[2021] [AMA] We're the Riot Games Music team, here to answer all of your music questions. Ask us anything!

Gosh, I like a lot of random things. I'm going through Bloodborne again in advance of Elden Ring (tfw no CNT). Just beat Ludwig.

Besides Souls games, I'm a big fighting game fan. Play a ton of 3S, and some Strive now and then. Love JRPGs too - Earthbound and Final Fantasy Tactics are my favs.

And obviously, music games - especially old school 90's era Bemani type stuff.

I'm not a musician (creative director) - but what I love about Ludwig's theme is that there's a duality to it that reflects who he is as a person, and the boss fight you find yourself in. The first half of it is loose, manic, and formless - mirroring the feral, bestial nature that overcame his mind. But once he rediscovers his "guiding moonlight", it completely changes. His theme takes on a very composed, waltz-like structure that gives you a glimmer of the humanity that he once had. It literally feels like a mad dance of two hunters in one last showdown.

Okay, don't hate me but I probably play Sol the most. I just find his oppressive strike-throw mix so satisfying and fun, and the fact that vortex low profiles a lot of stuff is just the cherry on top. Daisuke's vision, too strong.

I know it sounds trite, but Riot really does care about doing things with a player-first mentality - and the stuff that we've been able to do for music really embodies that.

One crucial truth about music that we've always tried to stick to is the idea that everyone has a deeply personal and specific relationship with it, which you can't really fake. So we always try to approach it from a place of authenticity (ie, "Would I, or someone into this kind of music, listen to that?"), while still tying it to a great experience that only Riot could provide. I don't think things like K/DA would have happened had we done it, genuinely, any other way.

See you in the Lands Between

K/DA will always be up there for me. It was not only my first time developing a music project at Riot, but also an opportunity to work with Fortiche (now, of Arcane fame) on the POP/STARS music video. A lot of my personal passion as a kpop fan went into the band and it also introduced me to all the extremely talented and wonderful people you see posting on this thread, so I'll always have a personal connection with it.

As far as something challenging I've learned, probably how to work with a huge company made up of many moving parts to pull off big experiences like we do every year. Big cross-product campaigns like Spirit Blossom, Worlds, K/DA ALL OUT, and Pentakill take an incredible amount of coordination and communication to pull off - and while it always isn't easy, it's always worth it when players come away with good and lasting memories of the things we've done.

It feels like validation that we're doing things right. Something we've always tried to stick to is the idea that we're not just making music that's "good for a video game company" - hopefully, people see what we're doing as good music, period.

If we do our job, Riot Games Music projects feel like cool music experiences that anyone can enjoy. But of course, if you know our games and IP, you might like them even more ;)

Favs:

- Villain, bar none. I'm both an Eve AND Kim Petras stan, so when everything fell in place for that track it was already over for me.

- Die For You has been on rotation lately. Love it.

Listen, we're only able to do these crazy little music projects because there are people out there willing to experience them. Never in a million years would I have thought that I'd be able to do anything remotely close to what we're doing as a team now, so thank you and everyone who's a fan of Riot Games Music for tuning in.

1 2 3 :p

Question to the folks here - what would you like to see from Riot Games Music in the future? Could be bands, genres, merch, experiences, whatever - let us know what's on your mind!

Besides Ludwig's theme, my serious answer would be the Cleric Beast/Vicar Amelia theme. I have a sneaking suspicion that the key of the song harmonizes with the pitch of the screams of those bosses, because it just sounds so musical when you hear them howl. Great fight.

My sh*tpost answer would be the Tower Knight theme from Demon's Souls. The first time I heard it, I was like "what the f*ck?" and it's been an earworm ever since.

I'll take 1 and 3!

1 - When I was in high school, I spent a lot of time with one of those make-your-own-games programs. At the time I foolishly tried to do it all - design the characters, write the story, create the battle system, and make the music. I'd already been dabbling with MIDI in trying to piece together arrangements for a three-piece punk band I was in, but I pretty quickly discovered that making the music was by far my favorite part of trying to design the game, so I just kept at it and tried seeing where it could take me.

3 - I think when you're starting out, it's actually a pretty great learning experience to simply try to emulate other songs and artists - I find that can be one of the fastest ways of learning how and why they made something work, from the inside out rather than just passively listening. Once you do this for a bit and start getting a firmer understanding of some music theory and production fundamentals, I think that's when it's a great time to start finding your own musical voice.

🤔

Not yet unfortunately, but it's high on my priority list!

DevilLoc Deluxe was something I had installed on my system for years without even realizing what it could do until one of the other composers mentioned it - it's now one of the first things I reach for when I want to really mangle my audio signal.

Pop, Kpop, 90's R&B, old school house/disco, hip hop, emo, classical

no u

Beefing up our merch/licensing program is definitely something we want to do for the future. We don't have a timeline on it just yet, but it's something I absolutely want to work towards - especially on future music releases.

Favorite anime - anything from Masaaki Yuasa. He's legit a genius. MINDGAME just hits different.

I don't know if I'd change one of our tracks, per se, but as a fan of 90's R&B I'd love to see a K/DA slow jam one day!

As Beckett said, live performances/concerts is definitely something we're looking at for the future. What type of music/bands would you like to see in one?

Ekko. The little hint at his theme during the Jinx fight in Arcane was chef's kiss.

To answer the first question, it really depends. For something like a music video or a montage sequence in something like Arcane, I think it's vastly preferable to have the music - even in a WIP form - be finished prior to animation. This way, the animators and video editors can get super creative with how their video matches the music - sometimes in super subtle ways like even matching a visual to a specific lyric. The video editors are also usually very "respectful" of the musical beat, so it's rare that we'll have to make awkward edits where a chorus has to be cut off midway through a measure or something.

We usually write score music after animation is already heavily underway. Score is reacting to the picture more than driving it, and it's pretty easy to sneak in time signature changes to make the score continue to work to picture if there are late-stage picture edits - much easier than it is with a song, where it's usually quite obvious if the flow is interrupted.

Irelia was pretty special to me, as it was one of the very last League champion themes I worked on, and I was also an Irelia main.

Tough, tough question. I really love the 90s arcade scene, so a lot of my favorite OSTs come from there. Anything from CPS2 era Capcom or SNK is top tier for me.

One soundtrack that I think is just absolutely amazing, though, is Streets of Rage. The kind of sounds that Yuzo Koshiro was able to accomplish on Sega hardware is incredible.

My dogs.

I can't speak to the request, but I'd say that the use of A and B themes usually happens organically as we explore the music for a champion rather than as something we plan from the outset. Sometimes a character seems too complex to have all aspects of them be completely represented within one single musical sentence. For what it's worth, I think it also helps give the themes more interest as standalone pieces of music, as having an A theme and a B theme helps give it more structure, and more of a sense of character journey, than just repeating an A theme in various permutations. Similar to the verse/chorus structure of pop songs.

I am! I've been on Arcane for quite some time, and there are a great deal of string-focused tracks on the score for that :)

F#!

Gotta love the level 1 first blood with top-lane Olaf

For composition specifically, degrees can sometimes be a useful shorthand for knowing that a candidate has a grasp of music fundamentals, but the degree itself is one of the last things we focus on. An impressive demo - impressively composed and produced - will often land someone near the top of the applicant stack. That said, if someone has a great demo that clearly used a bunch of live musicians, we also look for additional demos where most of it was done in-the-box, as we need to know they can make stuff sound great whether they have access to live musicians or not.

More generally, we look for candidates who seem humble, easy to work with, have strong communication skills, and are receptive to feedback.

It's been a while since I worked on champion themes, but my personal approach was often to think of the champion's lore, faction, and playstyle as the three primary things we might want to have represented in the music. Sometimes we'd want something that falls straight down the middle between those three, in which case you'd hear a good amount of their regional influence, but in other cases there might be a strong case for shifting the balance towards one aspect. But with limited exceptions, you'll still hear elements of the region in things like instrumentation choices.

It's rare that a track will get that far along before being scrapped, but it's happened once or twice. Usually the demos do a pretty good job at approximating what it's going to sound like when it's recorded, so by the time you get to the recording session things are (hopefully) approved already.

I think that happens to all of us from time to time. Usually in those cases we have two choices - time permitted, we can keep trying, or we just have to accept it and try something else. One particular area that I feel I'm always trying to get better at is mixing distorted elements within a hybrid orchestral track without completely obliterating the mix, or without them feeling underpowered and out of place and scratchy if I turn them down.

If it's a skills or tools question, sometimes we are lucky enough to be able to lean on someone else for support in bringing it to life, but if it's just one of those cases where we just can't figure out why we can't get it to sound the way we envision it, there's only so much you can do. I try to take comfort in the fact that even trying to hit those stretch goals is still a learning experience that might equip me to reach what I'm shooting for on the next project.

We don't currently have plans for this but I'll keep it in mind!

I think it varies - in the absence of a particular musical idea I tend to default to 3/4 as a starting point but I know many of us probably start with 4/4. I love 5/4 and 7/8 but sometimes it does feel like you get locked in to more rigid rhythmic structures in those meters. For whatever reason I've found myself gravitating towards 3/2 or 6/4 at moderate tempos lately because I really like how it feels like melodies have ample time to breathe in those meters.

Interesting thing about the Ekko time signature - because his theme was one of the earlier Zaun themes, and one of the more enduring ones, sometimes the use of mixed-meters actually gets interpreted as a core element of Zaun music. But we always saw that as being specific to Ekko and his ingenuity, and a part of his music almost in spite of Zaun rather than because of it.

There is usually a lot of communication between the sound designers and composers. We actually just did an interview with A Sound Effect where we chat a bit about music and sound for Arcane, and specifically on that collaborative aspect and making sure achieving a cohesive sonic experience and not stepping on each other's toes, if you want to check it out! Many of the things we touch on apply to other non-Arcane projects and workflows as well.

I can't speak for everyone but I think most of us usually start in a DAW, using whatever method of sketching seems most comfortable, produce a fairly polished demo, and then move to Sibelius when we're preparing sheet music for any live recordings as one of the final steps.

Thanks! I have to admit that scene was a bit intimidating to work on. When we decided to try a more grandiose, old-school sound for it, part of me wanted to modernize it a bit, but I'm glad I got the chance to just go for it and not hold back :)

Thank you! I was an Irelia main long before her rework was announced even internally, so I asked/begged to work on her music for the rework. I wanted to create something that felt ferociously agile but also effortlessly flowy, and at times tragic and introspective. For the arrangement, I settled on a string octet for the primary arrangement because I felt like it was small enough to have visceral intimacy of hearing individual players rather than monolithic sections, but large enough to create a motion blur when we needed it to.

I think the main difference is that with reworks, it feels like there's just a bit more at stake - the champion is already fully formed in players' minds, and we want music that supports that - we don't want to contradict it or let the mains down. With new champions it's a bit more of a blank canvas.

That's "Escape from the Arcade" from Arcane Vol 1.

1. No favorite, but I personally resonate with Eve's whole deal just so much. But as someone who worked on the marketing creative for All Out, yeah you really do kind of fall in love with each in their own way. I think the album being about each individual's quirks and creative approach helped.

2. SY on Baddest was brutal magma, and I love how confused y'all were at the song structure (heh). It's going to be hard, but she and Akali are truly one of a kind, and I think there's always going to be something surprising and different possible with that combo.

WE WERE BORN TO...

DIIIIIIIIIEEE

The moment I learned my coworker was from WoW I started complaining about Rogue balance (Rogue main since 2011). I haven't played since BfA. There's something wrong with me.

Kim was awesome. She totally clicked with the song brief and Eve as a character, and was really impressive with every take she did. Madison is also super chill and the combination of voices was just perfect. I love Kim's work and it was a dream come true.

Favorite memory of her was when we had a listening Hangouts call for the debut of Villain's music video -- she was really cool to hang out with, loved the weird parts like the snakes in the video, and it was awesome (especially during COVID) to connect with someone like that over a project we'd all been doing remotely for a while. She hadn't seen the video yet, and seeing her reaction just made my day.

PK is insanely fun to work on. Thanks so much for listening :)

First off, THANK YOOOOOU. Spotify's wrapped this year was funny as hell, I loved knowing the bizarre subgenres I apparently am obsessed with.

I didn't work on BIAD, but I can pretty confidently say nah it was not for K/DA. I can hear some of the elements you mean, though.

Our composers are really really good at their jobs and although I don't work the music directly, I'll definitely show them this -- capturing the essence of a champ is such a fine art and they kill it.

The bridge of "GIANTS" is in my top 3 or 5 music moments we've done. I love TD, and I alluded to it earlier but while we you shouldn't expect anything immediate, they're not forgotten and they are a part of our future.

Biased, since it's the one I got to work on, but Lost Chapter. It's a mix of Metal styles done in a narrative-focused way, and I loved the arc of it, and the ability for us to base a whole storyline around a concept album.

When he murdered the communist robot my friend and I just started cracking up. The absurdity of that moment was incredible, and the final zone boss being a RR statue with that soundtrack...that's some primo Fallout 1/2 humor there.

I have two from a music project management perspective:

1. Above all else, make working on projects a positive and fun experience. There are times where it can get stressful, but if we can still joke and laugh at the end of a meeting, we're going to make it through.
2. The production plan will change, so build in some time/buffer for it do that.

Thank YOU so much for being a fan. It's so amazing and humbling to hear that it's been part of your life on a daily basis.

What are your fav tracks?

Yes! Here are a couple tracks that have been on repeat for me lately:

climbgrow:

https://open.spotify.com/track/5RXTd9C3TYxXSaFAA73slU?si=211737c387f74438

https://open.spotify.com/track/1KWxLXuvKWJz3klz4951rX?si=b28121dd579a486a

GaGaGa SP:

https://youtu.be/YasDEgsKRyo

DATE ME GANE:

https://youtu.be/cj-MP7SrOkU

Edit: a few more!

COUNTRY YARD

https://youtu.be/HTY-yIfjTH0

Dizzy Sunfist

https://youtu.be/0BOn-mRNMQA

Good question!

I help run our music production side. I work with the composers to make production plans (how we plan on tackling making music for that particular project along with milestones/dates to make meaningful progress), manage the budgets and stakeholders, unblock issues so that everybody can work without issues. Depending on the project, I will also work with other production folks across different Riot teams to make sure I understand what needs they may have for the music.

Fav is so hard to choose, but I have to go with Akali!

Man, I'd love to see a dance battle! I'm still failing to learn the dance for POP/STARS.

Thank you for being a fan! We strive to bring our A game with every track we create, and words like these help validate that hard work. I hope we continue to not disappoint you!

Even looking back, "Radioactive" was an early-2010s essential for me. They're legit huge League fans and really cool people/collaborators. ID have contributed to the scene in a lot of ways and are always a fun band to follow.

ATLAN! YOU ARE JUST AS AMAZING! Pentakill's legendary keys!

We had a ton of fun today (and are still having fun replying!)

I play extremely poorly despite playing for 8+ years! I really love playing ARAMs though, and enjoy a good TFT game with the music squad (somebody needs to be 8th and I'm fine being this!)

More games forever

I'm touched to hear that you and your friends enjoy our music. Thank you and we appreciate you!

Thank you so much - it was a labor of love and I'm so glad that folks are enjoying it!

Thank you for listening! I hope Sessions helps you crush those exams!

Just wanted to say that we do see this and appreciate you for listening! What's your fav Vi track?

We appreciate you!

I can only answer the last question! It depends on the time of the year, but I typically work on 3-5 projects at one time. I can have varying responsibilities for each, so some may not take up a lot of my bandwidth per week.

edit: forgot a word!

YOU rock!

Supergiant Games! Darren Korb's work is incredible.

Edit: hit enter too fast! I'm particularly fond of Transistor and Pyre, and both soundtracks fit each emotion in those games perfectly.

The true legends are the folks in this community still rocking with us. It's something we treasure, and I hope we continue to make music you want to keep listening to.

How could I forget Rocket League.

I play way too much Rocket League.

Late reply, but I love Stardew Valley, Transistor, Pyre, and I'm currently working my way through Spiritfarer and Cozy Grove. I've also had a lot of fun playing through WoW Classic and Shadowlands in retail (team The Ascended!). I also play Beatsaber at least a few times a week!

<3 <3 <3!

He's amazing and we're lucky to have him involved in as many projects as he is! I particularly enjoyed getting to work alongside him on the score side of Arcane, as it's something he hasn't had the opportunity to do as much of but that he has fantastic instincts for.

Hi! As I recall, we were working on Blade of the Ruined King before Harrowing 2016, even though BotrK came out later. We did notice that there was some similarity between the two, but it didn't really bother us - didn't seem that out of place for there to be a little bit of linkage between the two.

Kole's decision to call back to that moment from BotrK was very intentional, and I think it worked super well. It's changed enough to really fit in with the language of the new Viego composition, while still having its source be recognizable.

It's a really good question and a complex one. I'll try to hit a part of it:

One thing we value is not being stagnant or chasing trends. Which, sure, is a great idea in theory but the difficult part comes when you consider how fast music moves and what that means in practice.

I think what we all value is taking whatever genre space we're working in and making sure we put our own spin on it; our own interpretation of the sound that's agnostic of a specific time and space. What makes K/DA work IMO is that it has 80s elements, it avoided an overly trap-based sound (I love trap btw), and sort of took a route that felt a bit like a classic/modern mix. Pentakill's latest album had the same mentality, in a more overt way I think.

In terms of picking genres, it's complicated and we're going through that process right now on plenty of fronts. But yeah, from what I've seen and experienced as a non-composer: I think the best answer to your question is "don't be dated, be inspired but don't be a follower, trust your talent, listen to way too much music."

I was the Creative Lead on Drum Go Dum's music video! I think a big lesson there was how much people value seeing a champion and a character doing their thing, above the more conceptual stuff we tried to do there. The dancer Bailey Sok is amazing and I did really enjoy how much people appreciated her even if they had criticisms for the MV. But yes, as someone who's worked on a lot of the video content of the last few years, that was a good learning experience personally and something I'd like to really show up on next time we give Kai'Sa her moment.

Oh I have a concept for a perpetually (PERPETUUM) drunk melee ranger with a sword for surrrrre.

Nami!

Absolutely going to carve out time to do a WL3, DOS2, Disco Elysium, and Baldur's Gate 2 run in the next year.

Love Loshe a ton. I legit think the hardest part of that game is trying to figure out what character you want as your main vs. party member.

The crisp air of winter in the woods.

It blows my mind we got to do, like, close to 100 songs this year. Please do not take us 10xing our previous year's output as a sign we'll do 1000 songs in 2022 XD

Yes! I'm always listening to something when I'm not in meetings.

Hell yeah, I personally love Aftershock a ton -- the 2nd verse "the very nature of the animal you've cornered" is so beautifully brutal and the band are gods for that one.

Vi: Growing Flowers - xander.
Diana: Ever Fall - Toyko

the PK gang for sure. Check out Tre Watson's YT for some cool stuff (they were a big part of the Lost Chapter album and played Mutaris in the concert).

Legit one of the most amazing things I've ever worked on. The band are gods and it was an honor to help create the show. We f*cking love you guys for listening.

I am not reflective of the team's overall taste (k, we're all weird), but personally and recently:

Uzi Vert

Gesaffelstein

Lord Huron

Glass Animals

flor

MEMBA

0171

GRANDMA

Dandy Warhols

La Dispute

King Princess

No specifics, but they're a staple of the roster for sure :)

:D :D :D

We've not forgotten about PK. And even in terms of Lost Chapter, there's plenty of loose threads I'd personally love for us to explore with y'all in the future. Viego is being tortured by a God of Metal for the Noiseome Host's sake...

:

)

Usually we work with an orchestra contractor, and we tell them exactly how many players we need and for how long of a recording session. They then assemble the group of players from a combination of freelance session musicians and sometimes symphony orchestra musicians, if there isn't a concert that day. That said, even though these are ad hoc groups of players that aren't collectively known or organized into a named orchestra, we often see the same faces at our sessions, and we can always request specific players if we want.

When we're looking for soloists as opposed to section players, we often look for ones who have a bit of their own extra sonic brand that they can bring to the table. There's one cellist in particular that we love using named Cameron Stone. While he's great as a session cellist, he is absolutely phenomenal at improvising to lead sheets or even just to the playback of the track alone, particularly in this snarling yet controlled sul ponticello styling that's unlike anything I've ever heard. So when we call Cameron, we know he'll nail the parts that we've written out for him, but we also know that we're gonna walk away with a ton of extra great material that would have been hard to even conceive before getting him in the booth.

80s hair metal vibes for sure. I loved the Jorn and Noora duet, would love to see them try more of that in the future.

I've been playing since season 3 and I'm still playing around 1-2 games a day unless things are busy. I barely play any ranked though - I usually play feast-or-famine top laners and I find the game to be most fun when going for the limit-testing all-ins rather than the more methodical, cautious approach I find myself taking in ranked.

This is delicious feedback, keep it coming btw everyone

Thanks for the kind words! Believe it or not, that's actually an Alex Seaver/Mako track that he wrote for that scene. I don't know if we'd ever release that as a standalone track as it isn't really mixed as such, but works just fine in context when given the vintage vinyl treatment and room reverb in the scene.

There's not a single thing we could do that doesn't also involve the help or creative collaboration with multiple teams at Riot tbh. As music we're a bit more insulated from, say, the actual games themselves - we're just more naturally detached from that specific part of things most of the time, so it's "easier" for us avoid some of the critique - but we all have the same values and share the same goals, and Riot really is a place where you can't do sh*t unless you have the coordination and support of people who work on different things than you do. Narrative, Audio (who helped provide voice acting talent for PK, for example), skins, etc. were all key for the last PK campaign, including a ton of other teams and individuals.

And hey, we're going to f*ck up -- that's a given! As music, I guarantee you we'll miss the mark occasionally given a long enough timeframe. That terrifies me, of course, but it's life. It'll probably make things better after we do. This isn't a post to beg you or chide you to stop critiquing things, btw. I think it's just important to realize the humble reality that we're not immune from screw-ups, and honestly the people who touch projects that get critiques are often the same people who are the MVPs of the projects people love. sh*t's complicated, but people here really do pay attention and care, and that goes beyond a specific team.

Personally, as a non-composer? God, just talking and hanging out with people smarter than you about music. It's really special to be able to talk with someone making a K/DA track (for example) about what it feels like viscerally to you, then digging into the guts of their process. Helps you articulate what you hear in better ways.

tl;dr, listen to a bunch of music, but talking to people who deal with music in different ways is key and has personally helped me understand a lot of nuances there. Bonus points if you know they're smarter than you about it, haha.

Our Love. I just adore it.

Mutaris hears you, my child.