The songs themselves are not separated, but are instead one long track with seamless transitions. The soundtrack can be heard on any CD player by using the game disc, and skipping the data track. In addition to covering almost the entirety of Age of Kings, The Conquerors, and Rise of the Rajas' soundtracks (the exceptions being the opening and credits themes), it overhauled the civilizations' introductory music, replacing the short jingles with one-minute tracks. Being a recomposition, it was intended to capture the spirit of the original, rather than strictly adhering to the existing notation. The new music took a different direction to his work on Age of Empires: Definitive Edition: rather than being performed by a full orchestra, a combination of sampled and live instruments were used. įor the Definitive Edition release, the soundtrack was recomposed by Todd Masten with Semitone Music Group, and recorded at 20th Century Fox Scoring Stage, Los Angeles. He used a similar production style to the original music, retaining the Boss DS-330 synthesizer, but with an Ensoniq TS12 instead of the E-mu ESI-32 sampling. The original soundtrack continued to be used for the HD Edition release, and new tracks composed by Vitalis Eirich were added for the game's expansion packs. This MIDI version of the soundtrack was used in the trial version of Age of Empires II, but not the full game. This allowed tiny file sizes, but generating a more limited, unproduced sound. Īs the soundtrack had been composed into a form that could be played by MIDI, it was also possible to use this control method to play the game's music with the gamer's soundcard synthesizer. The track sequence was designed around the timings of typical gameplay: slower tracks were used early on, while the player would be developing their base faster tracks later in the playlist, when it could be expected that players would be fighting intensely. The credits tracks for both Age of Empires II and The Conquerors are an exception, using live bass, drums, and guitar. Reverb was generated by the Lexicon PCM-91, and then the mix was processed onto DAT, and copied onto the game disc as Red Book audio. Synth DS-330 was used for string pads and bass drops, and the Alesis QS8 synthesizer was played to create bassy drones (such as the opening of Shamburger). Many instruments came from the E-mu ESI-32 sample library, the Boss Dr. Actual hardware was used, rather than being performed in a digital workspace, and controlled with MIDI. ĭespite the historical sound, most of the music was performed electronically, in a similar method to Age of Empires and The Rise of Rome. Ultimately, the musical elements of several cultures were blended together. However, with the game featuring a diverse array of civilizations, it didn't sound appropriate for distinctively European music to play while controlling an Asian faction, or vice versa. The initial idea was for the Age of Empires II music to sound specific to particular cultures and time periods. The original soundtrack was distributed in CD format some tracks can also be found in the game files. The music for Age of Empires II was composed under the direction of Stephen Rippy. For soundtracks of the other games in the series, see Soundtrack.Ĭover art for the Definitive Edition soundtrack This article is about the soundtrack of Age of Empires II.
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