Celestial Heavens and Mac Heroes, two sites devoted to the Heroes of Might and Magic series, recently conducted a joint interview with Bob King. Fans of the series and computer music composers alike may find the review quite interesting, as King is the music and sound supervisor for New World Computing.

The length to which King's team is going to make the sound stand out in the upcoming Heroes of Might and Magic 4 is amazing. The soundtrack uses over thirty musicians, including opera singers, a full women's choir by the name of Nevenka, and various orchestral players. The entire score has a Celtic theme and features bagpipes, guitars, mandolins, and vocals.

King stresses throughout the interview that the music for HOMM4 will be real music performed by real people. Synth sounds will be used for things such as percussion, but most of the music will be recorded live. He particularly wishes to make the vocals shine, as fans of the series, accustomed to vocals in HOMM2, were disappointed when HOMM3 largely left them out.

For folks in the music business, King also talks a little shop:

The entire score was recorded on a Digidesign ProTools system. We used various recording software to get things started but it all found its way to the ProTools system. We used Cakewalk's Sonar, Steinberg's NUENDO and Cubase as well as Sonic Foundry's Vegas and Sound Forge to do a lot of pre-production recording. Everything was recorded at 24-bit 48K through Digidesign, Apogee, and SoundScape Converters. Most all the instruments and vocals were recorded straight to ProTools or some of the other software, bypassing any mixing console. The recording path was usually Instrument - mic - preamp - compressor (sometimes) - A/D converter - ProTools. As far as the mix goes, I mixed it entirely on a Mackie D8B digital mixer and ProTools using some great outboard gear like Avalon compressors, TL Audio Compressors stuff from ADL, Joe Meek, Neve and SPL. I also only use a Lexicon 480L for my reverb.

As for a Mac version of HOMM4, several strong hints have been dropped at the possibility, though nothing concrete has been revealed. IMG will be sure to let readers know once we get confirmation of a Mac port.

Mac Heroes: Rob King Interview

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