00:12I'm Jeff Van Dyke, and I'm currently composing the music for Shogun 2 Total War.
00:18I hope you like this work in progress video.
00:21I just wanted to show you a little bit of the behind the scenes process of what we're going through,
00:26trying to make the music as authentic as possible.
00:28I hope you enjoy it.
00:39To capture the true essence of Japanese music, I wanted to record live taiko drummers.
00:46And luckily, here in Australia, we have a world-class taiko group, and they're called Taikos.
00:53They're really well known for their dramatic performances, and they're really tight players.
00:59Taikos is an Australian taiko group. Taiko is the Japanese word for drum, and I think the Aus bit is
01:05self-explanatory.
01:05We've been around since 1997, eight members in our group, and we've all spent a lot of time in Japan,
01:12both studying the traditional forms of taiko playing and performing a lot as well.
01:17Quite often when we go to Japan, we perform our original Australian taiko music, of course.
01:24So this project here with Shogun 2 is really interesting for us because it's kind of blending the traditional with
01:30the modern.
01:30We've got a huge number of instruments here in the studio.
01:34Geoff's composed for just about the complete taiko ensemble.
01:39I think we've got about 25, 26 taiko in there from the very big Ōdaiko through to the small high
01:45-pitched Shime-daiko.
01:46And it's just been great to have a composer write for us and to kind of stretch us in different
01:53ways, actually.
01:54It's been good for us to explore someone else's music.
02:00And I think it's going to give this game an incredible boost, at least in the sound department.
02:08We've got some huge taiko there and some huge sounds coming through, which I think is going to sound particularly
02:14awesome.
02:16We had a lot of music to get through and I wanted to make sure that we got it all
02:20done in time, so we booked two days of rehearsals in Sydney.
02:25Taiko's are professional percussionists and they've studied and worked all around the world.
02:30So they were super tight and this was really important for this kind of ensemble drumming.
02:35We had the chance to run through all the songs and make adjustments to the scores just before heading into
02:42the studio.
02:49It sounds really good, but for the first eight bars, I still think it needs to be two individuals rather
02:54than the group.
02:55You know what I mean? So that it builds.
03:06We recorded at Studios 301 in Sydney.
03:09This is one of the only studios big enough for all of the taiko drums.
03:14This particular studio is used to record orchestras and other large groups.
03:19We ended up having around 25 drums and about 40 microphones out there.
03:26As Ian said, the Japanese word for drum is taiko, but they come in all sorts of different shapes and
03:33sizes.
03:35So starting with the small shimidaiko, up from that is the chudaiko, which is the medium drum, which is ultimately
03:46what they used in the battlefield.
03:49There's these large flat drums called the hirido.
03:53And finally, the mother of all drums is called the odaiko.
03:58And it is massive. It took six of us to lift this thing.
04:02It weighs about 150 kilos. And this thing is super loud.
04:11We ended up having to break down all the songs into their various elements and record the five drummers on
04:18each set of taiko drums.
04:32At the end of three days of 12 hour sessions, we were pretty tired, but we found the energy to
04:39record some conch shells being blown through with humorous results.
04:54We're going to have probably, I don't know, maybe about 70 or 80 minutes of music in Shogun 2.
05:01And, you know, maybe around 30 or 40 songs in there.
05:04So hopefully everybody will enjoy it and hopefully it'll sound good in the game.
05:13Bye.
05:16Bye.
05:18Grazie per la visione
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