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Behind the Scenes RuneScape's Orchestral Score
The audio team didn't go to the ends of the earth to record the orchestral soundtrack to Runescape, they went to Slovakia.
This week Behind the Scenes meets composer James Hannigan
Conductor Alan Wilson and Jagex's very own Mod Lord to hear what's coming.
Today we've coming to Bratislava to this absolutely beautiful building and we're here to record an orchestra for Runescape.
We've made a lot of improvements to music recently in Runescape.
We've added live players, singing, but this really takes it to the next level. This is something special.
I'm James Hannigan I've been composing for games for 17 years.
I've worked on the Harry Potter series, Lord of the Rings.
Working on Runescape is really very exciting for me because I actually signed up to play the game when it was first introduced around 10 years ago.
I'm a huge fan of Runescape and the fantasy genre in general.
James Hannigan was really up for writing music for Runescape, it's his kind of style, the old sort of medieval style.
He likes the big epic themes. He's really good at writing exciting music.
He writes wonderful melodies and really good counter melodies. His harmonies are very very adventurous.
Today we've recorded quite a variety of material.
Two of the most important tracks were variations on the existing Runescape theme.
We've got a very nice soft, low key, very lyrical version of the theme,
which I think has come out very nicely and we've got a grand sort of large scale take, the big theme.
It's a strong theme, it's known by a lot of people,
we wanted to be quite sympathetic to the history of RuneScape,
but we really wanted to take it to the next level.
The orchestra itself is called the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra.
The lineup we have here today is a full string session,
14 first violins, 12 seconds, 10 viola, 8 celli and 6 basses,
which is a really good size for a string session.
And to compliment that we have a fairly large brass session of
6 French horns, over there we have 3 trumpets, 3 trombones and a tuba
and then we have the regular symphonics woodwind session,
which is 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets and 2 bassoons.
They are first class, world class.
They're a very established orchestra and so they were the perfect choice,
the sound that we're going for as well is very rich, lush fantasy music.
I think it's very appropriate for this environment, there's a lovely concert hall, a lovely space.
The acoustics in here are absolutely fantastic.
There's 2 elements you can never replace electronically and that's soul and spirit
and that's what you get from a live orchestra, playing live and being recorded live.
It's a real humbling experience to hear pure musicianship playing, there's no electronics, there's no correcting things,
it's just musicians who've dedicated their lives to their instruments and the whole sound is just magical.
Today has gone very very well. They really blew me away, they exceeded all my expectations
and we got some really nice music recorded.
Feels absolutely fantastic to be here. To feel the music come to life,
the realization of all the ideas we've been putting together over the months, it's a fantastic feeling.
Leveling up your prayer is always a tough one
and in next week's Behind the Scenes we talk to Mod Krista about one of the hardest skills to train.
Behind the Scenes let us pray.