and I say, "Hey, we should make a electronic song," and someone else says,

"Oh, we should make an orchestral song." Like who is right? You know it's a taste question.

And these things can't really be explained rationally, in many ways. It's just based on individual taste,

and if you want to trust someone else's taste over your own you know. You can hire as many all-stars,

and rock stars and geniuses as you want, but the better the relationship is that you have

with someone you work with creatively, the better your work will be.

If you don't have relationships and trust, then it's just gonna be a huge clusterfuck.

It's always a challenge to find your meeting room. I never know where the meeting rooms are.

What's up?

Sam, she's gonna work on the Amumu video. She's from London.

Hello.

Yes.

Awesome.

Yeah, I'll dig up some of the old... old uh...

Yeah, it'll be great to see some of the... some of the

Some of the old sketches. They were early sketches. Do we have any

do you have some of the video already done?

No. No

No. Just starting today.

I mean basically today was like we got the budget approved a few days ago so

See, Amumu is a sad zombie who became separated from his zombie parents and never found them again.

Cursed with immortality, Amumu lives forever as a weepy child wrapped in what appears to be toilet paper.

Small, sad-looking with puffy eyes. Slow and smelly, but surprisingly strong.

Always looks sad and dejected. Small body. Big head.

Okay so that was like 2008. When was that?

2000

Yeah, maybe 2007 even.

Oh wow. Two years before the game even came out?

Yeah. It was a simple metaphor, and it's gone a long way. It's good he's getting his own music video now.

That kind of just happened?

Yeah and I think he's a good vessel for it. Like I said, he's maybe just stories that are told.

You know maybe all over in turn. You're right. Like he's a good canvas for a boy in any nation, you know.

So he could be from Demacia or Freljordian.

Amumu, for sure, is the most expensive thing that we've done, as a music team, um that has no purpose.

Literally, there is no business incentive. There's like no - there's like no you know

There's no like promotional campaign tied to it or whatever.

The sole purpose is to do something cool for our players you know and beautiful.

In this video, that's kind of the only thing that we have to nail, which is him as a character,

How our players know him, because obviously we wouldn't want to disappoint them.

Yeah, like a Namibian bandit. Like our character's still gonna be pretty much based on your character.

You know maybe like everything he interacts with is avoiding him. I dunno. Does that make sense?

Christian, does that represent it correctly?

Amumu is such an old character. Players have known the champion for a long time,

Which means that there are certain expectations. I don't want to disappoint our players you know.

So this was the original

This was my take on it you know.

This one creeps me out.

Yeah, the holes in his eyes. He's a nasty little dude.

Yeah I mean well - I mean the - you know Amumu is Amumu. Like we can't really change him as a character

Yeah.

And we shouldn't.

Okay.

Cool.

Yep. See you guys. Bye Christian.

See ya.

Bye guys.

It's like, all right, the contract's signed. We're gonna spend a huge amount of money on this music video.

It has to be the best music piece you've ever made, but you haven't even written anything yet.

Can you tell us kind of what the status of the music - is the music already recorded? Is it written?

Is it finished?

There's no music right now. No music. It's all in my head. It's music,

so you can't predict how it ends up, so it's just like, "Ahh!" I have to actually figure it out now.

You know and we'll see. I mean yeah, we'll see. I don't know yet.

I feel like he's a complex situation for our game and our world, because people are like,

"Well how does he fit in?" And this and that, but like I feel like he's actually - he's a metaphor,

per se, you know that. He fits anywhere you know. There's so much to be done with this character.

Amumu is an exploration. You know it's - I don't know if it will be successful.

The music team at Riot Games started back in the day,

just with me kind of noodling around on blog and stream music tracks. On our music team,

we have Alex Temple, who's a composer, Sebastien Najand, also a composer, Mike Barry, also a composer,

me, also composer. Dan

Um..

I might be stretching my knowledge on the subject, just 'cause I haven't been here that long.

I've only been here two months you know, so

That's fine. Be as liberal and as uncensored as humanly possible.

We all have different strengths on our team. Alex Temple, for example, phenomenal in the traditional sense.

Young, handsome composer. That was kinda weird.

First CD I ever bought was - well I didn't buy it, but it was Beethoven's Fifth Symphony,

and my dad gave it to me. I was uh five I think,

and my parents had to have a rule that I was only allowed to listen to one hour of music a day,

because apparently I was trying to listen to too much.

Sebastien has a really good ear for how to weave electronic music into orchestral pieces.

Actually used to work for Han Zimmer's team.

The first album I bought was the soundtrack for The Rock, by Hans Zimmer. I was - well,

I was 10 when I got really interested in film music, and I started actually using computers to, like,

make music when I was about 11.

Mike Barry. A very, very classically trained classical pianist, and really good opinions.

I like being around people who are really good at things and feel like they're not,

because they're always trying to get better. My first love in music, before classical, was rap.

Going back like to Dre and stuff was the first CDs that got taken away, as a child.

Dan also is a composer. Pretty fresh on the team, and helps us with a lot of production aspects.

I'm not sure exactly how, but I ended up with this video on my computer, right now.

It's what I'm writing music for. I mean, since I'm new, like you know my schedule is a little more open,

So I said, "You know I've got some time. I can... I can work on that."

It kind of started with me, but I am probably the worst out of all of our composers, as a composer,

in the traditional sense, but at the same time, I probably know our game and our players best.

We have Perlman, Tchaikovsky, I don't know who the hell that is, Dvorak, Nat King Cole,

Led Zeppelin number three, Led Zeppelin number two, Frank, obviously.

One of the core ideas of League of Legends is you have these unlikely champions

coming from all different realms, and genres, and times and inspirations,

and they kind of come together in a really cohesive manner, and that, to me,

is the most interesting thing about League and also about the way that we approach music.

If you know your strengths, but even more important, your limitations, then you can really work well together,

as a team. If you have a very sober way of thinking about your team, I think you can achieve things

that are way greater than yourself.

We are all rolling? All good?

Yes.

Cool.

I keep finding myself worrying about like what your piece - like what your piece is, and making sure I'm giving you

the right stuff.

I know, it's

It's - Brandon, don't worry about the cameras. Just tell us what you know.

Right.

Um..

So this is Pan, one of our crazy artists.

Hi, how's it going?

And he's working on the - a Pentakill art piece.

No one has seen this, or

No. No this is - I mean he's still working on it. Can you give Sona a mustache?

Yeah, for sure. A little Chinese type.

Like a curly one.

Oh, it's right here.

It's a good mustache.

Yay.

It looks pretty - it's actually pretty legit, now.

Heavy metal.

Heavy metal, yeah.

Cool.

Oh, I didn't make different layer.

Uh-oh.

I can't get rid of it.

Oh no.

Pentakill originated as this sort of alternate reality where certain characters in the game played in a band

together, and that was enough for a while. And then years later, the music team had this notion of

"Sure, why not?" Like why not have those guys play in a band? Why not bring that band together

and drop an EP?

That note especially. That one.

Too much vibrato?

That's always a little - no, it's always a little flat.

Jesus Christ, my little sister could play that better.

Well, when we record this like the original idea that was so open, you know what I mean? It was like

Well, the first half you're obviously way behind.

You know what? Don't matter here. Stoppin' me in my motion.

I think the second half you can actually be a little more on the quarter notes, kind of grooving.

Except

'Cause right now you're rushing, but just one more time.

Too much stress, man.

I personally felt like it was gonna start as a joke, but it's sort of taken a life of its own.

The quality and the craft that's going into that EP is actually really mind-blowing.

Danny Lohner is a musician. He used to be part of Nine Inch Nails and A Perfect Circle,

and really knows some really cool alternative industrial stuff, so we're working with him, on one song,

For the Pentakill album.

Yikes.

That is creepy.

What's that sword on the wall?

Danny slayed

Excalibur.

Four people onstage one night.

Look at this guy. A flying mouse. You got that taxidermied.

Dude, the craftsmanship of this thing is just like - I mean just look at this wood. You know it's like

It's just this complete brutal machine, and all the other ones you can tell are kind of finished in like a

You know.

What's going on up there?

Yeah, let's just noodle around, right?

Korean people are funkeh.

What's up, Seinfeld?

There's a track she sang on. Is that the one - they have a character. They have a little punk rocker chick?

Jinx? Yeah.

She's fucking hot.

The character?

Yes.

Well, she looks like your type of girl.

Oh, fuck you.

Jinx, is that her name, Jinx?

Yeah Jinx.

I met the girl who designed her when I

Oh, Katie.

Oh, Katie, yeah.

Cool chick.

I made her sound effects.

For that?

Yeah, for that character, yeah.

Oh, wow.

She's cute though, that little character.

Do you want to play Christian, Trinity? Do you want to play?

I don't care. You can play. You're a better player.

We are right now here in Danny Lohner's house. Everybody's messing around with all sounds of

all sorts of sounds and ideas, and we'll probably record some stuff with Jason.

Just a little - yeah like no preconceived idea. Just like do some heavy,

riffy kind of shit that I can fuck with.

The most rewarding thing about working at Riot is the collaboration aspect. If you don't feel that magic,

then you're really not doing it right. That's kind of what we're all here for.

No, you're fine. I'm gonna put the riff on, so you have something to play to.

We started pretty much like every other video game, just with you know orchestral music, which is awesome.

I mean it's my favorite music, but if you now want to do something with character and that's like iconic,

you have to cross borders. You have to use things that might not work out on the paper. You know,

now we're at a point where we can work with maniacs like Danny, and

We could do remixes of that one, too. You could put out like Pentakill or whatever.

Release a lot of the League of Legends music, you know what I mean? Like the orchestral stuff and

No, that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna make a soundtrack, like the first volume, basically.

What makes it interesting too is that we could do the Pentakill remix or whatever.

I mean whatever's cool.

Even the fucking Crystal Method track

Basically we are starting to work on the Amumu music video, and you know obviously,

that also needs a music piece. We talked about it for months and months, but it took a while

for me to actually start to work on it. I'm fucking rusty, but anyway.

I never felt like I actually have the right idea what it should feel like.