Guild Chat - Episode 26

The following is an unofficial, player-written transcript of the episode. The accuracy of this transcription has not been verified by ArenaNet.
The 26th episode of Guild Chat aired on Januar 8, 2016.
"Host Rubi Bayer is first joined by Game Director Colin Johanson to talk about how plans for 2016, with details about the first big upcoming game update. Composer Maclaine Diemer and Game Designer&Composer Lena Chappelle then go behind the scenes on the Heart of Thorns music."
Transcription[edit]

Below is the raw unformatted transcript from Youtube.
[Music]
host ruby if you're watching for the
first time welcome
and we're very glad you're here i want
to start off today's show with something
that i'd
i'm planning on doing for every guild
chat here on out this is just to give
you guys
as players a little bit more insight
into what we're doing what we're working
on what we're creating what we're
improving here at
internet we're going to start with two
things today i
talked to a couple of our developer
teams i talked to game designer matt
pennebaker and you may have already seen
this on the forums
but matt's been doing a lot of work on
legendary collections just things that
you guys have been giving feedback on
things that you've been running into
and matt's been putting in some work on
studying and improving those
some of them are going in next tuesday
on the build on january 12th
but matt's had a lot of things to say
he's been answering a lot of questions
on what he's working on things that can
go in now things that are taking a
little bit longer to
fix and why that is and you can find
we've gathered all of that into a post
on the guild wars 2 forums
you can look in the bug forum and find
that to see
what he's doing with that so i know
that's the thing a lot of you guys have
been interested in
so we wanted to let you know what we're
doing with that
yeah you know quick quick to add to that
one is uh
i think we've said before we've got a
whole new set of legendaries that you'll
see slowly roll out over time
uh you know he and his team are are
going to be building those out right now
they're focused on making sure that the
one the
precursors and legendaries we put in the
game today uh are all functioning the
way that we want them to
that we're listening to player feedback
and iterating on those uh and then their
next big project is to start building
out uh more and more new legendaries for
the game as well uh taking lessons from
the ones we've put in so far
so that's just one more thing to look
forward to from from matt and that team
yeah i had an interesting talk with one
of our producers yesterday about that
that made me really excited about what's
coming
so i've seen some of the new legendaries
they're amazing i haven't seen them yet
so please email me or something guide me
to these because
i've been not spoiling myself um so the
other thing i wanted to mention i know
some of you
are curious about a balance update and
we're pulling together
some news right now about our goals for
balance in each class
we're going to have a really big blog
post about that next week
and carl mclean is going to join me next
friday on guild chat
to talk a little bit more about what's
what our goals are for balance in this
first quarter
so that's a little bit of news for
what's going on behind the scenes
um you can find that in every guild chat
coming up yeah that's
that's going to become a regular thing
we talked about this around when hot
launch
but uh one of our big goals for the game
uh is every three months or so every
quarter
to have a big balance update that kind
of shakes up the meta for the next three
months
so we have uh next week we'll be
revealing all the information like ruby
said about the
the first big balance update of 2016. uh
but that's something you'll be able to
look forward to every three months after
that as well
uh is a really big update uh and then
obviously between those updates smaller
tweaks like we've been doing um but
yeah it'll be really nice to settle into
that i think we've heard a lot from
players over the
the last few years they'd really like
more frequent balance updates they want
to know exactly when to expect them and
how often uh
and they'd like to see you know strong
changes to the the meta in the game when
those happen uh and that is exactly what
you're gonna see
so uh awesome yeah looking forward to
being able to tell you all about that
next week
yeah so we have we've got a lot of cool
stuff coming next week um
since we got colin in here we're going
to take really good advantage of your
time
i'm we're going to talk to you guys
today about what we're what we're
planning for 2016 and what we've got
coming up
um you've been working on a blog post
for next week about this this will come
out on the 12th
we have a lot going on on the 12th yes
next tuesday is a big day a build and a
blog
yeah but we're going to give you a
preview today um first can we talk a
little bit about
how about development balance and how
we're planning on doing that in the 2016
year
yeah uh you know next next tuesday i
have the the next state of the game blog
will come out
um and that'll cover both a combination
of what's coming up
uh not everything but a lot of what's
coming up in the next three months
uh and also kind of a high-level view
into where we're going with guild wars 2
in 2016.
uh and we're going to give you a little
bit of a preview of some of that stuff
that's in that blog here today um and
then a lot of it we're going to say for
next tuesday uh
but uh development balance uh always
this is so hard
development balance is the kind of the
headliner the the start of that blog uh
and i think if you look back on what
we've done development wise in 2012 in
2012
uh 2013 uh 2014
uh predominantly our focus was on
regular updates to guild wars 2. uh you
know
we had for a long time every four weeks
we were doing updates uh and feature
packs occasionally
uh we reached a point where actually
even every two weeks we were doing
updates with living world for a while
um and that was insane uh and uh
you know 2015 was the year where our
development focus shifted to be
very heavily on uh heart of thorns in
our first expansion
with a little bit of updating as well to
the game uh this year
our focus is really to find a balance in
development between the two uh we want
to have more frequent game updates for
everybody
and we want to be able to continue to
work on the next expansion
simultaneously
so that's a lot of what you're going to
see this year is a combination of more
frequent
game updates more regularly uh and
more balanced across different parts of
the game uh we really want to treat pvp
pve world versus world um as all of them
as our core game modes for guild wars 2
uh and frequently update each of them
uh and within them uh continue to update
the core
content pieces that make up those you
know so we want to have updates to
fractals and have updates to
living world uh have you know updates to
world versus world and
pvp uh all all of those are things that
we'll be focusing on new
raids as we kind of balance development
across this year
where we're also working towards the
next expansion as well
so that's that's really kind of what
balance development means to us
and what you're going to see in 2016 is
is a much more balanced strategy
development-wise yeah so i i kind of
want to emphasize again
all the game modes yeah yeah that's very
important and you know if
you look back on uh what our plan was
for 2015 and a lot of what we wanted to
do with heart of thorns uh
it was really kind of a broad
development strategy uh
and i think that's been true of arena
net really for as long as i can remember
uh is we're a company who works on
tons of different stuff we experiment
all the time i think everything from
living world to
uh the way that you update live games to
looking back to guild wars 1 like
you know having some of the things we
did with expansions like two expansions
in a year
uh that was crazy and most of us out
horribly but
uh you know we we really try to do a lot
of different things uh and i think we're
at the point now with guild wars 2 three
years in where
we really need to start focusing on
depth instead of breadth we've spent all
of this time building out all these game
systems and different types of content
and ways we can deliver cool things to
the players and i really want our teams
to focus on
let's take those things that we've built
and let's just polish those and add a
lot more content to them
instead of trying to do different
experiments and trying to add new game
systems
we're past the point now where that
really you know that's going to provide
so much value we know what guild wars 2
is about we've learned what works over
the last few years
let's just start doubling down on the
things that are great uh i think there's
one part of the game that we haven't
accomplished that goal
yet uh to be at a point where we can
just add new polish and add new content
that's world versus world uh our goal
last year was actually to get our big
overhaul for world versus world out
before heart of thorns
so that when we added the new
borderlands map when we added things
like guild claiming they complemented
the
a functional game system that had all
the core structure to it we needed to
have
that project started to be much larger
than we ever had today yeah it really
is enormous yeah i mean they've been
working on the on it for over a year now
uh
in particular the the principal program
on that chris has been working on the
world versus world overhaul for like a
year
to get to the point where a whole bunch
of other people can work on it which is
kind of where
we're at right now um so i would say
world versus world is the one part of
the game where we still have a lot of
core fundamental things that we need to
do
between population balance and scoring
and rewards
night capping john corpening our game
director in charge of that project has
kind of summarized a couple times his
thoughts on where that's going
but that's the last kind of broad
project that we have on the books
uh and then once that's done we'll be at
a point with world versus world where we
can focus on depth as well which is just
adding more content and just polishing
the experience
and every other part of the game that
we're going to continue to build on
that's really what you're going to see
from here on out is let's polish exactly
what we've got let's deal with any bugs
that came out from
from heart of thorns any feedback we got
from heart of thorns let's continue to
iterate on that
and then let's just start adding new
content to all of those areas
um so yeah that's that's what you have
to look forward to in guild wars 2 uh
and uh next tuesday we'll put a blog out
that actually makes some of that
uh real and shows you some of the things
that we're gonna do yeah
so this is i mean we've got this coming
up
toward the end of the month and then for
the rest of 2016 we're kind of planning
on seasonal updates
yeah and we're we're going to talk more
about that into that in detail yeah
we'll cover a lot more of that in the uh
the blog next tuesday uh with the
announcements of kind of how
um some of the stuff that you have to
look forward to uh later this year we'll
go into more details on more of the
things that we'll be adding to regular
updates for guild wars 2. um some of
those are things you'll see in the next
three months some of those are things
that we're going to get into later this
year
that we'll talk about down the road uh i
think the pvp team actually published
today
their plans for all the updates they're
going to make to season two of leaks
there's a huge huge forum post out right
now in
all four languages so if you missed that
go find it in our forums
uh and i think that's a great example of
this this uh depth rather than breadth
strategy right it's like we have leagues
now they're one of the core components
that we're going to be using to update
pvp in the future
along with obviously new new types of
pvp maps things like that
um you know those all of those types of
things basically
that's our focus now let's polish and
let's add content uh
and the pvp team's plans for pvp season
two
uh is ideally hopefully taking a vast
majority of the feedback we've gotten
from the players i hope you look at that
and say
yeah it looks like they addressed almost
all of our feedback we're probably not
going to get every single thing in
season two
but i think we got probably 90 95 of the
the big feedback pieces we're going to
be able to address
and we'd like to be able to do that for
each of the other parts of the game as
we go forward too
yeah all right so we have a lot
coming up i i feel like i'm not even i
shouldn't even say anything because
something's going to slip out but
yes wait till next tuesday yeah next
tuesday is going to be a fun day
yeah so all right we have that was like
a lot of information packed into a short
amount of time so we'll let you guys
digest that for a few minutes
we have a couple more guests to come on
we're going to switch you out and that
was the fun part that's right
this was the fun part too this is always
the fun part
um so we're going to take a short break
and then come back with a couple of
other guests i feel like the piano here
has already given it away
unless you're going to play i am going
to play myself out now
all right that was terrible all right we
will be back in just a couple of minutes
stick with us there's no music happening
you're not good at this
we'll be right back
[Music]
[Music]
and we are back with mclean and lena i
am so glad you're both here
especially you we had to like get you on
a plane to get you up here yeah
you had to get me out of my pajamas you
had to get the cat off my lap
and i understand the pain of both of
those things it was just
i'm on my sofa in comfy clothes and
there's a cat i don't want to leave
yeah i'm happy to be here yeah i am very
happy that you guys are both here
um so we're going to talk today about
the music of heart of thorns which i
think is kind of a given
with everything on here i'm assuming
that you have
more to say on the piano than colin did
because only a little bit i'm only
slightly better at the piano than colin
yes this is not a live concert just fyi
all right so
why don't we let you why don't we let
you get started
and tell us what you want to start
talking about yeah
so um i i thought it would be really
neat for fans to
hear the evolution of the main theme i
think some people
kind of got a window into it when it
changed from the the
last beta or the second beta to the
final beta and then the release version
it's two different versions and uh i
loved hearing the story when you told me
yesterday
yeah i so there's there's way more
evolution to it than that
um and most of it is is my own
the dissatisfaction with it you know uh
it's it's a it was a long
kind of difficult process to get to
something that i was comfortable with
and most fans never get to hear it in
fact
most people at the company haven't heard
any of these earlier versions
so i thought it'd be fun to just kind of
run through it and uh let people hear
how it evolved and see behind the
curtain
of uh you know writing music for guild
wars yeah so this is the main guild wars
the main guild wars 2 theme
this is the main heart of thorns theme
and then we will kind of dive into
all of the music as we go farther down
so let's start with this yeah
so um the very first thing i wrote for
the
expansion was about two years ago uh
and at that point this the story was
kind of it wasn't it was unclear but you
know
audio and music comes in at the very end
so i only had a very
small amount of information as to what
the actual story content of the game
would be
and there was some information that i'd
gotten about a golden city which of
course now we all know is terrier and
and we've seen how that all played out
but at the time it was it was a little
bit less
um it was a little less clear what it
was going to be so i thought all right
uh it that maybe that'll be the focus of
the expansion and i'll write the
gold city theme and then that will also
double as
the expansion theme and i had this idea
for a melody that came to me
when i uh to keep it uh
g-rated i was i was getting up to take a
break from my desk and uh taking a walk
through the office and i find that a lot
of snippets of melodies come to me then
because it's a moment for me to just be
clear-headed you know something will
just pop into my head because i'm not
sitting here
at the piano seeing like oh my gosh like
all these yeah wrong
you know um so when you kind of relax
something will just enter your mind like
people
come up with ideas in the shower or at
night um
and this melody kind of popped into my
head almost fully formed
and uh i had to drop everything i was
doing at the time i was working on i
think it was
living world season two stuff and i just
stopped for about a week while i tried
to get this idea out
um and fans will recognize it so i'll
play it we actually ended up recording
it live
at the very first orchestral recording
session we did in germany
yeah for living world season two and no
one's really heard it i think it's
a piece of it got snuck into a trailer a
few months ago
um but up until now no one's heard it in
this form because i was really unhappy
with it
so i'm just gonna play it okay let's
hear what it sounds like afterwards
so
so
[Music]
so
[Music]
says
if you changed
foreign
everything that you're doing
[Music]
nice i love it great yeah and this is
what you
weren't happy with yeah i wasn't i
wasn't psyched about it um
so it's so good it uh
savvy listeners will probably know that
uh
that's the music that eventually turned
into lion's arch
rebuilt uh last summer when after
you know a year of being destroyed after
scarlet's attack we finally decided to
put it back together
and i thought that it needed this new
theme so i'll get to what it turned into
in a second but it um
when we recorded it the i wasn't happy
with it wasn't the performance it was my
my writing right okay i didn't think
that the orchestration of the
of the melody was strong enough uh i
didn't think that on the day that we
were recording it i
got enough out of the performers it
needed a little bit more energy that i
didn't sense and i just thought you know
i'm gonna let this
sit in the can and it's a shame that
this piece of music no one's ever gonna
hear it until
today of course um
but yeah i thought uh i thought it
wasn't good enough basically
um and and i i wanted to let the idea
kind of marinate a little bit so i could
come back to it
so two things about it one is that a
it's
it's it is in the game now it's now the
lion's arch rebuilt music
um there is a piece of it in the middle
though that you might recognize
from somewhere else so the middle
section the form of it is
is very much like a pop song it's like
the main melody a
main melody again then there's a b
section and then it kind of returns to
the
a and then finishes very much like a
simple
beatles song or something i haven't
thought of that until just now and i
can't
unhear that now when i hear this piece
yeah you'll see that pattern a lot in
a lot of the stuff i'm not i don't want
to give away my secrets it's a big one
but uh
it's it's just an easy formula to follow
um
so the b section i thought okay this is
a really strong chord progression
and i want to use this in something else
um
and so i carried that probably a lot
further than i than i
ever should have because in the end i
ended up not using it for anything but
um yeah i i repurposed the lion's arch
music which i'll play a little bit uh
as sort of a special treat um we ended
up re-recording that piece
at our at the guild wars 2 heart of
thorns
recording session that we did for the
expansion back in august we had a little
bit of extra time and i thought oh
i want to get back in there and try this
again yeah so so we ended up
re-recording it
and no one this is another one that no
one's heard i'm just going to play a
little bit but we're going to
we're going to put this up on soundcloud
after the show and i'll give you guys a
sneak peek
preview of what it sounds like now a lot
more energy let's put it that way
okay here we go
[Music]
[Applause]
so
[Music]
so yeah that was uh that was just a
tidbit i didn't want to sit here and
listen to the whole thing again
but we will put that and the lion's arch
built built so those lines are to reborn
so i named them and i can't get
i asked him yesterday we were talking
and he was like um the quieter one yeah
the quiet we'll put the quiet one um
that uh you heard it in the music
between when colin was on
and when we came on um we have a live
version of that a new version and then a
new version of the
lion's arch reborn music
rebuilt i don't know this is a thing i
would ask you
there's a rebuilding lion's arch and
then the rebuilding of lion's arch
that's right okay that's the quiet one
and the lions aren't reborn is the loud
one
yeah okay so we're going to put both of
those up after the show how do i know
i don't know um okay you're good
so uh so as i said the old b section
from the or very original version of the
theme i thought that's a really strong
chord progression i want to save that so
then i went back to the drawing board
and i thought well okay i learned more
about the expansion and i said
what's what is this about it's about the
jungle it's about the sort of gathering
of forces to fight the jungle dragon so
it needs to be
less like majestic landscapes and it
needs to be more about
energy and driving and percussion and
more jungly right and i was
worried about the balance between cliche
jungle sounds like a lot of drums and
yeah and flutes first song yeah and and
but still
maintaining some sort of war like energy
um and i tried again
and i thought okay i nailed it and then
and we'll listen to that in a second
here
um and it has those elements and it has
elements that
that still ended up being in the final
version of the theme but i didn't think
the melody was very strong
uh and i didn't think that well let's
just listen to it i'll talk about what i
didn't think it was after we
hear what it actually is all right so
this is version
two of the heart of thorns thought theme
let's start at the beginning okay it's a
very good place to start
okay
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
i love it yeah yeah so
that one i mean you can hear what i was
talking about what's that
mclean didn't yeah yeah it could be
better i mean
i i like to i don't know i liked it when
i was done with it but then you know
that's kind of
that's the advantage of working on stuff
so much farther out than the release
date is you can let stuff sit with you
and
it can be a blessing and a curse because
you can sit there and overthink it and
and
end up ruining something that was fine
but i feel pretty good that that wasn't
the right
direction to go in there was elements
that i thought were cool the heavy
percussion i thought was cool
um the end is very similar the sort of
big fanfare epic
ending is very similar to how it
currently ends
but there's some other stuff in there
that i don't like the sound of the drums
i should
preface this by saying that that's just
a demo version it's not live so
it doesn't quite have the same heart and
soul and energy the other live recording
would have
um but i don't like the way the drum
sound which is uh my fault i have nobody
to blame but myself
uh and there's like this cheesy flute
thing that i threw in there i'm like oh
it should at least have some sort of nod
to like some strakahuchi
bamboo flute kind of thing but it
doesn't work um
so and the feed and the most important
thing is i sent this out to the studio
and i got some feedback and it was
people were like
yeah it's good you know that's good oh
but uh and and i try not i try not to
take that stuff personally because it's
a collaborative process and i don't want
to feel like i'm this
musical overlord and so i'm very open to
feedback and
most of the time people have been very
gracious and they don't have a lot of
criticism so
that was a huge red flag to me was when
i sent this out and people were like
yeah
it's okay you know so then i thought all
right let's
um let's think about it a little bit
more and then come back to it so
by this at this point season two is
starting to wind down
and i'm starting to think about planting
seeds
for uh music for heart of thorns
for people who are kind of savvy and
listen to that stuff like people will
know the uh
the mordremoth theme that's been popping
up and stuff going back all the way back
to season living world season one and we
talked about that
yeah so i'll play it okay very i need to
preface this by saying that i'm a very
very poor keyboard
player and i'm just i'm not even gonna
attempt to play anything other than
plunking out a couple notes
but the mordremoth theme is very simple
it's so it's like this
right it's just those notes
and it's built around these minor
seconds right so
in music the simplest way to explain
musical terms thank you
a minor second is the shortest distance
in
uh in music that you can move between
two notes so you have this note
and then the shortest distance you can
move to the next note is a minor second
right so it's
it's built all around that kind of stuff
um
and i wanted to create uh a sort of
underlying
um not it's not so much a theme it's not
really melody it's more just like a
little
bit of movement between some notes that
that could
be used as almost like the background
canvas for other melodies to be put on
top of it
throughout the whole expansion uh you
know
all through almost every piece as many
times as i could fit it in there so i
came up with a similar
sort of variation on the more jermoth
sound which is these three notes that
goes like this
right it's like similar it's a minor key
right and it has the same that same
minor second kind of movement
so
right as sort of a string pattern that
they could play
and i started dropping that in into
trailers here and there so i'm going to
play a couple clips of some trailers
this one i don't actually know i don't
know if this one went out so this was
part of
a teaser that i think we cancelled
despite it being finished
i wrote some music for a teaser for
ritlock coming back from the mists and
it has this
this little motif you'll start to hear
it in there and i'm just going to play
about 10 seconds of this
okay
[Music]
okay so you could hear it in the strings
and you could hear it uh
doubled by the woodwinds and it's just
something that that creates
some energy and a sort of sense of
menace as it is pulling you forward
right as the music continues to build
around it
um and then we did another trailer this
was the trailer at the
end of season two the big animated
trailer that you see
that ends with the heart of thorns logo
and it was the first time we kind of
said hey
we're doing a big expansion so i used it
again and then this time i can't really
duplicate it on on the keyboard but
the the strings play the same notes but
they do what's called tremolo which
means they are moving the bow
as fast as possible and it gives it this
like shimmery sort of buzzy sound
instead of just
you know it's i can't do it but instead
of just being one
it's okay it's it's it's not possible to
do the same way on a keyboard but um
it gives it this a little bit more
tension it's a little bit more uneasy
because they're sort of shaking you know
so i did the same thing again in at the
very end of that trailer so let's play
that
real quick
[Music]
so
[Music]
so you can hear it it's a little bit
lower in the strings that time which
also gives it more of a throaty kind of
growl sound
it makes it a lot more like i said
menacing it's like
bump but a little you know and i thought
okay that's really cool so now i'm going
to use that as the basis for
this new version of the theme and and
the version that i'm about to play
this is the version that was in the
first couple of betas so we recorded
this one live
um about a year
a little over a year ago here in seattle
and i was like great we did it we have
the theme
finally and you people will recognize
this it sounds very close to the to the
current theme so
um i won't play all of it i don't think
uh just
you can if you want to oh okay maybe
i'll play all of it um so let's just
play and then i'll talk about it
afterwards okay
this is so version now we're on version
three of the theme
okay
[Music]
so
[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
so that so that will be familiar to
people who played the beta
it's like out there on youtube we put it
up we did a big like blog post with
rpgfan.net i believe
um forgive me if i got that wrong where
we said like hey here's the
debut of the heart of thorns theme and
then i was like wait a second
never mind um and so you can hear how
it's really really close
uh but there's a couple things i thought
were problematic with it is
again the orchestration is i thought it
it was just a little bit
dull right i thought it needed more
right the point of it
is you want the game to fire up and you
want to hear this music and immediately
be transported into the world
that you're about to embark on an
adventure in right the same way
whether it's star wars or game of
thrones or
you know star trek anything that you
hear that within
five seconds last two seconds you're
like oh my gosh here we go right
and i didn't think it had that quality
um
and i still wasn't super happy with that
middle section that you hear the b
section that's been transported since
the very beginning and i eventually got
to the point where i just had to scrap
it
uh which is that's a very difficult
thing is to throw out something that you
really believed in like for almost two
years i'm like this is
it's going to work this is going to work
and it never did
it never did so so now we come to
version
four this is uh last summer
um i panicked i freaked out and i'm like
nothing
this is wrong everything's wrong so i'm
gonna throw it all out i'm gonna start
again
which is you know that happens about for
me that always happens about three
quarters of the way
into the writing process i'm like
everything is garbage start from scratch
and then i usually think about yeah i'll
come back around
after about a week of freaking out so i
decided to start over again
and this was very short-lived uh but i'm
gonna
play this so this is really airing my
dirty laundry this is an incredibly
unpolished
demo version with digital instruments so
it's gonna sound like crap
and i'm not stop that yeah i'm not i'm
not uh well i am apologizing but i'm not
really sorry stop it immediately
but you'll hear there's a couple
elements that i did draw on
that ended up in the final theme so
let's just take a listen to this real
quick
version four
[Music]
so
[Music]
yeah i must really like you guys to let
you hear that um especially the ends
so okay so um that was as far as i got
before i'm like no this is even worse i
gotta i gotta go back to the original
idea but there was a couple things i
pulled out of it so again the percussion
i thought was stronger the energy
was higher and felt more there was more
danger
the other thing is that motif that i was
telling you about that the strings play
that's like
[Music]
i thought you know even though i've
planted the seeds for that i don't like
it i am going to throw that out and i'm
going to start over again
with a new idea and and uh i'm going to
try to
explain this quickly so um
the guild wars 2 or the original guild
wars 2 theme music
is simply up and down a minor scale
right it's like
right it's like a nostalgia wave every
time i hear that yeah and and it's it's
great because it's so simple it allows
you to
adapt it in a ton of different ways all
of which have been done by
me and jeremy and lena over the years
like we've all taken that
bit of clay and turned it into a lot of
different stuff which is i love how
simple it is you know
it's really malleable like you know if
you're doing anything in a minor key
just like
throw it in there and exactly it'll
totally work yeah and and uh
it it it imparts that information of
this is guild wars but then you can say
well but it's guild wars but it's a
little bit different you know
but it's recognizable exactly exactly so
i thought well
all right let me see use that as a basis
but let me let me
you know get a little clever with it so
if you go if you continue to go up the
minor scale
that's the next note right and i thought
well this is the first expansion for
guild wars 2 so let's add that extra
note so the
instead of the motif going you know it
goes
right so it it covers those first four
notes of the guild wars theme
and it keeps repeating them but then on
that you know the sort of final
repeat it it adds that extra note so
it's like all right
super music nerdy like no one's ever
going to think about that
but to me that was sort of my rationale
to say like here's here's a new element
like let's make this guild wars but
let's push it a little bit further
you know and how can i do that musically
so ins so that's now the underlying
string pattern
that you hear in the most recent version
um
and then the other piece from my my
panic version 4
that i took is the b section like i said
i was really unhappy with it so i threw
it out
and i thought i needed some new chords
that add it was very
it was it was a little too happy
sounding for lack of a better term and i
needed more
tension right so this these are these
chords at the end of version four i'll
play them again even though they sound
awful
stop that
[Music]
um so so that element even though it's
not fleshed out at all
in version four i thought okay that's
something to build on
um and so that leads us to the current
final version uh which has bits and
pieces of every version before it
but is the theme that we all know and
love so should i play it please
okay all right this is the last piece
that we're gonna listen to we've gone
through all these iterations we may as
well have the payoff okay
[Music]
[Applause]
so
[Music]
so
[Music]
[Music]
so there we are guild wars 2 heart of
thorns
musical evolution that was real that was
really neat to see
the iteration of the evolution and how
it progressed and what you loved and
what you didn't love
yeah i usually don't see all of that
especially not some of the
you know the sort of rough spots that
you showed like you know it's
i certainly wouldn't i don't think i
even kept them i probably just like
delete them instantly yeah
i'm bad about about uh holding onto
things too long but i do think it's
i think it at least illustrates the
point that
you know they say inspiration is it's
one percent inspiration 99 perspiration
which is like a really cliche thing to
get your kids
motivated to do their homework or
something they've never even bothered
using that one of my kids i might just
do it
um but it's true i mean you know it
the the the inspiration for a melody or
a chord progression that comes
instantaneously i don't know how to
explain that i don't
i don't think anyone can really explain
that but then
it's all about working it until it's
right and that's just hard work and it
takes a long time and people only see
the final product and think
oh this minute and a half long theme you
know whatever this person
obviously came up with this
instantaneously and and was like amadeus
just like uh
scribing out like brilliant you know oh
my gosh but it's definitely not like
that
just couldn't sleep one night so you
know um
so so anyway but that's uh that's that
so let's talk about something else
it's still gonna be music is that okay
yes okay so you were talking about just
like feeling disappointed at one point
we had put that out
and i know you've been through that too
or you're going through iterations when
you're
when you're iterating on this and as
it's progressing you're figuring out
what you don't like
what's like the ratio and you don't have
to give numbers what's like the ratio
between satisfaction that you're making
it better and disappointment that you
lost things and just frustration that
it's not done
um i i think like it's always
the whenever like something starts to
work like the the frustration that it's
like you know taking
you know that you didn't get it right
before it kind of goes away because it
gets
me overwhelmed by like yes it's finally
yes it's finally there yeah progress
and like um to give an example of like
something coming to you like i was
working on
um in lieu of mclean actually having
written the the terrar theme
uh in the beginning which eventually
turned into the heart of thorns theme um
uh eventually i took over the the
terrier theme and
obviously saw it through to completion
um but for a long time i was having a
really hard time with it
um because i was really kind of like
picturing this like really big epic
thing in my head and i just kept
listening to like you know john williams
and all of these like you know
just sort of seminal like you know big
bombastic
uh but melodic soundtracks and i was
just like i've gotta like you know
capture that and i've gotta you know and
i got to a point where i was just like
i'm trying to write someone else's
soundtrack
for them and i and so like i got to a
point where i realized like i
i'm not writing what i'm what what i
would write
and so you're writing someone what
someone else would write right and it
has to make it harder yeah and it was it
was incredibly hard because i kept
writing all these things and i was like
but it's not
exactly what i wanted it to be but what
i wanted it to be was not actually my
music
and so and so eventually which is like
okay no i'm just
start over much like you know mclean did
uh which would
and just say like okay what would i
write
and just kind of like trying to
rediscover that is like you know what
would i actually
write for this and and so what i ended
up going back to for the terrier theme
um was instead of starting off with just
like
because i was starting too soon or uh i
was starting too far in rather
um so like the the moment that i was
trying to start from and i kept on refer
referencing back to the like the sort of
announced trailer for for her
things where um and if you remember back
to the
very first uh pre-recorded live stream
that we talked about i was talking
very like obliquely about this because
because the rear wasn't actually an
announced thing yet
and so i couldn't say like oh yeah it's
that gold you know it's the gold city
called terrier the forgotten city
and i'm allowed to talk about that yeah
i can say that now um but yeah so like
you know the moment when redlock's like
busting up the doors and like suddenly
the camera zooms through and you're
going down the waterfall and everything
and i was like starting from that door
opening moment
awesome and that well i mean that's
that's what it was in this mistake
was starting from that
but i was trying to burst in through the
door before i even like established
where i was
and that was kind of like the metaphor
that i was going through when i was like
failing over and over again to write
this theme
and so i was just like ah here's the
theme and
and i had to like kind of step back and
then so if you actually
you know if you've heard the i don't
have like a fancy uh
you know tablet or laptop to play this
one but i'm sorry
but i mean you can go through it's on
the terrier themes on the soundcloud so
you can
easily go to that one or you know we can
talk about other ways to get the
soundtrack later
but yeah but you know if you listen to
the beginning of that it
starts with just a very simple like harp
thing and sort of
establishing the the little sort of
arpeggio and everything
and just kind of like um going into that
sort of arpeggio and everything and kind
of establishing
the jungle first before the door opens
and sort of like you know flying around
and just kind of like getting that
really like nice table setting for like
here's
here's where we are and then you get to
get that like door opening moment of
like then it goes into like the big
thing and it was kind of a lot like you
know when i was writing for
um labyrinthine cliffs
it was about that ascent it was about
that motion through the area
and so when i was realizing that i was
writing for a very like specific just
like static shot i realized i needed to
go back to kind of what i did
before and like kind of score emotion
rather than
just like one screenshot i'm having a
weirdly difficult time with this and i
understand why you wanted to start there
because
my brain doesn't want to step my brain
doesn't want to sit back and establish
the jungle first it
sure feels like it should be at that and
i can understand why you had such a
difficult time with that
well it's it's it's uh like a
counterpoint to what i was talking about
with the main theme
right this is this is scoring a place
let's
create a sort of half-baked metaphor
here so this is sort of my favorite
place and then the main theme has to
score a mood
and you need to feel that mood instantly
but with a place you want to
encounter that same sense of wonder that
as a player you don't start the game in
the most beautiful city
slash map in the whole game you you have
to eventually un
uncover it you know what i mean you have
to kind of wander through
difficulty and then the reward is oh my
gosh this beautiful landscape right you
start in shame or before you turn around
and realize there's a giant divinity's
reach behind you
right right and it's it's slightly
startling moments yeah it just creates
more drama the
the moment when it hits that peak is
much more stronger
because you started down here rather
than saying like bam like we're gonna
hit you in the face with some gold
city right but it's also like it's also
a very
bam hit you in the face with gold city
um that would make a really interesting
acronym um but no uh
but there's always like that kind of
like toss-up between
writing something cinematically for a
space
and getting too cinematic with it
because there's also the danger of just
like sort of
you know wandering off and just like
writing an imaginary film
when technically a player is directing
it themselves and they're not going to
be like seeing everything that you want
them to see with the music
and so even though you're kind of
writing a more of a cinematic sweeping
or even though i was writing more of a
cinematic sweeping thing like i still
had to like
this could be for just looking at you
know
the the pavement in gold city or it
could just be for
like actually like running through
literally the entire city
and so like it kind of it had to have
that versatility to it
um you know what that kind of brings me
to something do you mind if i pick your
brain some more about twitter
and arc basin in general yeah so i was
just kind of going through and listening
to the different themes
and i then i realized oh lena did all of
these so
that's super handy did you try i mean
because you have like the
you have like the battle theme interior
and then you have general arc basin work
yeah and you have just the regular to
rear were you trying to like weave those
together
absolutely okay i was um yeah there's a
lot of i think they sound alike but i'm
also musically stupid so
you would be correct then yeah um yeah
about the musically stupid part no no no
thanks maclean i wasn't actually trying
to play
this is on records but then you turn it
around
um but no like but he's right carry on
i'm sorry but there's a lot of like um
uh thematically similar uh well like
literally
similar elements in sorry there's it's
kind of a trilogy
of pieces that i kind of consider the
core auric basin
themes there's uh you know terrier
there's the
attack on terrier which is the combat
theme and
or for the big meta and then there's
also a
lullaby an exalted lullaby which is what
i
originally sort of considered like the
sort of night theme for
the area but it kind of you know evolved
into more of just a you know general
area music for uh for it and then there
was
uh a fourth theme that i wrote actually
first
which was kind of more of like here is
the jungle and has a little more of the
sort of
uh percussion and and uh sort of you
know
those instruments that kind of like set
the the tone for a jungle environment
but those three like um they all i
started with
the city theme with tareer okay and uh
there was two
two main elements and i actually learned
it's funny like i
this was how i wrote anyways but i
learned kind of like how to
define it by reading uh one of my
favorite composers bear mccreary who did
bastard galactica and all that stuff
he has an amazing blog um and if i i
forget what the website is but you can
check it out if you search for bear
mccreary blog
where he basically just goes into like
in-depth like
composition uh just
kind of what maclean did just right now
but like in a blog format and be like
here's
here's this like arpeggio that i did for
this theme and here's this theme and
you know he'll show the sheet music for
it and he'll talk about his process of
actually writing and scoring these tv
shows that he's working on
and so what i realized with the terrier
theme is i had kind of two established
uh motifs with it one was the actual
melody
and then the other one was the little
ostinato that kind of starts in
ostinato is a repeating phrase
that starts it off with a harp
[Music]
and so that kind of like kicks
everything off and then
uh when the melody comes in
that one um and so that's sort of those
are the two
motifs there and so for the combat theme
i took that uh ostinato the repeating
phrase
and i turned it uh into what the violins
start in
um when it when it kicks off and so
instead of going you know being all
pretty like
it goes
so it kind of like takes that same uh
progression and then moves it forward
into the instruments and brings it you
know energetic and combat and all this
stuff and just kind of played with
everything
um and then the the rear melody comes
back
in sort of the victorious section in the
attack on terraria
theme um and and then also with the
lullaby
uh the knight theme um the uh the flutes
are playing kind of a modified version
of that same theme so it's all kind of
taking these
elements and reconfiguring them and and
uh
it's kind of like what i was saying
earlier with like the guild wars theme
like
um and i was uh on a podcast and asked
about what makes a good theme
uh a while back and i after racking my
brain i was like
i think it's the versatility of the
theme and i think like the theme's
versatility is what gives it the most
strength
because you can involve it in the most
amount of music so if you're writing for
you know a setting which involves like
the people the exalted
you know you want to be able to write
theme that you can then apply to a whole
bunch of different
setting or different pieces of music
that still kind of conveys that same
uh you know the character and and and
everything about it
um melodically as well as you know and
it helps tie everything together
and so yeah it was a lot of fun to just
take one
take one thing and then just kind of
start finding other ways to
yeah uh to you know to transform it and
evolve it into different
uh settings and you know working with
various settings just as a player
one of the things that well and this is
just some of the most fun i've had in
heart of thorns so far
when you're when you're doing the medal
in terrier yeah and
i don't know how much both of you have
done the various areas
but there's i can't remember which i
can't remember if it's south
i don't know but you go in there and you
you fly up and you hit your glider and
you have to swing around and drop bombs
on the opto vine that's so fun and the
first time i did it
usually i'm i've kind of got like the
music in one ear and my guild mates in
voice chat in the other but this time
was like
just the music and i still had it up and
i'm you know i'm soaring around in
battle and i just had this moment of
this music
works this works with it so well
because you know i've just flown up in
the air and i'm i'm doing this amazing
aerial attack with like four or five
other people
and i have background music that matches
this that works for this and
it felt good and so nice work
yeah thank you i actually it's always
the best feelings like getting comp
compliments like that just like it works
like hey it works it felt
amazing it just elevated it elevated the
gameplay and i don't
care if that sounds completely hokey
i mean that's what we're trying to do
yeah exactly that's exactly
what we want to happen we're not just
writing music for the sake of writing it
you know it's just to bring out the
emotions that we want players to feel
well it was it was pretty cool it it
felt good it was fun i
should have checked into it soon i
didn't even realize you wrote that
entire thing until two days ago when i
was going okay i want to talk about this
thing
which one of them do i need to talk that
was lena i have to tell her that felt
really good
yeah i should say that the so the very
first thing i played was the original
gold city theme which
obviously turned into something totally
different and i realized that i didn't
have a grasp on what
the uh of what terrier and oreck basin
needed to be
um and that's why i handed it over to
elena who i did i think did a much
much better job than than i was capable
of doing awesome appreciate that
well that seems like a really good note
we're getting we're actually past one
o'clock right now oh wow um
i know we just we're having way too much
fun but
we have a soundtrack where you guys can
get all of this music and this seems
like a good time to talk about that
so you can find everything at guild wars
2.com forward slash shop
because you can get it on amazon itunes
i am 8bit
do you guys want to tell about the vinyl
sure
we can show it it's not final yes it's
on vinyl well i mean it will be
i think um it's so cool
the i am eight bit people uh they
have we've been working with them on
some on some stuff for merchandise and
some promotional
marketing things i think for a while now
and
they sponsored twitchcon with us
um and so i was there at twitchcon we
did the live performance thing
which was really cool yeah and then we
were i was talking to some of the people
you know behind the scenes uh when other
segments were happening
at twitchcon and they pitched the idea
of vinyl i had kind of given up
that was john and amanda yes seriously
because they have a pretty they have a
pretty sort of thriving section of their
shop that's that's game soundtracks and
vinyl and and
you know they were like let's do one and
i thought what you know
we can do a physical release so it seems
strange to skip uh
a cd and who knows whether or not that
will happen in the future it's not up to
me
um or me or any of us in this room so
please don't bother us
but uh you know to have something
tangible in this day and age is really
cool and
it's it's something that gets uh touted
a lot about
how nice it is to hold in your hands and
it's not just a cheap record it's
high quality vinyl it's amazing artwork
high quality printing the whole thing
that they did all of it you know we just
sort of consulted and said yes or no
and that's like the benefit of vinyl too
it's like you get just
such a cool package out of it yeah it's
something that you can just display
hey like that um really cool
like high resolution prints of art and
just
open it up and it's just art um and then
there's uh
you wrote some liner notes uh for it too
right i'm going to
um yeah i'm going to do that you're
going to do that today
i think yeah it's it's just a way to
encapsulate all the things that we
feel and say about the music in
situations like this this is a physical
way of saying
here's the thing like we worked on this
aspect of the game really hard
and now you can own that piece of it you
know as
a beautiful package and just like
honestly when you mentioned
like you know i made that was going to
be uh doing vinyl for us i was just like
just like deer in the headlights because
i was like oh my gosh like you go on
their site and like look at the
soundtracks that they already have there
and it's like
we're gonna be there yeah right that's a
really good good company
yeah or all of them are in good company
now whichever
yeah uh and we should say too that when
you get the vinyl when you pre-order it
yeah you'll instantly receive the
digital version of the soundtrack for
download
yeah within 48 hours because the vinyl
is releasing later this quarter
so you can pre-order the vinyl now
through im8 bit
um but the digital you can have now yeah
so
i love instant gratification it's the
best and do you want to reiterate where
the
digital itself is yeah you can get the
digital at well again
if we can show the album art again the
link wow i totally forgot the word i was
like what's a url
the url is right there and you can find
that will take you to the
amazon uh link to the
itunes link and to i am eight bits link
i am eight bit is where you get the
vinyl
and then the others are purely digital
so
all right that was a lot of fun thank
you both thank you maclean thank you
lena
thank you yeah yeah thank you to your
girlfriend for letting us borrow you
yes my cat most importantly and the cat
will send him back home to you both
very very soon all right i will
let you get back to work and we actually
are going to steal some more of your
time before you leave oh okay
okay let's see how i i do that on camera
and you can't retaliate
yeah oh wait we should talk about the
lion's arch music putting it on
soundcloud we're going to do that oh
that's right we're going to do that
after the show we have two pieces new
live versions of the previous lion's
arch music that came out
last summer when the city was rebuilt
forget about those old versions
they're they're terrible these new
versions are way better
stop apologizing for your work stop
calling it terrible we all think it's
pretty good
all right well that's really still
terrible okay oh my gosh guys
all right so we are not technically
we're running late for on point
um we do not have on point today because
jebrow's isp is doing work and they were
like
hey we're cutting off your internet now
and you can have it back on saturday
so that was totally not his fault we
miss him and we will have him back
very very soon for onpoint um for now
make sure you follow our channel here on
twitch so you don't miss future shows
because they're going to be pretty great
and thank you both for coming absolutely
thank you yep we will see you guys next
week
oh and i'm going to do one more little
thing here can we scoot this just a tiny
bit
thank you it's just a little thing here
in the video
okay hey mark can we show off this over
here
thank you i know where i like can it
jump i like ore
what's cool
oh
[Music]
Guild Chat - Episode 26

Transcription[edit]

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