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Howard Shore's 王者荣耀 (Honor of Kings)


Faleel

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Here's some more info on the game

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wangzhe_Rongyao

 

Zimmer & Balfe worked on it too

 

 

~

 

 

More info:

 

https://pvp.qq.com/webplat/info/news_version3/15592/24418/24987/24988/m18519/201802/691836.shtml

 

Google translation of this page:

 

Quote

 


Creation of the world's top art masters

The super-large orchestra of 96 top performers participated in the recording

60 singers' top choirs

Abbey Road Studios in the world's hall-level recording studio recorded...

The eternal Chang'an City melody undulating, the king's most prosperous city on the mainland - Chang'an, stands in front of you.

Want to know how this epic music was created? Click and watch the "Forever Changan City" music documentary ~

 



 

Artist profile

Howard Shore: One of Hollywood's best film musicians, the Oscar winner, the "Lord of the Rings" series, the "Hobbit" series and other classic film music composers.

 

1.png

GIF: Composer Howard Shaw

[Chimes + bamboo flute + drums = thick Chinese elements]

Chang'an City is located on the central plain of the king's mainland. Under the leadership of the female emperor, there is an unprecedented prosperity and prosperity , all the people are prosperous, and the people are thriving. The travellers and products from all over the world come to Chang'an and let the time flies. The beauty of this oriental fantasy city will never die.

In order to present a mysterious and graceful oriental city in the melody. In the choice of musical instruments, Howard used the representative instrument of China, the flute, to play the main melody lines with the orchestra. The melody is clearly distinguishable and has a strong Chinese color.

2.png

 

GIF: Orchestra live performance

 

3.png

 

GIF: Flute player Tu Huabing

 

At the same time, Howard also used chimes. The chime was a large-scale percussion instrument in ancient China. It was born in the Western Zhou Dynasty and flourished in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States to the Qin and Han Dynasties. It is also one of the most representative instruments of the Tang Dynasty in China. Cooperate with the Chinese drums to create a magnificent oriental rhythm ~

 

Picture 1.png

Chime (picture from the network)

 

[Crossing the dialogue between China and the West]

According to the description of the audio big Sean, before the creation of Mr. Howard Shaw's "Forever Chang'an City", he only came to Hong Kong, China. China is a unique and mysterious oriental capital in his eyes. Because China's Tang Dynasty is a world-famous historical dynasty, including the music of the Tang Dynasty, the impact on the world is very far-reaching. For the sake of music creation, Mr. Howard deliberately watched a large number of Chinese documentaries, as well as the historical background of the Tang Dynasty and the folk music, costumes, etc., and recorded the characteristics of many Chinese music in detail. The Sagamons now hear the "Forever Chang'an City". The reason why there is a Chinese musical sense is that the melody uses five-tone music, and also uses the rhythm of China's four-stable. Taking the Chinese melody as the root and integrating into the Western concept of music creation, this game of dialogue across the Chinese and Western music presents the unparalleled Chang'an City in the minds of each summoner ~

 

Picture 2.png

GIF: "Forever Changan City" sheet music

 

Xiao Xiaoji : The audio is big. I want to ask what is the most memorable thing in the process of creating music with Howard Shaw~

Sean : Actually , when I was recording on Abbey Road Studios, everyone was a little nervous, because at the moment when the last music was played, all we had was music. When all the musicians were seated and ready to record, Mr. Howard appeared, with white hair, but his eyes were wide, and all the musicians, conductors and staff were enthusiastic applause and hugs. When the conductor began the first instruction to play, the music came out from the studio. Everyone present, including myself, was very excited. Our domestic photography teacher told me that at that moment, I was in tears. Hey.

————————————————————————————————————

 

There are a thousand Hamlet in the eyes of a thousand readers. I believe that the summoners with both value and talent have their own understanding of "Forever Changan City" ~

Regarding this music, what do you want to say , please tell your baby in the comment area, and share with you the prosperous Changan in your eyes ~
 

 

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Regarding this music, what do you want to say , please tell your baby in the comment area, and share with you the prosperous Changan in your eyes ~

 

🤣

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So did Shore compose a whole soundtrack for the game or just contributed a few pieces to it?

 

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The Wikipedia article says Zimmer & Co worked on the original 2015 soundtrack:

Quote

The game's music was composed by Hans Zimmer, Jeff Broadbent, Lorne Balfe and Duncan Watt,[21] and was performed and recorded by The Chamber Orchestra of London at Abbey Road Studios in London.

 

So perhaps some new music is composed by Howard Shore, Thomas Parisch and Marcin Przybylowicz?

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It's a mobile game that gets continuous updates as time goes on. It seems Shore contributed some pieces to a big 2018 update that was pushed out, but had nothing to do with any of the music that was in the game for its first 3 years. 

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23 hours ago, Faleel J.M. said:

 

Hmm. Shame. Sounds like a generic RC "oriental" video game anthem. It's even missing Shore's staple flairs in orchestration. Clearly a paycheck gig.

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3 hours ago, Fabulin said:

I hope that Chinese money, ambition and competitiveness will result in a surge of commissions from top composers in the next couple of decades. Every time in history such increased demand occured, excellence followed.

 

2 hours ago, KK said:

 

Hmm. Shame. Sounds like a generic RC "oriental" video game anthem. It's even missing Shore's staple flairs in orchestration. Clearly a paycheck gig.

 

LOL

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  • 1 year later...

Isn't a little sad that, despite all the success with both Middle Earth trilogies, Hollywood isn't offering Shore jobs anymore, so he had to go to China to find something to score? And a mobile game of all things? 

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It is probable as well, considering he had a lot of bad experiences with Hollywood movies post-LOTR (i.e. King Kong being rejected, chaotic recording of the Hobbit with plenty of Peter Jackson interference). But I think Hollywood also stopped offering him any more jobs, which is sad. If I was the director for a Hollywood blockbuster, I'd certainly want to at the very least meet the composer of Lord of the Rings for a talk.

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Just got done listening

 

The Zimmer/Balfe tracks are fun and energetic!

 

The Marcin Przybyłowicz tracks were in a very similar style, and pretty good!

 

The Shore tracks are great!

 

Chang an City has shades of The Three Hunters, then has mostly a nice eastern flair that is entirely un-LOTR-like

 

King's Valley sounds like the FOTR prologue action material, A Good Omen, and some ROTK action material thrown in a blender with the Chang an City textures.  I love it!

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For slate/reel/part number fans, the two compositions are shown in the session video as:

  • HK1 King's Valley 1210
  • HK2 Chang An City 1210

As always with Shore, the 1210 refers to the date of composition or orchestration - December 10th. Both pieces were orchestrated by John Ashton Thomas. 

 

There are some familiar faces in the session video:

Conductor - Robert Ziegler

Engineer - Pete Cobbin

James Sizemore is also in the booth.

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53 minutes ago, Edmilson said:

Why Shore didn't orchestrated and conducted his pieces of music by himself, like he did on LOTR? Maybe he didn't want to fly to London to record just a few pieces of music?

 

He was at the sessions. Check out the video earlier in this thread!

 

1 hour ago, Jay said:

What do you think of these two pieces, Jim?

 

They're fun - almost an Oriental twist on Middle-earth. A little reminiscent of Chris Young's Monkey King scores in terms of orchestration and instrumentation. I'm hoping that they hire Shore to write more music!

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One of Shore's compositions did sneak out in China a while ago - 

http://www.hans-zimmer.com/index.php?rub=disco&id=1702

 

That release also includes contributions from a whole load of other composers!

 

There's also another album, released internationally:

https://open.spotify.com/album/1G6AKEjswii05LYbwJbGmK?si=0E8gmXa0R_u0KaJJT8Zy4w

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On 8/18/2020 at 7:56 PM, Edmilson said:

Isn't a little sad that, despite all the success with both Middle Earth trilogies, Hollywood isn't offering Shore jobs anymore, so he had to go to China to find something to score? And a mobile game of all things? 

 

Probably a similar situation to Young scoring the first couple of Monkey King movies. He said in an interview that the producers contacted him and asked him to do it, rather than any element of him looking overseas for jobs. I guess that if a studio decides to throw some serious money at the scoring and they like a particular A-list composer, they're going to see whether they're interested...

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The "Chang An City" tune plays better for me now. It's kind of catchy! Although it still leans toward generic "Oriental EPIC". 

 

"King's Valley" on the other hand is a mostly unlistenable collection of Howie's leftover EPIC tropes.

 

The Zimmer tune is kind of fun, though it's clearly more Balfe/team than Zimmer.

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6 hours ago, Jay said:

Come on, isn't "unlistenable" a bit over the top, KK?

 

Probably. I think I'm a little attached to the more nuanced attention with which Shore has handled these colours in the past, especially in the LOTR/Hobbit and even SUN context. So I guess I get a little annoyed to hear all that reduced to the "loud choral chords + taiko drums + operatic solo" formula...for what I presume is a big paycheck gig. I mean it sounds no different than a generic Zimmer action cue really, just with a different voice. It's one of the reasons the third Hobbit score has not aged very well for me...but that's another conversation.

 

I guess I just don't like hearing Shore on autopilot mode. :p

 

Sorry folks, didn't mean to be a buzzkill.

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I don't really get disappointed by hearing something like this at all; If I had known about it ahead of time and had hyped and hyped myself up for it, then maybe that'd be the case.  When we just get random new music out of the blue that's fun to listen to, I dig it!

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Totally fair. And it's just music for movies/video games. Not worth taking so seriously.

 

My knee-jerk response also probably had to do with my general cranky mood at the time.

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