League of Legends Dev Tracker

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

no u

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

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.

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

🤔

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...

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.

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!

1 2 3 :p

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.

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.

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 ;)

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.

See you in the Lands Between