Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures Music Interview

Music 4 Games has published the results of an interview they did with Knut Avenstroup Haugen, composer of the Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures soundtrack.

The mixing process

The tracks that are more orientated towards folk music like some of the tracks for Stygia and Cimmeria, have a (standard) approach to the mixing process. They have a limited number of tracks and are smaller in scope than the orchestral cues. Especially for the Stygian music, I was able to be quite free in the approach to the mix compared to how I would have done a realistic sounding orchestra mix. I was able to use (unnaturally) large drums and pull solo instruments to the front of the mix in a way that is normal in a pop mix, but would not sound natural in a purely orchestral mix.

Mixing the big orchestral cues of the score was a different thing. Even though these pieces are closest to my background as a classical composer and pianist, mixing them was a huge challenge. The reason was of course that I had to make it sound like something I didn’t have access to, but nonetheless would be compared to; I was constantly striving to make it sound as much like a real live orchestra as possible. It was very difficult at times and was beyond doubt the most time-consuming part of the entire production.

Everyone who has ever worked with sampled orchestras knows that it takes a lot of programming to make a piece sound realistic. I had to spend a lot of time on this even though I would eventually add live instruments. Actually because of this fact, the programming took even more time since I had to make sure the sampled version followed the live recording; if the live and sampled strings moved apart dynamically, articulation-wise or in tempo, the two would no longer blend. I would then have to rework the sampled part or draw volume automation on the audio tracks. In many cases I would have to do both.