# Age of Empires IV music



## Henning (Feb 4, 2022)

I usually don't post much about myself, but this is a very special and certainly the biggest game project of my career. Perhaps some of you are interested in a little nerdy talk about Russian and Arabian medieval folkore and orchestral music. 






Age of Empires IV: Composing the Rus and Abbasids – DYNAMEDION







dynamedion.com


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## Mr Greg G (Feb 4, 2022)

Congrats! I haven’t played the game but it looks like a fun RTS! Are you allowed to share a track or two here?


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## Brasart (Feb 4, 2022)

Congratulations, and fantastic work, I'm always in awe listening to especially the research and quality of arrangement that goes into soundtrack such as these; Civilization, Humankind, Age of Empires... etc


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## Henning (Feb 4, 2022)

Mr Greg G said:


> Congrats! I haven’t played the game but it looks like a fun RTS! Are you allowed to share a track or two here?


Well, YT has quite some uploads of the game soundtrack where gamers recorded the music out of the game as well as some rips of the official soundtrack. The music is continually shifting and changing with all the different layers going on horizontically as well as vertically, so it's hard to have something definite. But here's one for the Rus and one for the Abbasid that I like:


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## averystemmler (Feb 4, 2022)

I've been playing AoE IV since release (on and off), and you're responsible for the best use of music I've ever heard in an RTS. I think you managed to capture a distinct sense of each culture in a completely accessible and "cinematic" way that supplements the visual style and pace of gameplay, and the implementation is seamless. I think you and the rest of the AoE IV team have set a new standard for interactivity in RTS music.

The game itself has gotten some criticism by grumbly gamers (mostly unjustified in my humble opinion), but the reaction I've seen to the music has been universally positive. I've seen several multi-paragraph internet tirades about some gameplay or balance complaint, concluded with "the music is amazing though."

You've definitely made something special!


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## Bee_Abney (Feb 4, 2022)

Congratulations and very well done!


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## Henning (Feb 4, 2022)

averystemmler said:


> I've been playing AoE IV since release (on and off), and you're responsible for the best use of music I've ever heard in an RTS. I think you managed to capture a distinct sense of each culture in a completely accessible and "cinematic" way that supplements the visual style and pace of gameplay, and the implementation is seamless. I think you and the rest of the AoE IV team have set a new standard for interactivity in RTS music.
> 
> The game itself has gotten some criticism by grumbly gamers (mostly unjustified in my humble opinion), but the reaction I've seen to the music has been universally positive. I've seen several multi-paragraph internet tirades about some gameplay or balance complaint, concluded with "the music is amazing though."
> 
> You've definitely made something special!


Wow, thank you so much! It's been really a lot of heart blood we all poured into this project. I have done game music for over 20 years now but this is personally for me the most complex music system that I have ever encountered. I had a feeling that it would be cool when working on the music but seeing it in action it is really so incredibly seemless. Our audio director Lin Gardiner - a top engineer and music producer - she really brought out the best in us. Tilman Sillescu did the Mongols, the HRE and the lovely new version of the main theme, Alex Röder did the English and Chinese, Armin Haas the Delhi Sultanates and Mikolai Stroinski the French. I got to work with super kind George Strezov and his "Wotan" choir and the lovely vocalists Clara Sorace, Hayat Selim, Gediz Coroglu and Mehmet Capan. It's been a ride that started somewhere in early 2018 and I'm really happy to have been part of this game. I guess I could talk for hours on this


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## ChrisHarrison (Feb 5, 2022)

Sick!! Tell us all about it! 

What software (daw/game integration) did you use? 

Sample libraries? 

What’s your computer rig like (ram,spects, etc) to handle that kind of project?


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## Henning (Feb 6, 2022)

ChrisHarrison said:


> Sick!! Tell us all about it!
> 
> What software (daw/game integration) did you use?
> 
> ...


Well, my DAW of choice is Nuendo. But I'm quite sure that you can manage a project like that in any modern DAW. Our audio director Lin Gardiner did the integration via Wwise, I think. I upgraded my rig to a 10940x with 256 gb ram and 11 tb of ssds last year to work with only one machine. But when I wrote the Rus and Abbasid music my old rig was two i7s with a total of 72 gb ram between them connected via VEPro. So nothing special really compared to today's possibilities. I used lots of live instruments right from the start so this cut down on sample lib ram usage quite a bit.

Still there were a lot of sample libs for the percussions and the orchestral choir, strings and brass mockups. Choir, strings and brass were replaced by the live recordings we did in Budapest after the composing stage. I remember I used a lot of Spitfire HZ Percussion, old and new Tonehammer/8dio/Soundiron stuff, Heavyocity master sessions, Red Room's Saga and Audio Ollie LA Modern Percussion. I did a lot of layering to get unique sounds for each of the different Ages.

Strezov's Wotan, of course, was a godsend for the Russian choir. So much so actually, that I got George and his choir on board for the live recordings. I also used Stefano Maccarelli's Ethera series featuring Clara Sorace to mockup the Abbasid Imperial Age vocals. Again this was a library that made me want to have the real artist for the live recordings and wow, did she deliver! I also had Sonokinetic's Gediz library which was so good that we got Gediz Coroglu himself to record his takes in Istanbul. Through the guys from Sonuscore who were working on their Hayat sample lib at this time we got in contact with Hayat Selim who also did mindblowing recordings for the Castle Age of the Abbasid. So this goes to show that sample libs can also be a kind of calling card for artists .

All the pre-eqed and panned dry individual tracks were sent out to mixing engineer Rupert Coulson who works at Air Studios and did the final mix on all of this. Sending individual tracks made it possible for Lin and Rupert to make different mixes of the audio snippets, like taking out some instruments here and there or dropping the percussions or whatever. So from the 180 minutes of music I delivered they made about 5 hours of different music snippets. And this only for my two Civilisations. There's 8 Civs in total, so you can imagine what a load of music content is in this game.

Of course being this kind of interactive has its downsides. You can't really create a full piece with recurring memorable melodies (though we all snuck in the main theme into our music here and there). You have to compose in a way that getting from one layer to the other does not grate in any way. All snippets have to be loopable and have to fit with one another. There's transitions from one Age to another each for every layer. There's intros and exits for every layer. The music had to give a feel of advancement from the Dark Ages up to the Imperial Ages. So lots of things to consider and test for. And yet, listening to it in the game it feels that all the work really paid off. It is so peaceful and a bit melancholic to be in the Russian tundra and to stop gaming for a while to listen to the wind and other sound effects and then there's perhaps a lonely violin and domra playing in the background. It is all scripted so well, it really works .


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## ChrisHarrison (Feb 6, 2022)

Bro! Thank you for such a thorough response. I’m moving house today and putting a studio in the basement, so I’ll be looking over all your info in detail. 

One more question, kind of personal, but if you’re comfortable, we’d love to know your journey on education/experience/location and networking to get you a AAA game like this? 

I’ll see pick up the title and play it!


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## Henning (Feb 6, 2022)

ChrisHarrison said:


> Bro! Thank you for such a thorough response. I’m moving house today and putting a studio in the basement, so I’ll be looking over all your info in detail.
> 
> One more question, kind of personal, but if you’re comfortable, we’d love to know your journey on education/experience/location and networking to get you a AAA game like this?
> 
> I’ll see pick up the title and play it!


Well, I'm quite a dinosaur by now though I may not look it . I had the usual recorder and piano education that lots of people go through. After school I learned to play guitar by listening to records and playing along most of the time and I played in some bands. My younger brother got us into doing game music together. He was very good in talking to people and everyone loved him at first sight. He sent lots of demo tapes (yes, tapes) of his music to game devs and companies in the late 90s and soon we had our first gigs. We also met Tilman Sillescu and Pierre Langer who had just started their company Dynamedion and who also offered game music production services. And we actually did a few game music/sfx gigs together.

Then my brother passed away in 2007 and everything broke apart around me. In the end I picked up the pieces and kept going. At some point in 2013 I sent Tilman a current demo of my work and he got me back into the Dynamedion family. Dynamedion had grown to quite a big company with quite a lot of composers and sounddesigners by then. So I kind of worked my way up again and learned so much on the way. I mean, the guys there are so awesomely good in what they do (well you might know Tilman Sillescu, Alex Pfeffer, Benny Oschmann, Alex Röder, Jochen Flach, to just name a few). So in the end I found my place and the gigs got bigger. Somewhere along I went back to music school and learned to play the violin. I started playing whistles and fiddle in an Irish folk punk band and I made some string arrangements for bands I liked. That's basically my story. Sometimes things just happen, you know. Nothing really to learn from, I'm afraid.


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## ChrisHarrison (Mar 7, 2022)

Very powerful story! Absolutely a lot to learn from this. You worked very hard, and it's beautiful that you got to share such a special musical journey with your brother. Thank you for sharing your story, I found it very inspirational, as I'm such many others have. =)


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## Henning (Apr 14, 2022)

Wow, how cool! Age of Empires IV won in the category Best Score and Best PC Game at the Canadian Game Awards!









Introducing the Winners of the 2022 Canadian Game Awards - Canadian Game Awards


It’s with our great pleasure to reveal the winners of the 2022 Canadian Game Awards. The nominations were put together earlier this year by our Selection Committee. Our Judging Committee, which is comprised of various members of the gaming industry, voted on the winners of each category. The...




cgameawards.ca


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## Bee_Abney (Apr 14, 2022)

Henning said:


> Wow, how cool! Age of Empires IV won in the category Best Score and Best PC Game at the Canadian Game Awards!
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Congratulations! Great work!


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## Henning (Apr 16, 2022)

Bee_Abney said:


> Congratulations! Great work!


Thank you so much!


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## CatOrchestra (Apr 16, 2022)

Congratulations on your success and thank you for sharing with us your life journey.

Did you undertake any music theory courses/program at University? If so, any favourite courses or books that made you look at music from a different perspective?


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## vancomposer (Apr 16, 2022)

Herzlichen Glückwunsch! 🏆

Sounds amazing of what is available to hear online!! I am playing AOE since 1997 and remember those super fun multiplayer sessions with friends back then and what a pain it was to wire everything up with BNC cables! 😁 Good times!

I will resist a bit longer till I get AOE 4 since games can easily keep me away from work. 😄

Often during winter I put in week long game marathons.


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## Henning (Apr 17, 2022)

CatOrchestra said:


> Congratulations on your success and thank you for sharing with us your life journey.
> 
> Did you undertake any music theory courses/program at University? If so, any favourite courses or books that made you look at music from a different perspective?


No I did'nt take any university courses. I only had 10 years of music school lessons on piano and about 6 on violin. The first in depth look into orchestration was the Rimsky-Korsakov one and then I picked up the Adler book. Theory is certainly helpful to get a good overview of what's possible/regular in most situations. But I think that I have learned (and still learn) the most from careful and intensive listening and just doing things. There's always things that are eye openers for me and then I try to find out how this or that effect works and make a mental note to try it out in my own stuff


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## Henning (Apr 17, 2022)

vancomposer said:


> Herzlichen Glückwunsch! 🏆
> 
> Sounds amazing of what is available to hear online!! I am playing AOE since 1997 and remember those super fun multiplayer sessions with friends back then and what a pain it was to wire everything up with BNC cables! 😁 Good times!
> 
> ...


Thanks! Yeah, you should definitely try out the new installment!


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## ChrisHarrison (Apr 20, 2022)

Congratulations! That's bad ass


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## Henning (Nov 3, 2022)

A little follow up on the music for Age of Empires: https://dynamedion.com/news/age-of-empires-iv-ottomans-malians/


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