Boards›Sound & Music

Riot Music Team - Update

RiotPraeco··71 votes·96,146 views

Hello folks.

With the Kindred theme coming out, I'd like to introduce you to Edouard "Ed The Conqueror" Brenneisen, who just joined our music team as composer. Kindred was his first project, and we're all very excited to have him on our team, writing music for you all in the future.

With him, our team now consists of the following vagabonds:

  • Sebastien "Chemicalseb" Najand (His work includes the themes of Ekko, Braum, Urf, Super Galaxy Rumble, Rek'Sai, Bard, PROJECT, etc.)
  • Alex "Scherzophrenia" Temple (His work includes the themes of Bilgewater(including map music & champion themes), Snowdown 2014, Tiny Masterpiece of Evil, Tales of the Rift, etc.)
  • Jason "Protoshredanoid" Willey (He also joined our team somewhat recently. His work includes the theme of Tahm Kench, Pentakill & eSports music contributions)
  • Edouard "Ed The Conqueror" Brenneisen (As mentioned, Kindred was his first piece for us)
  • Myself, Christian "Praeco" Linke (My work includes the themes of Nami, Diana, Jinx, Vi, Amumu, etc.)

Together, we work on all musical aspects of League of Legends. We all have different and musical styles and backgrounds that we try to utilize intelligently for all the different projects that we tackle, and one of the awesome aspects of working on this team indeed is being able to learn from each other every single day.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask us whatever you'd like.

Also, for the curious, the awesome dudes from surrenderat20.net already uploaded the theme, which is currently on PBE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVtvPXVysiE

Thanks,

Christian // Praeco

195 Comments

Deep Terror Nami95 votes

You want to know what I think?

https://i.gyazo.com/4a34031ccbc06ec685b35fe4521a2500.gif

disregardable12 votes

harsh man

kindred's theme is awesome. well done to the newbie!

Deep Terror Nami54 votes

That's me unchecking it, not checking!

disregardable40 votes

o rip. I'm so blind.

Ignis04 votes

Don't feel bad I read it the same way xD.

Virgin Ray10 votes

O rip I'm so blind

LeeSin

h4Ys0EYmWi8 votes

Good stuff as always Praeco!

RiotPraeco21 votes

<3

Darkwolf7773 votes

{quoted}

<3

You are making me wish I had kept composing music. I used to do it so often when I was younger but now it is a distant memory. item 3070

R B1 votes

Is that you darkwolf_777 ooooooooooooooooooooooo

Darkwolf7773 votes

[{quoted}](name=R B,realm=EUW,application-id=aAJWt2b9,discussion-id=748EyQOB,comment-id=0009000000000000,timestamp=2015-09-21T23:08:29.779+0000)

Is that you darkwolf_777 ooooooooooooooooooooooo

ummm how did you know?

A Superb Villain7 votes

Question for Mr. Temple:

How did you develop the music for Burning Tides ( Butcher's Bridge, Miss Fortune/Gangplank themes)? How did you settle on what instruments to use? What influenced its creation? Also, will the full track be released as was done for Twisted Treeline and the updated Summoner's Rift? We have snippets of it in both of Gangplank's themes and Miss Fortune's, but, as expected, large portions are missing.

Also, Tiny Masterpiece of Evil lives up to its title in every way. Thank you very much for that.

RiotScherzo5 votes

Hi!

Bilgewater was a fun project to work on, particularly as someone who probably plays 10 ARAM games for every SR game. One of the first things we looked at was what kind of instruments it should have, and whether there should be a "featured" instrument (in the way the Nyckelharpa is for Freljord). We decided that rather than focusing on one instrument, we could capture the melting-pot feel of Bilgewater better by using a variety of different instruments "imported" from other parts of Runeterra, brought together with some questionable playing techniques to make some unsophisticated noise at a pub down by the slaughter docks. The next question was, what should that ensemble sound like?

A lot of the "percussion" that you hear in the track is quite literally what you might hear in a Bilgewater pub: it's recordings of mugs being slammed down onto wooden tables that I later cut up and assigned to keys in a playable MIDI instrument. Some of the other non-MIDI instruments were chosen based on what was available, which in hindsight I think fits the spirit of how a Bilgewater ensemble would be assembled. We brought back the same bouzouki that chemicalseb used all over Braum's theme, but after traveling all the way from Freljord we thought it shouldn't sound that great. To fix this, I tuned it down almost an octave to get a loose, nasty twangy sound from it. I also bought a cheap Mandolin for the project, and while I do my best to play it "correctly" on many parts of the tracks, I think we actually had much more interesting results when I played it with a violin bow. I thought of it as the sound of a drifter with a bit of mostly-forgotten fiddle technique bartering his way into possession of a mandolin somewhere in Bilgewater, and trying to play it like a fiddle because in his addled mind, it looked kind of like one. You can hear this in a lot of the drones, like the ones that begin most of the logins and the champ select music. The voices are a bunch of Rioters having a little too much fun for a Monday afternoon. We'd considered doing lyrics but concluded that it would be too distracting for in-game music.

Musically, I thought everything should be simple and unsophisticated - the kind of music that would be picked up through oral tradition rather than properly learned. Thematically this meant straightforward rhythms with a lot of note repetition and a lot of stepwise motion (moving up or down by just one note rather than in larger leaps). I developed all of this in the map music first, and then later extracted and re-purposed the themes for the various logins. We actually work this way on a lot of our projects, where we might do a promotional video first, and then expand certain elements into the login. (For example Shurima, Ekko, Freljord, and Summoner's Rift were all done this way.) This often is due to project timelines more than anything else, but it also works in our favor, because it can be tempting to get carried away while working on a standalone login and write music that will be harder to adapt for a more time-locked format.

I have been meaning to get the rest of the music up onto Soundcloud, sorry for the delay! I'll try to get it up this week :)

RiotZenonTheStoic7 votes

What are the music teams favourite musicals?

TerraRising5 votes

Will we have more music from Pentakill? One album isn't enough considering the possibilities.

RiotPraeco22 votes

Yeah! We've had a handful of get-togethers so far to write on some new stuff. We don't have much yet, but we're actually working on it :)

Rotal2 votes

PREACO xD That's my chance! You guys should do a new band ''Hexakill'' with 6 new skins. Jinx should be the leader of the group /like karthus) with red hair and a pony! (hairstyle) And Hexakill should be the rivals of the band Pentakill!:) And Jinx band destorys the Pentakill posters allround runeterra and YEAH. That was my idea! :C I hope you read it.

Edit: My whole Idea: Hexakill Mode in Summoners rift with new things included like new Hexakill/Pentakill QUESTS. Background music should be one of the new Pentakill/Hexakill songs. (like they did with bilgewater) New 6 Skins: Jinx (Redhair, with dutt/braid cant explain it but a pony hairstlye, rockstar outfit, her gun should be a microphone if she crits a disgusting sound comes out. She should have dark boots and many tattoos with a 6 = Hexakill, Ekko (His dance already fits a guitar), Bard (He could be such a good rockstar WITH A AFRO) and yeah I HOPE YOU GUYS LIKE THIS IDEA !:)

Shaune4 votes

Is there going to be an update to the League of Legends album? I can't wait to hear what songs are going to be in Volume 2!

RiotPraeco13 votes

Yes. Also in the beginning phase, but this one should be taking way less time than the first, because the newer music is produced much better, and hence will not require as much re-production.

Ms Fire4 votes

.... can I have your scores?

dEAdbUs2 votes

I wrote notes for Valor just by ears. There is no polyphony in their music, so you can do same.

However if I'm right, Praeco said once that may be in future they will release scores.

Btw you can find some made by community in the Internet. I saw scores for Amumu, so there is can be others.

RiotPraeco7 votes

We will indeed release this one, as soon as Ed is done with the proofreading

0mega Z2 votes

yay! If you release a couple more i could probably get my orchestra to do a whole concert,which would be really cool.

edit: well orchestra plus band, chorus, and whatever other strange instruments we need (and we've had some weird ones)

Swizzle3 votes

now all we need is Skrillex

Niyumi6 votes

Dubcrap isn't music, so I'd really rather they avoid her at all costs. ^^

Dylightfull5 votes

French progressive house music is where it's at, right guys? http://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/thumbs_up_okay_daft_punk.gif

Ed the Conqueror7 votes

ChemicalSeb and I are French nationals - do we qualify? :P

Herbye8 votes

Really depends on taste I'd say. I do really dislike Skrillex's style but Dubstep has a lot of great tracks tied to that genre.

ZeroGrav0073 votes

I absolutely love the classical feel it has. It sounds really pretty to me. Very dramatic and soothing at the same time. Nicely done :D

Ignis02 votes

This is some amazing work +1. Fits the theme very nicely.

But I have to know. Who must give praise to for the Quinn and Valor music (extended).

RiotChemicalseb3 votes

Praeco :)

Doobydu2 votes

Riot's music is becoming one of my favorite video game soundtracks, the quality has always been top notch and I don't know how they always manage to translate the personality or "feel" of a champion into a music piece. GG WP Riot Music Team!

EnderForHegemon2 votes

Frankly this is some pretty edgy shit. You guys went way outside even the large box that exists with login themes so far, and I don't think it works. I listened to it through, and didn't get any sense of progression, narrative, or cohesion in the song as I had come to expect from login themes. Maybe that's something you wanted? But it doesn't come across as powerful or moving or interesting to me. After I finished listening to it, I went back and listened to the whole thing again, thinking that I had missed some element tying the song together, but it wasn't there for me. It was just random phrases for the sake of random phrases.

The cello is played really, really beautifully, but it's notes don't sound emotional, and don't move the song forward. Possibly I'm just a bad audience, possibly I'm in the wrong frame of mind, and this is actually a really good piece of music, but I don't like it.

I can tell you about other logins and why I liked them, or what I took from them, but ask me to talk about this one and I come up blank.

Vi was just fistpunching awesome and catchy Nami has a terrific rolling-wave melody with creative 'bubbles' made from plucked strings Thresh was just freaky and uncanny as hell Quinn and Valor had a strident, vaguely skyrim-y open world hero theme Lissandra had a soaring choral vocal part that made up for the rest of it Aatrox's had a struggling, gasping heartbeat Lucien's was a bit oddball-y but it meshed wonderfully with the animation Jinx was a stunning machine-gun homage to Vi's login Vel'koz had an inevitable predatory, stalking hungry pulse, with huge stages of progression Gnar was a playful and funny dance Braum rocks solidly back and forth Bard is spooky, outlandish, and intriguing

Kindred could have been better. Actually, it feels like one of the logins that have dialogue or song woven overtop. It feels like the music could potentially frame a conversation, speech, exposition, poem, song, or fairy tale. It doesn't have an identity of its own though. I'm let down, after the wonderful voice-over that Kindred has, that Lamb's voice wasn't spinning a tale.

Ed the Conqueror2 votes

Hey EnderForHegemon,

Thanks for checking out the login screen and taking the time to articulate your response.

I wouldn't necessarily call this style of music "edgy shit", but we felt like an extraordinary champion should call for extraordinary music (extraordinary as in "out-of-the-ordinary").

With something like 127 champs in our roster, we constantly need to shoot for music that we believe is most relevant to the spirit of a particular champion. You certainly seem to enjoy specific themes embody specific champs, which is great! Although I do wish you'd enjoyed "Kindred" more, perhaps we can agree that it wouldn't be fair for our new champ to get something not as specific music-wise?

Thanks for playing!

Nex1 votes

Why does the song sound a bit "all over the place". I don't know how to put it but it doesn't have a set melody throughout all of it, and it changes a lot at seemingly random times. What are you hoping to achieve with it?

Tysmin6 votes

because kindred has the same interaction between lamb and wolf

Ed the Conqueror4 votes

Hey Nex,

Thanks for sharing your insights.

In all that we do, we strive to best represent what the champion is all about. Kindred is yet another amazing, non-generic champion, and we thought it called for a very particular music piece.

I realize the style is somewhat unusual for games, but we feel very strongly that as our champions are as unique as ever, so should the music (as long as it best embodies their characters).

Thanks for listening!

Veraska2 votes

[{quoted}](name=Ed the Conqueror,realm=NA,application-id=aAJWt2b9,discussion-id=748EyQOB,comment-id=00150001,timestamp=2015-09-22T04:29:39.763+0000)

Hey Nex,

Thanks for sharing your insights.

In all that we do, we strive to best represent what the champion is all about. Kindred is yet another amazing, non-generic champion, and we thought it called for a very particular music piece.

I realize the style is somewhat unusual for games, but we feel very strongly that as our champions are as unique as ever, so should the music (as long as it best embodies their characters).

Thanks for listening!

How weird are y'all willing to go? Do you think we'll ever get a champion whose login is white noise or harsh noise wall or something a uneasy to directly listen too?

It'd be kinda of unsettling to que and the champion is some weirdo resting on the uncanny valley and his login music is so moot and static

Roasted Sigurd1 votes

The real question is...

Who worked on Bit Rush? Give them a cookie for me <3

RiotScherzo3 votes

That was Andrew "Shadowluxx" Kierszenbaum, who interned with us over the summer. He's a talented kid and we hope he comes back!

Time Out1 votes

Who made the theme song to Lucian (for the client when he was release and for the teaser)! It was so good!

RiotPraeco4 votes

The Crystal Method!

Dragon Fang Shot1 votes

In university, were you guys composition (or at least some kind of music) majors or minors?

Ed the Conqueror5 votes

I was a Jazz performance major :P

Dragon Fang Shot1 votes

What instrument was your main focus?

Ed the Conqueror2 votes

{quoted}

What instrument was your main focus?

For "Kindred" i'm pretty sure it started with singing the melody, so that part of the creative process wasn't really slaved to a particular instrument. When it came time to flesh things out, I was trying to keep a balance similar to what you'd encounter in game :)

Boogihead1 votes

I've got a question, Praeco, relating to Pentakill. How did you guys even begin to work with Jorn Lande? Like, was someone a fan and reach out to him? I ask because he is currently my favorite artist, along side Matt Barlow who I would love to hear in a Pentakill song, maybe on a song about the Shadow Isles or the Void (Kinda want to hear him singing more like his 'Something Wicked' saga.) All the music from league is fantastic, I've never not enjoyed a single tune I've heard from the game or anything related. Metal!item 3025

RiotPraeco3 votes

I actually just messaged him and went like "Hey, so we're a bunch of nerds and wanna make some metal. Can you please sing on our songs" :P

He's a super friendly guy. I remember the first time I called him, he answered the phone while he was fixing his roof on his house in Norway, which had a very cold winter at the time. Very open minded and simply wants to make some music. Very passionate!

9Lives1 votes

Who did the Thresh piece? That's probably one of my favorites. It really captured the whole "creepy/spirity/no escape" vibe he's got going on. Makes it feel like Thresh gets what he wants no matter what and no amount of running etc. will save you

The suspense it built <3 Gives me goosebumps when I listen to it

RiotPraeco3 votes

Ah, that was me. Yeah, Alex Yee, one of our writers, had written a nursery rhyme, and I went "wait a minute.... how about we get some kids to sing it and make it all creepy." -- turned out quite nicely ;)

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