Greetings warriors of Calradia!
Music
is a vital part of our lives, and it’s one of the most
powerful tools for conveying emotions and feelings –
especially in visual media, like films and video games. A good
score connects you to the setting as a whole and grounds you
to the scene; it evokes certain feelings and images, moves you
to feel in a certain way. But that’s not all: music is
one of the very few things that you never really forget
– and it’s always connected in your brain with the
feelings you had when you listened to it. And so, in many
years from now, if you happen to hear a certain melody you
will be brought back to that moment, to that memory. That is
why we take really seriously the music of Mount & Blade
II: Bannerlord – and why we have tried to be as
authentic as possible, asking a true medieval music band to
compose and play music for the game. And it’s not a
trivial task – it takes artistic talent, but also lots
of research and hard work… But let’s leave that
for them to explain in their own words in a special Q&A!
How did the band form?
Individually, our interest in medieval music goes way
back, but the idea of forming a band to perform this type of
music first developed in 2003. Kaan Bahadır and Selçuk
Dalar joined together to dig through an archive of old songs.
They picked a few songs from the archive which they could play
with some plucked and wind instruments that they own and
started tryouts as a duo. Thus formed Ensemble Galatia! In
2004, Serkan Özçifçi joined on stringed
instruments and in 2005, Senem Gökçe Okullu on
vocals. Gökhan Bulut joined in 2006 and Nevin Şahin
joined in 2011, which formed the current line-up of the band.
Additionally, there were many musician friends who worked with
us and helped our progress but parted ways in time.
What kinds of medieval music (styles) do you focus
on?
It’s extremely complicated to categorise all the
music composed throughout European over millennia. Still, we
think summarising our field of study in two layers won't be
too far off the mark.
We can define the first
layer as "Chronological". We are focusing on two eras
historians define as "High Middle Ages" (11. - 13. Centuries)
and "Late Middle Ages" (13. - 15. Centuries).
The
second layer is more "Thematic". Across all of the Middle
Ages, there were roughly two branches of music, one is
"Liturgical" (e.g. Church music), and other is "Secular" (e.g.
Folk music). We prefer to work mostly on Secular music of this
era.
As a band, we are interested more in the
music that impacted on the common medieval citizen's everyday
life, instead of institutional ceremonial music. Sometimes
it's dance songs from palaces, love songs from Andalusia,
songs of knights, wandering bards or songs compiled by a king
and dedicated to his holies, or songs of exiles spread all
over medieval Europe. These medieval songs embodied with us as
tales where anything is possible. I think that's how we pick
what we play!
What attracted you to this style of music?
The charm of medieval music is hidden in this period's
extraordinary cultural diversity. At the end of the Antique
period, the Roman Empire was able to build up a vast cultural
realm that spread from the British Isles to North Africa, from
Spain to Caspian Sea. Following the break-up of the empire,
the fall of Western Rome, the dispersal of central authority
to local kingdoms and fiefdoms enabled rich and pluralist
structures where indigenous themes stepped up and local
languages were written down. And this variety went further
when Muslim Arabs conquered Syria, Egypt and Northern Africa
from the Romans, Spain from Visigoths, Sicily and parts of
Southern Italy from Ostrogoths, and even further still when
Magyars and Vikings came down from the north. At this time,
the bards of northern pagans, ancient Roman and Greek
heritage, vibrant Arab poetry and Berber music from North
Africa were all living together across Europe. This
interaction provided a basis for a very unique musical
liveliness so uncommon up until this point in history. After
the Crusades, Turkish, Persian and other Middle-East
involvement put a good measure on this diversity. So, in
short, the magical and fabulous atmosphere of the Middle Ages
is very attractive for sure, but we are most impressed by this
cultural diversity.
Can you tell about some of the instruments that you
use?
The musical instruments we use are mostly unfamiliar to
anyone born into the musical world of the 21st Century. As
with cultural elements, music evolves over time. This
evolution is also reflected in musical instruments as form,
timbre or material. Just like in biological evolution, the
evolution of instruments relies on adaptation to new times,
otherwise, it gets marginalised and squeezed into obscure
music that lives on in small communities or ceases usage and
vanishes altogether.
We use more than 20
instruments alternately, based on the region and period of the
music we're performing. Some of the instruments we use look
familiar to modern ones as they are predecessors of the
latter, while others look very unfamiliar. For example, one of
our most used instruments, a "Vielle", is similar to a modern
viola, and a "Lute" looks quite like a guitar. However,
listening to a kind of lap zither named "Psaltery", a northern
string "Tagelharpa" or a “Hurdy-Gurdy” with its
interesting mechanics could be as curious as witnessing a
sabretooth or a woolly mammoth alive! :)
How did you become involved with Bannerlord?
Actually, we met dear İpek and Armağan very long time
ago. After a concert in April 2007, we had a lengthy talk
about the game they were developing (Mount and Blade:
Warband). But unfortunately, we didn't have access to
instruments nor the recording environment to handle such work
at that time. After some years had passed, we were able to
meet again in 2018 and took our chance to compose parts of the
music in this project, (which is very exciting for us!).
What music do you work on for the game?
As a general approach, we are composing music that's
going to be used in physical locations, such as taverns and
palaces. In these areas, you will see the musicians perform
their act. For that purpose, we are preparing many demos for
each kingdom. Once a demo is prepared we hand it over to
TaleWorld’s audio department (salutes to Uğurcan) where
they pick which music is appropriate for which area, and
sometimes to places that we didn't plan! We think the
multiplayer lobby is one of these places.
Is this your first experience working on a game project? Is
it different than other projects you have worked on?
Ensemble Galatia is a band that is focused on
performing medieval music. In the past 16 years, we mostly
performed songs that have survived to this day in written form
or through oral sources. In other words, we play and sing
songs discovered from old handwritings or that have been
passed down through the generations by being performed. Our
recordings have been used in TV series, documentaries and
short films. But as we said, these were songs from hundreds of
years ago. Therefore, this experience of composing original
music with TaleWorlds is a first for us.
On
other projects, as the melody was already there, we were
focusing on performing issues like deciphering existing
notation, correct execution by the period, sound and harmony.
Stylised composition in this manner is a new and exciting
pursuit for us. Additionally, we're excited and happy to use
the new instruments we crafted and acquired within this period
to be heard for the first time.
Have you faced any challenges that needed to be overcome
while working on the project?
As we stated, stylised composition became a new
pursuit. For a group that's focused on performing period music
that's been transcribed from day one, creating new
compositions out of nowhere could be described as a new design
area, and so a new challenge for us! :)
However,
with Bannerlord's historical background being based on reality
and each of the kingdoms inspired by medieval cultures really
made things a lot easier for us. We are not experts on each
and every style of music encompassed by these cultures for
sure, but researching, reading, listening and experimenting on
each culture was an enjoyable learning process instead of a
drawback.
Bannerlord features 6 different factions, all based on
real-world medieval cultures and peoples. What’s your
approach for these different in-game cultures?
The idea of the Medieval Ages has very strong imagery
on its own. As Ensemble Galatia, we built up our repertoire on
displaying this powerful imagery and musical variety from the
very beginning, thus we were very familiar to the musical
approach of the cultures represented in Bannerlord. It's
possible to say that our biggest inspiration was the cultures
themselves, as we already had experience with them.
Nevertheless, there's a big difference between performing
authentic music and composing fresh, stylised music. With
stylised music, you have to represent the period's
characteristics. So you have to distil all of your research,
performing and listening practices to craft original music
that evokes the cultural and periodic feelings with sound and
strong melodic structure. Our biggest aid was the works of art
that have passed down as transcriptions or oral traditions.
How do you go about making a music track?
A composition, with no doubt, can be brought to life in
many different ways. Sometimes, the whole work just arrives as
a sudden revelation. But, to be honest, that's a very rare
situation. Most of the time, it's you who have to reach the
muses. To achieve that, we firstly focus on the distinctive
instruments of the target culture. We draw a frame by
combining an instrument's capabilities and performance styles
with the structure of music, common modality and scales of
that culture. Then, we improvise within this frame. And
lastly, we decorate and variate the themes that emerged from
this process. Matching melodies with correct instruments is
another part of the work, where we materialise the true sound
of that culture.
Do you have a favourite faction in Bannerlord?
We can admit that when we first read this question,
there was a silence of doubt. In the game, every culture was
so detailed and visually substantial, it's really hard to put
forward one over the others. But later, there were some
whispers saying "Sturgia"... There's a good chance we are
biased because of our latest works. Well, except Gökhan!
He's a Vlandian guy! The Vlandian culture is very similar to
our current repertoire, so it's not hard to say we feel that
Vlandia is a part of us. But in our production phase, we try
to think, dream and act like a musician living in that society
at that time. Every culture we work on become our favourite
during that time. I think we will ultimately decide about our
favourite culture only after we finish all the work and sit
down and play the game itself.
You recently released some new songs, can you tell us a
little bit about that? Where can people listen to your
music?
We designed our album series Codex Minor (Small
Manuscripts) as Mini-albums / EPs, where we include examples
of various medieval European music. Just as the relics
unearthed completes the imagery and bigger puzzle of past
cultures, we want our Codex Minor series to appear as freshly
discovered parchments that serve the same purpose.
We
released our latest Codex Minor on October 11, and we hope to
release more in the future. All of our albums are available on
all digital music platforms like Spotify, Deezer, Amazon
Music, Fizy, Apple Music, Google Music and many more. Also,
our first album can be found in CD format if anyone is
interested!
On top of that, you can subscribe
to our YouTube channel, where you can listen to our albums and
live performances. There will be some surprises soon! Also,
you can follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to keep
track of our future concerts and workshops!
https://www.ensemblegalatiaofficial.com
https://www.instagram.com/ensemblegalatia/
https://www.facebook.com/ensemblegalatiaofficial/
https://twitter.com/EnsembleGalatia
https://www.youtube.com/ensemblegalatia
https://open.spotify.com/artist/5SW13PyqkGUyriEIj9t5ap
https://itunes.apple.com/artist/ensemble-galatia/651322866
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