BlizzCast Episode 4
[00:17]
Nethaera: Welcome to Blizzcast episode 4! This is Nethaera from the World of Warcraft Community Team.
To begin this episode I’ll be interviewing the Director of Audio and Video, Russell Brower, where we discuss the music of World of Warcraft, the inspirations, the journey that has made the music what it is today, and where it’s going in the future.
Also in this episode, Drysc sits down with World of Warcraft game designer Jonathan LeCraft to discuss professions both now and in the future.
To end this session, we will join Bornakk for the Community Q&A with World of Warcraft Lead Designer Jeff Kaplan, Starcraft II Associate Game Balancing Designer, David Kim, and Senior Designer Mike Heiberg.
Part One - Interview with Russell Brower, Director of Audio and Video
[00:57]
Nethaera: Welcome to BlizzCast Russell!
Russell: Hey, Nethaera! Good to be here.
Nethaera: I’ve been looking forward to this interview with you, and I know many players have wanted to hear more about the processes behind the music in our games.
Russell: Me too!
[01:09]
Nethaera: Could you share with the listeners a bit more about what you do?
Russell: Well I feel very lucky because the Sound Department and the Video Department work on every project Blizzard does, so World of Warcraft, Starcraft II, things that are in development, the concerts at BlizzCon the Worldwide Invitational, these podcasts, everything. So, we all wear several hats in this department and so in addition to being the administrator and just keeping all the schedules and planning intact, which I do with a very able staff of producers who without whom I could not even… I just shouldn’t even get out of bed in the morning. In addition to that, it enables me to, as long as they have a tight ship running, I can write music, which is the one thing that I do hands-on here still. There are three of us on staff who write music as much of the time as we can, or full-time, and I’m proud to be one of those folks.
[02:12]
Nethaera: Alright.
Some people may not realize how much music is in World of Warcraft, The Burning Crusade, and even the latest patch. Could you give us an idea of just how much music has been composed for the game overall?
Russell: When World of Warcraft shipped in 2004, it had, I would say, just shy of about 2 hours of music. And today, with the recent release of patch 2.4, Fury of the Sunwell, we’re just shy of 16 hours of music in the game. I’m also proud to say that probably two thirds of that feature live players at least in part if not all the way up to full orchestra for many many tracks.
[02:59]
Nethaera: How long does it generally take to create one new piece of music?
Russell: Well, like everything at Blizzard, it takes as long as it takes to be right.
Nethaera: When it's ready.
Russell: When it’s ready. And, it depends on how long something’s been cooking in the oven, if you will. I’ve known about the Fury of the Sunwell concepts now for many many months and so I’ve had the luxury, being on staff here, I’ve had the luxury of mulling this over and looking at the concept art for weeks and weeks. And once a few months ago when I could initially get into the internal server and I could explore the Isle of Quel’Danas and everything like that, I started taking screenshots.
And so a typical experience for me is that I will take hundreds of these screenshots that somehow capture the mood of the space for me. And I’ll put those on my screensaver at work or on my wallpaper or what have you. And as long as I have between then and when I actually have to sit down and start writing, I’ll be mulling that over. And the more time spent doing that, actually the faster the music comes out in the end.
So in the end some pieces may go very fast. I might write a piece of music in an hour or so and some pieces will take longer. I’d say the Black Temple was probably about five days of actually sitting down and writing and Fury of the Sunwell was about three days of sitting down and actually writing. And that was in both cases a similar amount of music, just shy of an hour each.
[04:47]
Nethaera: There’s been a lot of curiosity in regard to the Blood Elf music in light of the latest content update, Fury of the Sunwell as you mentioned. Could you tell us a bit about the evolution of this music and where the inspiration came for the creation of it? You said you did a lot of in game play and everything else, but what else might have inspired?
Russell: Well one thing I really appreciate here on all our projects is the backstory and the lore which is behind it all. I mean it’s gameplay first, but it all has context. It all has a reason for being there. So when we first introduced blood elves as a playable race, I went through their backstory and tried to understand what they were all about. What was compelling to me was they were a beautiful race to look at and yet they have just about the most tragic backstory of any of the races. Certainly, they’re right up there.
So, that led to a couple of concepts early on and again, this is pre-release of Burning Crusade. One concept was, I featured a lot of solo cello because that instrument, at least when it’s played a certain way to me can achieve this amazing duality of both gorgeous and melancholy at the same time. So with that in mind, I employed another device, there’s an interval in music known as the tri-tone where if you play a C natural on the piano, the F sharp above would be a tri-tone, and it’s been referred to in history as many things including the devil’s interval and things like that, it’s even been controversial in times. The reason is, it’s not quite consonant and it’s certainly not terribly dissonant and it makes people feel kind of uneasy without being harsh or jarring. So I wrote all around that interval and you’ll hear it in Sunstrider Isle. You’ll hear it in Lament of the Highborne. I’m playing a lot of games with that interval.
So those two devices, that interval and the cello together with kind of tying into the choir ideas that were started with the night elves being a related race, in the original release of the game, that palette of choir and harp and whatnot just all blended together and formed the basis, or vocabulary if you will, for the blood elves. When Fury of the Sunwell came along, this seemed like a great opportunity to sort of bookend that experience. I figure if you happened to have rolled a blood elf and reached the Isle of Quel’Danas as a blood elf, sixty-something levels ago, you last heard this music. And as this music and related new pieces that have evolved start coming back, there’s kind of this connection that I hope players will feel to the original material. There’s a consistency there. I employed a lot of the same singers and whatnot to increase the sense of continuity to the stuff that you may not have heard for weeks or months since you first rolled your character.
[08:21]
Nethaera: What has been your favorite part of the process in creating the music for Fury of the Sunwell?
Russell: Well in keeping with the idea of revisiting the thematic ideas from the blood elves, I really enjoyed getting the opportunity to write kind of a companion piece to the Lament of the Highborne which had proven to be such a cool and compelling part of the Burning Crusade experience. This song which is called “Shorel'aran”, which is Thalassian for farewell is, it doesn’t have words it’s just kind of hummed or sung on an ahh, but I had the same singer who had done Lament of the Highborne come in once again and just do a heartfelt rendition of this piece which really does sound like a relative of Lament of the Highborne. You hear it when things are really at its most tragic in the Isle of Quel’Danas as well as in the Sunwell instance.
[09:25]
Nethaera: In Sunwell Plateau.
Russell: Mm Hmm. Exactly. That was probably the most fun, it really felt like on a musical level we had achieved something that I know Chris Metzen and the others who work on the story try to achieve and that is the sense of a continuum that sometimes you see isolated stories and events that are compelling in and of themselves, but then if you take a step back and look at the broader picture, there’s really a lot to this world and it all ties together in ways that are really compelling to explore.
[10:03]
Nethaera: Is there a particular piece that you’ve found to be your favorite either in Fury of the Sunwell or Burning Crusade?
Russell: Well I have to say that if you listen to the Burning Crusade soundtrack there’s a piece called “Shards of the Exodar” which was written by Derek Duke and this is what you hear in the Exodar when you roll a draenei character. It’s something that is so… it’s ambient and because it’s ambient it infiltrates your experience in a way that is not... it’s not as in your face as say the blood elf music or something like that he built it with a series of vocal tones.
He built kind of a tone poem if you will of evolving chords that he did with his own voice using techniques of looping and certain editing techniques and that was overlayed with some really stirring performances on a number of instruments but principle among them an ancient instrument called a duduk which is very emotional. This performer who actually reprised that performance at our BlizzCon show last year just together, he and Derek did this piece live and it was amazing it actually got a standing ovation because there was this one moment that was so emotional. This player has done the duduk and other wind ethnic wind solos for many big major picture films and he’s just the best and we’re so lucky to have gotten to work with him.
Nethaera: That was a fabulous event.
I have heard that there is new opening screen music in the works for World of Warcraft’s second expansion Wrath of the Lich King. Even though this is still a work in progress, would you mind giving everyone a preview of it?
Russell: I would really enjoy playing some of this for you and the watch word is “work in progress” because as we record this interview it’s only been two days since I was on the orchestra stage so I haven’t added in the big epic drums and the other things that really add to the Warcraft vocabulary that hopefully is becoming quite recognizable in context with World of Warcraft.
[12:36]
Music Plays
[13:27]
Russell: So what this is, I’ve taken the march that’s in 7:4 that’s been in both versions of the login screen music to date and re-envisioned it once again, this time I’m going a little more primal. The first version was very dark and had a timbre that was mostly achieved with synthesizers, but definitely had a strong mood of something brewing. And then the second version for Burning Crusade was for one thing, a live orchestra but was also filled out in a completely different way. It was a little more like an overture as opposed to a piece of film score. So I wanted to find with the version for Wrath of the Lich King something in between that echoed of really classic fantasy film scores but would bring to bear the power of the 96 piece orchestra that we had and 90 voices that we had in the choir.
My thought process behind choosing the sections of the login screen music were that we should have something old and something new and visit all of the releases of World of Warcraft. So there are pieces from the initial release in 2004 kind of re-imagined or revisited, rearranged into something that you might not expect. There are a few quotations from Burning Crusade as well as some of the patches like Black Temple and Fury of the Sunwell. And then there are some themes from Wrath of the Lich King. These are all part of the World of Warcraft so over a course of seven plus minutes instead of, we’re up from four in Burning Crusade, the orchestra and this wonderful choir take you on this little journey through places you may remember or that you have yet to encounter that you have yet to enjoy and hopefully shed a little light on what’s in store for you in Wrath of the Lich King.
Nethaera: So it’s very much a musical chronicle.
Russell: Yes, and I hope to certainly update it with each major expansion, much as we’ve done now.
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