TMC Modder's Interview - Arktos news

Welcome to the third interview of the TMC Modder's Interviews. Lurking around for interview partner I managed to catch one of the three legendary musicians of KoA, so enjoy an interview with

Hello, ArktosMusic. Musicians are a rarity in modding teams, the more I am sometimes amazed that John.M managed to gather even three at his modding project. However, lets start it slowly, with an introduction of yourself for those who don’t know you.
Answer: Hey! I am Felix and I am skulking around the internet as Arktos Music, an alias I used since I first started with music production back in 2015 I think it was? I am some young lad from Germany who decided to dive deeper into the endless spheres of digital music production. So I ended up being a HipHop-producer and Cinematic composer somehow.

First one of the most important questions for some people here: What do you prefer, the books or the films?
Answer: I prefer the films by far. I've seen the LotR-trilogy way before I read the first sentence in any Tolkien book. Also sadly I am not really a book person so I value the films a lot higher, I can see why others think the other way round though.

When and how did you come into touch with modding?
Answer: I don't really know anymore, maybe 2010 or something when the good old strategy game started dying. I always felt that some games, especially RTS games did not fully satisfy me, knowing there is much more potential. So I discovered mods and alot later modding in general. To this day I've assembled and created my own "submods" for existing mods for private use, for games such as Medieval II: Total War and of course Mount&Blade Warband.

So in your private mods you already replaced all the music or did you try out other areas of modding too like coding or modelling for example?
Answer: No this had nothing to do with music but still I would not call it coding or modelling. I knew my way around editing game files, rudimentary scripting and texturing and modelling programs. I never created a 3D-asset on my own but experimented with texturing and combining stuff. Mostly it was merging multiple mods into one. In Warband for example I was messing with say the 1257AD mod and expanded its troop trees, equipment (from resource packs or other mods) and accurate party sizes and so on. My biggest undertaking was fully translating Floris Expanded and reverting it to a more native artstyle but still retain all the improvements in graphics, gameplay and scripting. This custom version is my favorite Warband mod to this day.

Why did you decide to join the modding project ‘Kingdoms of Arda’ for the upcoming Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord? Did you scroll around for LotR-mods, saw John’s work and said: ‘This is it! There shall be decided my fate as musician!’?
Answer: I was strolling around to find some news about Bannerlord and its modding capabilities. On ModDB I then discovered a TBD mod called ‘Kingdoms of Arda’. The assets, the idea, the whole project was just awesome to look at and I wanted to participate. I feel mods set in fantasy universes (i.e. Prophesy of Pendor) deserve their own music. But of course custom made music is not easy to be found, or even thought about in the first place. The feature list mentioned new music though, so I applied with a very poor sketch for Rhûn's soundtrack. The first step to becoming a part of this great team.

At the beginning I mentioned it already, there are not many musicians around at the other LotR-modding projects. How does it come that ‘Kingdoms of Arda’ has even three?
Answer: Musicians with the 'equipment' to write orchestral music are sadly quite rare or at least not a common sight, that KoA features three of them is just plain old luck I guess. There are many people looking for a LotR-mod for Bannerlord, and some of them happen to be composers who would be foolish to not participate. Also once one mod features custom music, there is a chance everyone employs it if the creators are willing to allow it. Actually I would love to work on other mods for other games as well, but there is such a thing called real-life – so time really is a problem.

‘Kingdoms of Arda’ is for the upcoming game M&B Bannerlord. What kind of an experience is it for you to be part of a development team which works on a mod for an unreleased game?
Answer: Honestly, I always felt lucky that I could – theoretically – finish everything I had to before Bannerlord even releases. While this becomes more likely every single day, my to-do list grows too because I am always ridiculous ambitious when it comes to my music. But certainly I can enjoy Bannerlord once it releases while all the other poor guys need to start modding, haha.

How is it like to work at this project as a musician? When artists and modellers are showing off their work, are you then feeling sometimes a bit pressure that you now need to show off some of your work too?
Answer: Back when I first joined the KoA-team I spammed the discord with mp3 files to show off my work. Despite the positive feedback, they sounded like crap. Nowadays I just post a sketch of one minute and ask if the idea fits or whatever. After approval I start to work out an alpha, ask for approval, start the beta etc. Only when I feel one of this stages is completed I also feel the need to show off my work.

Solely the music of the films is already outstanding, to play a game or mod without it seems to be unimaginable for the majority of gamer community. What is in your opinion the fascinating aspect of Howard Shore’s work? Is there a piece which you favour yourself personally?
Answer: That Shore managed to create a giant catalogue of themes and leitmotifs and intelligently develops them to support the story. Also, Shore's work is one of the few universally known film soundtracks, everyone knows the Shire, Isengard or the Fellowship's music.
I do not favour a particular piece per se but I have a pretty strict list of what factions or topics have the best music. On top is Dol Guldurs/Necromancers descending line. I just love this almost stupid and to many ears boring sounding theme.

As I wrote, it seems to be unimaginable for the majority to play mods and games without the film music. So why even bothering with creating new music? Can’t you just act as DJ Arktos, remix the film music a bit and we are fine?
Answer: Haha, while this may certainly be possible (although remixing orchestral music is kind of difficult and also a sin) many mods – especially for fantasy universes – are a lot bigger in scope than what is portrayed in film or other popular media. There are some many factions and aspects not scored by Shore just because they were neither featured in the books or films. Custom music helps to make all these places and different like Rhûn, Harad, Enedwaith etc. come to life, just the way architecture and clothing does.

Many LotR-mod developers, who cannot relay on the talent of a musician, are using the film music in their work. Their argumentation is most times that they are not earning any money with it, so it is fine, sometimes referring to the fair use argument. What do you think about this argumentation?
Answer: There is only so much you can do. I don't want to elaborate this further. My opinion would be way out of scope for this interview. A compromise could be that you always just leave the music vanilla style and the player listens to LotR-music in the background or replaces the music files with LotR ones for his private use.

A mod outstanding with its own music is ‘The Last Days (of The Third Age of Middle Earth)’ (TLD), a mod for Mount & Blade and Mount & Blade: Warband. ‘Pagan’ aka ‘Vlad’ composed at least 150 minutes of music, setting out with this his own version of how Middle Earth sounds like. What is your opinion about his work?
Answer: He is a madman. It takes a lot of courage to actually rescore LotR in your own way, although TLD certainly helps with its book-based designs and what not. I never played TLD though and so I only listened to it outside of the game. However I really like it, although the pieces are a bit short. But of course Pagan is the one to look up to when it comes to scoring mods. Final KoA will feature at least 300 minutes of music though.

So, how did you, Martin and Mackey settle who gets which factions to compose? Was it one long evening at a Warband duel server or are you following a simple concept like ‘First comes, first serves’?
Answer: Sadly I haven't found the chance to play with anybody of the KoA-team yet so we mostly discuss these things in private chat. After AskeLTR “left” I was the only musician for quite a while and theoretically in charge of everything. In this time, before Martin or Mackey arrived, I set up my to-do-list and it included everything. To this day there has been no change to this. We have our favorites: Martin favours making Gondor and Dwarves, I am completely hyped for Rhûn, Harad and Angmar, and all three of us being equally afraid of sophisticated elvish music. The at least 300 minutes music I mentioned just take into account my work, Martin and Mackey may contribute another 300 minutes. So we won't work exclusively on factions, everybody does what he wants to do (which in my case is everything). However this is quite a dynamic process, so I refrain from battle music for now, since Martin is way better at this and so on. Let's see what Mackey focuses on once he completes his intense Shore studies.

You as well as your fellow musicians Martin and Mackey have all released already a lot of music pieces, I always enjoy listening to them. In the end it seems like you have decided for staying near to the film music for the known faction. How does it look like for the factions not appearing in the films? How are you making up your mind for how they will sound like?
Answer: First thing that comes to mind is: „How would have Shore scored this faction? Is there any sort of reference in the existing music that hints on what it could have sounded like?“. Yes there is, not much though, in fact more like three or four aspects. The rest really comes down to your own imagination. Most of the non-film factions will center around a signature instrument just like many of the film soundtracks do. The Hobbits play on a Tin Whistle and the Rohan fanfare sounds on the hardanger fiddle all the while the ancient Lorien and Mordor evoke more oriental flavoured colors with Sarangi and Rhaita. Similarily Harad will be built around the sadly cliched Duduk and Santoor, Rhûn features the famous Shakuhachi, and the Dwarves feature nordic string instruments such as the Nyckelharpa. Combining these ideas of signature instruments with the already established musical style for each of the cultures (evil men are an exception) allows for a rather LotR-esque feeling and sound – hopefully.

That reminds me a bit of how Pagan described some of the music directions in TLD for the factions: ‘An exotic, Eastern Europe, Middle-East melodic mix’ for the Elves, ‘a sorrowful Duduk for the Haradrim, telling the tale of how these proud warriors have found themselves so far from home, fighting along side the inhuman Orc’. Isn’t creating a melody sometimes a bit like story telling with music?
Answer: More often than not. Melodies for factions with numenorean heritage or mankind's prowess in general such as Gondor, Arnor and even Umbar mostly start with a heroic fifth upwards, “lesser” human factions such as Dunland or the Woodmen retain rather simple and reluctant melodies. This approach ensures that every human nation sounds somewhat similar but has a clearly distinct style and of course meaning, just the way Pagan described it.

Which instruments are you able to play yourself? Did you already start as a child or are you rather a latecomer here?
Answer: The term latecomer is an understatement. I have no musical background whatsoever, apart from the memory of classmates laughing at my very distinct one-finger style of playing piano back then. Nowadays I have rudimentary skills playing the keyboard (I am learning to play it properly now) and music theory.

You have published five Music Dev Blogs at moddb. Honestly, before I have been in contact with you musicians I have just imagined you are using some kind of mixing console software into which you put music notes and a melody comes out. The longer I stay now in the discord and read/listen about your work, the more I realise how wrong I have been. How much time did it took for you to reach the professional level you have now?
Answer: Well, first thanks that you believe we are on a professional level sound-wise, this really means something :D
I can only speak for me, it has been two years for me, although I really worked towards orchestral music and did not really care about other studies.

How does the equipment for your work look like? Which software are you using? I often read also about some kind of music libraries, what use are they for?
Answer: Sadly composing for orchestra and creating realistic cinematic „Hollywood“ music is way more needy in terms of hard- and software than let's say every song David Guetta has ever made. Since we can't rely on jack-of-all-trades synthesizers for orchestra we need so-called sample libraries. These are basically collections of recordings of instruments in all their facettes put into some complex scripted piece of software called sampler. These samplers allow us to operate these recordings as virtual instruments inside a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), FL Studio in our case. I press the key C3 on my keyboard and what you hear is a sample of say a cello section playing this exact note. So basically I can play any instrument on my digital piano, either convincingly or not. The key is that you hear actual recordings of instruments, not synthesized sound waves.

That somehow doesn’t sound like as if my potatoe PC could handle that. How needy is that all in regard of hardware?
Answer: As if the software wasn't expensive enough, the hardware required to run this stuff PROPERLY is at least just as expensive. You need a beastly CPU to stream the samples, at the very least 16 GB of RAM, and many TBs of storage, preferrably SSD not HDD. I won't even talk about Headphones, Keyboard, Speakers etc. My project template needs about 40 GBs of RAM, some sounds are still not loaded. The file size of a library spans everything from 3GB up to 350 GB of storage, you might want to store it on a SSD or else you are facing loading screens 50% of the time. You can do Electronic Dance Music with every PC or Laptop out there, but orchestral music is a whole different level. Full virtual orchestras & choirs are only second to video editing and radar-analysis software in terms of hardware requirements. The good thing is you don't have to worry about system requirements for all the games out there, you already meet them most definitely :D

What is the typical working process for you while creating music?
Answer: I sit down in front of a blank project inside my music production software, with nothing loaded but a grand piano. Then I start jamming, finding my way through some sort of maintheme for this particular track, which is mostly given for the first releases' GRIM-factions*. Once I have an idea I load up my orchestra project and start converting my idea into some orchestral soundscape. Once I have completed about 30 seconds I don't know what to do anymore and need to find inspiration somewhere else, images of landscapes, other soundtracks - whatever. When inspiration strikes again, be it 5 minutes or 5 weeks later I return to my piano and start sketching out how the track should continue. And this goes on and on until a piece is ready to be called finished. Interestingly I have no problem with switching between projects and different minds. The one minute I think about Rohan's complex harmony, the next minute I nod my head to some Hip-Hop beat.

*(Note: The term GRIM stands for the four factions Gondor, Rohan, Isengard and Mordor, the ‘Middle Earth’-quartet involved in nearly every Tolkien-themed mod)

Which problems occured to you while working? How did you solve them?
Answer: My worst problem in writing for orchestra is: how should this continue? You create some beautiful sounding music, it lasts 20 seconds and then nothing. I often help myself with some basic analogy. In Hip-Hop repetition is key, so I decide to copy and paste my work over and over and then start altering, alternating and switching things up to have something completely different in the end. Some other problems are the typical musician and composer struggles, touches of depression and self-doubt, missing social life or back-pain, but gladly I've been spared from the latter ones as of yet.

You are often posting some music samples at the discord, about which I am sometimes throwing in my two cents worth opinion too. How does a constructive feedback look like for you?
Answer: Just like yours :D
When someone thinks it is good then one should say it, and if one dislikes something I prefer a timestamp and an explanation on why this could be better. I know that many don't know how to phrase what they feel is missing or what they thinks sounds bad, because they lack the musical terminology to describe it in proper harsh ways – but still, I wish there was a lot more feedback from everybody. More often than not it is you giving feedback to me, me giving feedback to Martin and Mackey. When there is no feedback I don't take it as „Ok it's fine, move along.“ - I don't really work on it any longer for some time because it must have been very disappointing.

At which moments do you decide then that a specific piece of music is finished? Do you always finish first one melody before starting to work on the next or is it sometimes better for you to change the theme for clearing up your mind?
Answer: I decided a long time ago that I would have a rather mechanical and structured approach to finishing music. Orchestral music is not some ongoing bassline grooving over some ongoing drumbeat, so changing up your core idea is essential to develop a proper structure to not bore the listener. Personally I don't like changing a theme too much, but alternate between different instruments instead. In KoA different types of pieces have different minimum lengths I need to stick to. If I have done 2 minutes for a world map track, I force myself to add at least another 60 seconds but never exceed 5 minutes.

Even though I originally didn’t aim for your reply here, it answers an actually good question which I could have asked too. But to rephrase my original intended question: Do you always finish a music piece for one theme, for example the Harad melody which you put online recently, before starting another one or is it sometimes better for your productivity to change to another faction’s theme?
Answer: I am switching around all the time, if I lose the initial spark I let the piece rest and come back to it later.

Do you think your stay at the modding community influenced you in any way? Maybe, your professional career or your studies?
Answer: Certainly the modding community gives us musicians room to grow and an appreciating fanbase to work for. You got what the community wants and don't have to fight for clicks, views and appreciation out on Youtube, Soundcloud or other platforms. Working as a part of the modding community for the community helps pushing things forward because all these people share your interests – in this case the love to Tolkien.

I know that you are selling HipHop-Beat licences. Do you not fear that you might have at one day too much LotR in your mind and are accidentally selling a HipHop-Beat with the Shire-theme?
Answer: Oh dear this actually happens a lot, not necessarily LotR but other stuff. And most of the time it really is accidentally. Often it works the other way round though, that I employ something non-LotR to KoA's soundtrack, 3 months later I think: „s***, now it's too late“. A prime example would be the first ‘World Map-Track’ for Harad. There is only a limited amount of things you can do to have something sound oriental in western music/tonality. So it happens that forty seconds into the piece one of Harad's Maintheme erupts and it is so freakingly similar to the showcased Aserai-Soundtrack from Bannerlord that one could almost consider it theft. If you don't notice this right away though it is too late and no one in their mind would go back and change everything just because of this similarity. There's a saying: Good Composers Borrow, Great Composers steal. :D

Let’s hope they won’t notice it :D
Coming back to the more important questions: Do you have by any chance already a Shire-HipHop-Beat in your portfolio?
Answer: Shame on me but yes I do, a friend requested it ages ago – thanks for reminding me to send it to him.

What a lucky fellow! In case he doesn’t want it anymore, I know of a good discord in which it will for sure find some listeners^^
Still, after all, working on a mod is hard work and time consuming, I only mention again the dev blog series about the KoA music on moddb. Isn’t there sometimes a moment at which you think: ‘Nah, it’s not worth all the trouble, I rather play mods than help developing them.’?
Answer: I guess it is worth all the trouble. After all I grow as a musician and composer and get to know new things and people, so that is always great. Sometimes I do think that though, but this is mostly because I have no Idea how to help with developing Skyrim mods ^^

Which brings me to my favourite fairy-tale: Once upon a time, a LotR-mod has received a C&D order and had to stop developement. I already mentioned the discussion about it in the KoA-Discord in the interview with Niclaitheking. Do you think your work comes into conflict with intellectual property rights? And do you fear sometimes that KoA might share the same fate?
Answer: Music is difficult to pin down in terms of copyright, so I can only have rather uneducated guesses to what extent I infringe copyright. Yes this really bothers me as all the trouble as you called it would really have been for nothing but personal training. And I am speaking for all the guys here at the team, 3D-artists, 2D-artists, the humonguos amount of work Nic put into basically everything that is not an armor or tapestry design and so on – KoA is THE ONE giant Tolkien-mod I hope to see released one day.

What is your favourite LotR mod? Why do you like it? Also, is there any project that caught your attention lately?
Answer: ‘Divide and Conquer’ without a doubt. The tons of content, factions and designs, almost everything is awesome, and of course they have crazy marketing with Galu at the top. The release of version 3 would be what caught my attention lately :D
One thing that really bothers me though is the Muezzin vocals in the ‘Men Of The East’ soundtrack. Islamic music is awesome but has no place in LotR. Actually I hope someday my music ends up in DAC too…

What is your overall impression of the LotR modding community, of the ones for Mount & Blade, and in general?
Answer: Sadly there is a foolish tendency to do everything alone and not team up with bigger teams, just because people do not get along with each other or really lack dedication. Just take a look at all the ambitious but dead LotR mods for Warband. To be honest I am wondering why there are not more one-man LotR-mods for Bannerlord planned already.

The only other Bannerlord-project know to me is ‘Chronicles of Middle Earth’. Any thoughts about it?
Answer: I am not really a Open-World multiplayer guy, but still I hope this project finally sees the light of day as a Bannerlord mod. I appreciate their patience to wait for Bannerlord to create something way better than you could have for Warband. Again I hope this does not continue as a one-man show.

Finally: Would you like to say anything to creative people who are reading this interview at the moment and might think about bringing LotR into a game?
Answer: If you are really planning on starting LotR mods or joining them, wait and see if you keep the initial spark or lose it early on. When you feel you are becoming less and less motivated very quickly then maybe modding is not for you. Nothing worse than loads of eager people never to be seen again two weeks later. And for all the composers out there: take a good look in the modding community in general, you have a wonderful opportunity to work on projects you like, learn new things and also get exposure. Modding is way better to start project-scoring than looking for short-film-makers!

Thanks a lot for the interview!
For all those who have read through the interview, Arktos has been so nice to upload a playlist on youtube for the interview