases. This will always be a compromise, I’m afraid;).”

WHAT DOES YOUR FIRST CONTACT WITH A NEW LIBRARY LOOK LIKE? WHAT IS IMPORTANT TO YOU AND WHAT IS NECESSARY FOR YOU WHILE TESTING THE NEW PRODUCT?

“I attach great importance to the sound quality and also to the intuitive playability of the instrument. I must have the opportunity to create inspired music with a library. If it is too complex and complicated to use, it stops being fun and thus it doesn’t inspire me anymore. Some big libraries, even though I own them, have fallen out of my template, because when I use them I am programming myself to death ;).”

HOW DO YOU JUDGE YOUR OWN COMPOSITION? WHICH FACTORS PLAY A ROLE?

“The most important thing is the basic idea that must be inspired on every level. I never want to do that well-known “messing around with notes” that the famous film composer John Barry criticized with some modern composers. My compositions are mostly based on a single, compelling musical idea that I elaborate on very carefully. I have to convince myself of the strength of my idea. It is never good to simply record more and more material without reflecting upon the musical core to try to conceal the weakness of the basic idea. This procedure would create random tracks which you hardly can call a composition.”

IS IT POSSIBLE THAT YOU RECOGNIZE THAT YOU FOLLOW THE WRONG DIRECTION WHILE COMPOSING? HOW DO YOU REACT?

“It may be hard to believe, but usually my very first idea is the best. Sometimes I test something different, but in the end I often would return to my first idea. In some situations, you have to relinquish your idea heavy-heartedly as it doesn’t fit the scene. In this case the best thing is to start with a completely new template and to set up a new tempo and meter. If you try to tinker on your old idea – you often will not take a step forward. So for me it is better to throw my old idea to the wind and start with a new one.”

HOW DO YOU HANDLE CUSTOMER’S CRITIC IF HE/SHE HAS GOT ANOTHER VIEW ON THE RESULT AS YOU HAVE?

“I take the developer wishes extremely seriously. I regard him/her as a partner while composing as he/she is a “part of the team”;). I often hear from other composers that their customers are “annoying” and “have no idea” and that they “make life awkward” for composers. I see this differently. I’ve been doing my job for over 15 years now and nearly all of our customers are really capable and had clear visions of their projects and together we achieved great results. There were situations in which I was caught in my own idea and I have bristled internally to create something different. But often I have learned that it is better to try something different to achieve the best result. Customers often are right, they keep the big picture in mind, while composers are professionally blinkered – that has been my experience dead honest. I really like customer’s feedback as it motivates me even more.”

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Tilman Sillescu

See you soon, your Dynamedion-Team

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Galaxy on Fire 3 – Manticore awarded “Editors’ Choice” in the App Store

Posted on December 13, 2016January 23, 2017 by marketing

“Galaxy On Fire 3 – Manticore” with music composition by Dynamedion gets the “EDITORS’ CHOICE” feature in the Apple US App store, which is a great award and speaks for the quality of the space action RPG.

Galaxy on Fire 3 – Manticore (DEEP SILVER / FISHLABS) is one of the best sagas and amazing looking games on mobile – according to IGN. On the one hand you have to master exciting sci-fi action missions in deep space and on the other hand you will experience a truly compelling story.

The game has now been awarded with Apple’s Editors’ Choice label that cherry-picks and highlights very promising apps that you definitely have to try out.

It’s a huge honor to enjoy the trust of nameable game developers like DEEP SILVER / FISHLABS and we’re happy for the whole team that their efforts with this wonderful game are being rewarded now. We want to say thank you for the great collaboration and we are happy that we could support the amazing and awarded space action with music written by Dynamedion.

Visit the App store to download the game:

https://itunes.apple.com/app/galaxy-on-fire-3

THE LION’S SONG WINS GERMAN DEVELOPERS’ AWARD

Posted on December 12, 2016December 13, 2016 by marketing

“THE LION’S SONG” (MI’PU’MI GAMES) with music composition, sound design and music production by Dynamedion wins the GERMAN DEVELOPERS’ AWARD for “Best Indie Game 2016”

Congratulation to Mi’pu’mi Games and the whole team for such a great prize! Project Manager and Senior Sound Designer Felix Diekhake and the CEO of Mi’pu’mi Games Gregor Eigner about the collaboration:

“We were surprised and thrilled to hear that the protagonist of the first episode would be a composer – and we knew immediately that the music for a game like this would have to be something else. Gregor and his team came to us with a strong musical vision: not only would the music have to convey a range of intense emotions from loneliness and loss to elation and bliss, it would also tie into the game’s storyline itself and develop over the course of the game based on the player’s choices, working as a signal for inspiration and, ultimately, feedback and reward for completion of the game. While the game is set in the early 20th century, the team felt they would like to contrast the historical setting with some more modern sounding elements in the music. Finally, they asked us for a layered approach, with a unified mood theme that would work as the background music throughout the episode, and three different layers to fit the mood theme that would indicate sources of inspiration during the game and serve as the closing theme, with the tone of the music depending on the choices the player made. Creating the soundtrack was a long and winding (and occasionally bumpy) road. But at the end we were rewarded with a soundtrack we are immensely proud of for a game we hugely enjoyed playing. Mi’pu’mi is a wonderful team that it’s a great pleasure to work for and with and the experience made us look all the more forward to both playing and composing music for Episode 2 of The Lion’s Song – which we meanwhile did.”
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Felix Diekhake (Project Manager & Senior Sound Designer, Dynamedion)

“THE LION’S SONG is an episodic narrative game about four creative minds. Since the main character of the first episode is a composer it was key that the music would reflect the struggle with inspiration. We had productive meetings where we discussed the game, the game story and our referenced ideas for the game. Dynamedion understood to come back with audio previews really quickly. We had a short finding phase to get the actual music production on track. Dynamedion did an excellent job to give birth to a fantastic audio landscape and supported all changes that we requested perfectly. After our collaboration on the first episode, we are eager to evolve this partnership on our future episodes for THE LION’S SONG.”
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Gregor Eigner (CEO, Mi’pu’mi Games)

Enjoy the Lion’s Song Concert Medley with music by Dynamedion.

We are always thankful for great collaborations like this and we are really looking forward to new and exciting projects. We give you a hand and support your project with music composition, live recording, sound design or audio direction. Just check out our services and tell us more about your next project:

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Dynamedion wins Global Music Award for “Best Game Music”

Posted on December 7, 2016December 7, 2016 by marketing

“Champions of Anteria” with orchestra, choir, soloist recordings and music compositions by Dynamedion wins Global Music Award 2016 for “Best Game Music”.

We are happy to announce that Dynamedion is among the Gold Medal Winners of the Global Music Award 2016 for “Best Game Music” for our contribution to the “Champions of Anteria” Soundtrack. We also want to congratulate Jeff Broadbent, who composed the other half of the soundtrack and whose tireless efforts and great work further enriched working on this fun project a lot! And of course congratulations to our team of composers Tilman Sillescu, Alexander Röder, Henning Nugel and Jochen Flach!

Maybe you are curious to learn more about our work in “Champions of Anteria”? In this article we find out what the intention behind the soundtrack was and how our composers mastered the challenge. Oh and you can check out the “Champions of Anteria” Demo Trailer as well here.

TOTAL WAR: WARHAMMER – THE KING & THE WARLORD CINEMATIC ANNOUNCEMENT TRAILER WITH MUSIC BY DYNAMEDION

Posted on October 20, 2016 by marketing

Our composer Alex Pfeffer had the pleasure to write the music for the brand-new WARHAMMER Announcement Trailer. Come with us and dive into the battle.

Total War: WARHAMMER is an award-winning PC strategy game series (The CREATIVE ASSEMBLY / SEGA and on the 20^th of October the new add on “The King and the Warlord” was released.

Harken to the echo of war: “The trailer music composition by Dynamedion’s composer Alex Pfeffer, with its dark and heavy brass section heats you up for the belligerent choir and string climax. It will immerse you right into the pictorial and stunning atmosphere and make you want to long for your warhorn to start the battle.”

We are always thankful for great collaborations like this and we are really looking forward to new and exciting projects. Tell us more about your project and we will give you a hand to implement your musical wishes.

What do you need?

Sonuscore Live Orchestra Raffle – Throwback

Posted on September 9, 2016September 9, 2016 by marketing

Together with Tilman Sillescu we retrospect on the Sonuscore Raffle and congratulate the winner Clelson Lopes on his incredible well deserved first place composition.

Sonuscore – the producers of incredible virtual instruments called for competition via email and facebook. Many of you sent them music of all kinds of genres, from Techno and EDM as well as Hollywood-style orchestra works and also more experimental classical compositions. The range of different music compositions was very huge and it was incredible to listen to all of them! Also the composers behind the tracks came from all over the world and it was a pleasure to see that so many people from different continents share the same passion for music. Sonuscore compiled roughly 40 compositions of the raffle for you to listen:

Although the decision was very hard to select the best track – we are happy to introduce to you the winner of the Raffle: Clelson Lopes from Brazil with his composition “Cosmos SpaceTime”. He won a coaching session with lead composer Tilman who listened to his music and gave him a personal feedback. Clelson has the chance to record one minute of his track by a professional live orchestra in one of Dynamedion´s OPEN ORCHESTRA SESSION. Tilman gave him a hand to optimize the composition to reach the best outcome. Today he tells us some insight about his personal thoughts about the raffle and the first coaching session with Clelson:

“It was a lot of fun for me to see how many great and very different compositions have been submitted to us. I was really impressed about the entire quality of the compositions – there are some talents we might have to keep in mind ;). It was hard for me to pick out a winner, at least 10 of these tracks also had to deserve to win. In collaboration with our team I decided in favor of the composition that has touched me the most emotionally. Cosmos SpaceTime is a really unique and amazing composition and the winner of the raffle, Clelson Lopes is an incredible friendly person. A few days ago we had our first Coaching-Skype-Call and we talked about further details. He would like to expend his orchestration a bit and we spoke about the orchestra toning that could do his composition good. In my opinion the track doesn´t need much, it is already very complete. But some harp, percussions here and there could make the whole sound more colorful. I am really excited to listen to the final version!”

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Tilman Sillescu (Creative Director)

Tilman did his best to make this a lot of fun for our winner! We are also really looking forward to the final product! Stay tuned! 🙂

HITMAN – ARE WE STARS

Posted on September 6, 2016September 20, 2016 by marketing

We entered the world of assassination – In-game music and music of the Hitman promotion video “ARE WE STARS” written by Dynamedion.

This time the marketing section from the creators of HITMAN (SQUARE ENIX / IO INTERACTIVE) had a very extraordinary idea to promote the latest game episode that plays in Thailand, Bangkok. Many of you probably have seen the music video of the Brooklyn-based alternative rock band “The Class” with their song “Are We Stars”. HITMAN fans don´t have to think twice to notice that something is wrong with the band. But you have to admit – the first time watching the video you weren´t sure if it´s a real new band or not.

The band has got a Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud account and on the Bandcamp website you can download their three songs for free. Well, three guesses who wrote the songs. We are very proud to announce that we were part of this great marketing strategy and promoted the new Thailand episode. Additionally to that we wrote the in-game music for the Bangkok episode that was also used in the trailer. The video shows the first impressions of the new levels in Bangkok and integrates some slight leads what players can expect about the mission of agent 47. The fictional lead singer of the band is Jordan Cross. His name appeared several times in different episodes but only in background dialogues. This time he is the target person for our agent. The mission “Club 27” takes the players into the opulent Himmapan Hotel and Resort at Chao Phyraya River outside Bangkok.

There are two things about HITMAN that distinguishes the game from others: On the one hand HITMAN occupies an enormous game depth. For example you can checkmate the subject in many different ways. The players feel “relieved” to discover another such crazy method to accomplish the mission. On the other hand you get agent 47 in an “appetizer format”. Each mission is characterized by great challenges, escalation contracts, exclusive subjects and a lot of opportunities to achieved one´s aim. Later in 2016 the final two episodes USA and Japan will be released.

The three songs for the latest episode in Thailand (“Are We Stars” • “Shine A Light” • “Gun Show”) were written by Felix Diekhake and produced by Christian Hartung. Felix gave us some insight into their work:

“Writing the songs for HITMAN was a real pleasure – after some stops in Italy and Marrakesh (more on that later), we were asked to create the music for the virtual band “The Class”. IOI gave us an elaborate briefing on the band’s backstory and character and some input on the desired style and we set to work – the first track we pitched was a pretty grungy number with rather psychedelic lyrics alluding to the events preceding the Bangkok episode (something along the lines of “I saw your pale hand wave goodbye as the crimson king got crowned….”) which ultimately didn’t fit what IOI were looking for, so we pushed the style to something more pop/electronic driven and the lyrics to something a little less oviously vague, which, after a few rounds of feedback, became “Are we stars?”. Once that one was done and approved, the other two tracks (“Gun Show” and “Shine A Light”) practically wrote themselves. Writing the songs was both a challenge (how much of the story can we reveal in the lyrics?) and a lot of fun. To see them come to life, first in the stellar production done by Christian Hartung, then in the game and the release through a “real” band, was really, really cool and something I’m very proud of. This is actually the first time ever that music I wrote came out on vinyl – I can’t wait to get my hands on that record :)”
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Felix Diekhake

We present you “The Class” with their song “Are We Stars”: Enjoy!