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

“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)

WHAT WAS THE INTENTION BEHIND THE SOUNDTRACK?

“Our intention was to emotionally draw the player into the wonderful game world of “Champions of Anteria” with the help of our music and to make the game experience more intensive with a beautiful soundtrack. Moreover it was very important to us to support the flexible game system musically. Music can achieve a lot in a video game – also in regards of the game structure. But the most important aspect is that the music can simply flow inside of a game system. Thereby it makes the player feel like he is in a conclusive game world.”

 

HOW DID YOU MANAGE THE TASK?

“The excitement was to find a fresh and unique basic sound for the new game. For “Champions of Anteria” we appreciate to represent the medieval setting musically. Usually we break the task intuitive, in case of this game we stress the new interactive system to accompany the new and flexible game system optimally.”

 

WHERE ARE THE TRACKS BEING USED WITHIN THE GAME?

“CoA uses an highly interactive music system that adapts to the player’s choices and experiences in a unique way; every champion is represented by a solo instrument, or a group of instruments: brass for the Knight, choir for the Monk, woodwinds for The Archer etc. So, depending on which Champions you take with you, the arrangement of the music changes, forming evermore combinations – a fascinating concept!

We were mainly responsible for the base-tracks that were used for the start-up phases. Here, the overall intensity of the music gradually builds up as you progress through the game – so the music serves both to represent the events on screen as well as a reward for the successful player. The “menu” tracks we did add a nice extra twist: when you switch to the main menu while playing, the music is reduced to one or two solo instruments.”

 

WHERE THERE ANY CHALLENGES TO MASTER?

“Like I said, the music becomes more intense as you progress through the game. In the first and very calm levels we wanted a very barren and placid music that especially supports the beautiful nature settings. The levels develop to a very crowded and lively village daily routine with a lot of residents. Here we have represented musically the buzzing rural activities with often nearly dancing maddish rhythms. It was a great challenge for us to accompany the gradual boost of intensity in the game musically.”

 

WHAT DID YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT THE WORK?

“The best thing for me personally is always the phase in which our music is implemented and live recorded by the soloists and the orchestra. That was particularly important and intensive in this project because our soundtrack was created very orchestral but frequently enriched by lovely solos of historical instruments. It is always great to see how the musicians fill our compositions with their personality and the music makes the decisive step into analog life. A fact that Ubisoft always emphasizes.”

 

ARE YOU SATISFIED WITH THE RESULTS?

“Sure, definitely – and of course I hope our mix of emotional orchestral music and historical-medieval atmosphere pleases the “Champions of Anteria-fans” just as good as us.”
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Tilman Sillescu (Creative Director, Dynamedion)

“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)