League of Legends Dev Tracker

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

F#!

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 :)

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.

My dogs.

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!

🤔