Vanguard: Saga of Heroes Soundtrack

[Fearin]

Excerpts taken from music section of Todd Masten's site. from Orchestral Recordings and Vanguard

http://www.toddmasten.com/#!__music
"I was extremely forturnate to be able to conduct and record with the Seattle Symphony & Choir for a MMOG project I worked on recently.

I composed pieces for each starting city with unique thematic elements to help support the races and environments.

After the recordings were complete I layered in the orignal sample-based tracks that were used to create the orchestrations and arranagements before mixing and mastering the final versions.

While the game had a combined total of over twenty hours of music, only one hour was recorded with the orchestra and choir. These tracks are presented here.

There were three main in-game continents patterned after real world locations found in Asia, Europe, and Persia.

The final three tracks are songs written for each of the three elvish cities sung in languages created for each clan.

All of these tracks can be found on the Vanguard: Saga of Heroes soundtrack disk that shipped with the collector's edition of the game."

http://www.toddmasten.com/#!__music/vanguard
"I composed twenty hours of music for Vanguard over a period of about two years. During that period I wrote every day without fail which really helped me nail the size and scope of the massive game world.

The music for this game was designed and composed in a modular fashion for each distinct environment and was created to be interactive. Each piece is composed of twelve layers that are triggered on and off by a series of in-game events or actions by the player; as well as environmental variables such as time of day and the length of time the player spent in a region. Each region also had ten layers of combat music which was seamlessly transitioned when the player was in battle.

I had a personal goal of composing at least half of the pieces outside of standard 4/4 timings, so many of the pieces are written in 5/4. 7/4, 6/8, 11/8, and other non-standard meters. I also experimented with whole tone scales, and twewlve tone row composing.

The game world inhabitants were as culturally diverse as our real world, so I was able to use instruments and voicings from around the globe.

I enjoyed working on a game which offered so many opportunities to the composer to experiment and push the envelope.

During the last eighteen months I stepped in to join the production staff and get the game focused and shipped before moving on."