Behind The Music: The Home County – Music For The Mines
- James Smith
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
Deer Park Studios had the great pleasure in composing the music for The Home County video game – now available to buy!
This beautifully animated village-management game is inspired by Edwardian Britain and was created by over a period of 3 years.
We’re now ready to take you behind the scenes on our music composing process!
The developer and artists had created a vibrant and lush landscape for the village's setting with a brief of Downton Abbey meets the Lord of the Rings Shire themes.
However, as the Mines play such a large feature in the game, we have gone further by creating sounds that blend the original orchestra base of the over world with authentic instruments from the Roman, Saxon and Viking eras for each region of the mines.
Roman Mines
For this area of the game there are two main tracks, Mines of the Legionnaire and Spirits from Empires Below, which throw every instrument conveying the tropes of ancient Rome in there... If we had an ancient roman kitchen sink that would have gone into the mix too!
For the Roman mines we were incredible fortunate to have the Grammy nominated [Dune: Awakening] woodwind specialist Sandro Friedrich to record a number of layered flutes including the pivana, occorso, zurna and the bouzouki.
The light and lilting nature of these interwoven lines immediately immerses you to ancient civilizations. Underpinning the flute layers we have lyres and the roman war drums but the instrument that stands out to us is the Cornu.
The Cornu, meaning horn, is an ancient roman military brass instrument in the shape of a letter G which wraps around the body. The call of this instrument produces a deep and wide bellow that is iconic of this period whilst also blending with our brass links of the surrounding areas.
Saxon Mines
The Saxons proved a tricky one to get to sit into the mix of the already establish sound world of the game. We couldn't go down the route of throwing all tropes of Saxon era like the Roman mines, so elements were chosen resulting in a focus of folk music and their rituals.
We chose wooden flutes again alongside the penny whistle and medieval fiddle to provide the folk aspect, in Saxon Ancestors and Under The Barrow Downs. This coupled with modal inflections was halfway there but a driving force was needed to provide the excitement of battling through the underground labyrinth.
A good amount of experimentation with all sorts of instruments was tried and tested until we got to the Hurdy Gurdy at which point we had an introduction to the wonderful Vicki Swan [The Witcher Blood Origin, Runescape Dragonwilds].
Vicki is a worldwide driving force of the harpa who opened up a another level of texture and rhythm of sound through the Nyckelharpa; a traditional keyed fiddle that became popular in the medieval era and a perfect fit for what was needed to accompany the folky lilt of the wooden flutes.
The harpa worked so well for this setting we decided to explore ensembles of various harpa and ended up combining an ensemble of fiddle, nyckel, octav-harpa with an orchestra to produce a warm and resonant sound heard in March of the Pickaxe.
Viking Mines
The final area of the mines was the Viking period and this brought with it some pretty ingrained sonic stereo-types, both from recent blockbuster games and films. So, the challenge here was how to bring these popular tropes into this game to compliment the world we were creating and still keep the game fairly relaxed.
Like many creatives faced with a challenge, this is where we avoided the main issue and did other things instead! The other things in this case were to go back to the ancient instrument specialist John Dyer to see what viking-esque instruments he could come up with.
There was no disappointment to see a massive pipe with a brass boar's head materialise alongside ram's horns. The incredible carynx proved a worthy distraction! To find a space that would emulate being in a vast cavern was the next port of call so a stone lined church allowed us to maximise the resonance of the carynx to make the haunting calls fit into the chambers of the mines.
Combining a few days of playing around with various note bends and calls this alongside other Ram and cow horns set the scene for the nyckelharpa and tagelharpa to give the ever driving rhythmic pulse. When this was combined with the typical viking drum battery the sound sphere was established it just needed connecting to the rest of the mines.
Creating this cohesion was a simple thing of taking elements of the graceful lilting themes written in 3/4 for the overworld and reworking them in 4/4 for the march like beat heard through all of the Viking tracks.
The themes are all extrapolated from Ode to Joy via other motifs around the mines; the opening two bars of rising and falling stepwise movement we know so well from Ode to joy can still be vaguely heard in the B theme of Hammerfall of the Deep.
For the Viking themes this reworking and morphing of themes into something new leaves us with a sense that although in a more rhythmically driven differing style is heard there is still some connection to the surrounding areas.
Hammerfall of the Deep is also a great example of harmonic and rhythmic signalling within the gameplay. Throughout the mines there is a lot of digging, to keep this exciting and dynamic at every turn there is rhythmic pulse that is ever changing in layers whilst maintaining its regular stomping drive in a similar manner to the beat of a typical working-song.
As the theme progresses it descends by step in a cyclical pattern giving the player a sense of working to deeper depths whilst completing tasks.
Take a look at our Orchestra recording sessions to see how it all came together!
You can buy the Orchestra Sheet Music HERE.
