Greetings Pharaohs,
We're thrilled to share with you an exclusive interview with Louis Godart, the main composer of Pharaoh: A New Era soundtrack. Louis will talk about his commitment to faithfully rearranging and enhancing the authenticity of each track from the game OST with traditional Middle Eastern instruments. He will also tell us how he managed to overcome the difficulties encountered during this beautiful and inspiring musical journey.
Hello, Louis! Let's begin this interview with a short introduction.
Louis: Hello everyone! My name is Louis Godart and I'm a musician from Nantes - a beautiful city in the West of France that is worth paying a visit to. (he's right, you know.)
How did you start music and how did you end up working on Pharaoh: A New Era?
Louis: I've been playing the guitar for twenty years. After playing and studying a vast array of musical genres (metal, jazz, rock, classical and improvised music) and composing for different projects, I figured out I could also work in the video game industry by joining game jams. Playing video games has always been a hobby right before I started playing the guitar (I was a huge fan of Age of Empire II in my teenage years).
A few years later, I met Théophile Noiré (Co-founder of Triskell Interactive) and he told me he was working on the remake of a city-builder named Pharaoh. I must confess, I had never heard about it before then.
And what can you tell about your involvement in Pharaoh: A New Era conception?
Louis: My work on Pharaoh: A New Era was pretty straightforward. I had to recreate the entire music from the original game. But you know, "straightforward" does not mean it was simple nor quick.
How did you revive the original Pharaoh soundtrack? Did you encounter any particular difficulty?
Louis: Basically, there were four main stages to revive the Pharaoh's music. First of all, I had to transcribe the original music, in other words, use my ear to capture and gather the most important elements of each song (i.e. melody rhythm, harmony, etc.) that make them easily identifiable. The result is a simple musical skeleton with a limited number of instruments programmed in MIDI format, on which I'd later build the arrangement.
(NB: MIDI file is a format used to connect devices that make and control sounds such as synthesizers, samplers, or computer)
Then, I had to arrange the tracks to program virtual instruments so as to make the music sound real (and not just "the right notes with the right rhythm) when I used symphonic orchestra libraries, etc. And to be honest, this is one of the most tricky parts because this is literally the moment when the music comes alive. This is also the moment when I could take liberties with the original material (add a counter melody, use different harmony or rhythmic elements, etc.). The idea here was to absorb the music as much as possible (in other words, treat it like I had written it myself) without distorting it so players could enjoy the tracks as much as they did twenty-three years ago.
After that, we went to a recording studio to work with musicians who play various traditional Middle Eastern instruments. Pharaoh melodies are mostly played by solo instruments so it was difficult to program expressive solo lines using my software.
Then we finally mixed the whole soundtrack in a studio so each musical element (using virtual and real instruments) would fit into its right place and sound consistent. Arthur Lauth at Brown Bear Recording worked his magic for that matter and the result is brilliant.
Here, you can actually listen to a comparison between different versions of sthA:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pql9kbLQfpA
What was the biggest challenge you had to deal with when working on the game soundtrack?
Louis: There were several challenges, to be honest, but one of the biggest was to avoid cultural appropriation as much as possible. Pharaoh: A New Era is the biggest project I ever worked on. This experience also made me understand how stressful it can be to work on a huge IP that drives so much nostalgia and expectations. The community is demanding yet extremely supportive and I really enjoyed getting to know them.
Also, it might be surprising but the hardest thing to transcribe in Pharaoh: A New Era OST was the ambient tracks like "Agbj" "Hapj-aA" or "WATJ" since they were quite different from the rest of the soundtrack. These tracks are rather based on particular synthesizers' textures but I managed to create them with my software.
Did you get in touch with the composers of the original Pharaoh game?
Louis: I did! I reached out to Keith Zizza, one of the main composers, and had the opportunity to discuss some choices made in the original game (i.e. the crowd chanting in the track (jrj-Hb-sd). We also talked about the arrangements I made for the remake and it was really instructive. It was a real pleasure to exchange views with someone who worked in the video game industry back in the 90s.
How did you proceed to compose, reorchestrate and arrange everything from scratch? There were no partitions available, right?
Louis: Indeed, there was no source material left to work with. In other words, I didn't have any HD, uncompressed files, or any separate tracks whatsoever to make the transcription easier. So I had to work with the same MP3 files that can be found in the game.
But to be honest, it wasn't that hard since ear transcription has always been a part of my musical education and I love it. However, sometimes I had some doubts regarding the kind of musical element or instrument that was used here and there. To be honest, that was literally the same kind of questioning that the graphic team had to deal with during game development (i.e. are these random pixels a clay pot or wooden box? etc.) but in my case, it was applied to music.
How long did it take to analyze the original soundtrack before starting the transcription process?
Louis: Not that long to be honest. I just needed to listen to the whole soundtrack once or twice to get an overall idea of what needed to be done. Then I’d jump into transcription work starting with sthA which is the most famous track from Pharaoh.
How long did it take to rearrange the whole soundtrack in Pharaoh: A New Era?
Louis:Because of my self-discipline, I time-tracked my whole work on the soundtrack and I spent a total of 1000 hours working on it.
Now let's talk about Khepera, the track you'd like to introduce today. What kind of instruments were used to compose it?
Louis: Various live instruments were used to compose Khepera. When listening to it, you can hear ney, kawala, Turkish clarinet, violin, qanun, acoustic bass, and various other percussion instruments such as the daf and the rik. We also used several virtual instruments but it would take too much time to list them all.
Listen to Khepera on my Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/lgodart/khepera
And how many musicians were involved?
Louis: There were six musicians!
- Saddam Novruzbayov: wind instruments
- Kais Siala: violin
- Niqolah Seeva: oud
- Nidhal Jaoua: qanun
- Bachir Rouimi: percussion instruments
- Myself: acoustic bass.
I also need to mention the excellent work of our sound engineers, Timothée Funfrock and Charlotte Davy. Their precious contribution to microphone placement helped me stay focused on the music during our recording session (there were a lot of moving microphones).
How long did it take to compose and rearrange Khepera?
I spent about:
- 3,5 hours to transcribe
- 12 hours to arrange
- 15 hours to record
- 5 hours to mix
So I’d say a week of work at least. But don’t worry, not all the tracks needed that much time. But when it comes to Khepera, I felt the need to transcribe the spirit of the song.
When it comes to Khepera and its rearrangement, can you tell us how you managed to keep the "authenticity" or "the spirit" of Ancient Egypt as well as the original track?
Louis: This is a tough question. The first thing I want to say is that, in terms of historical musicology, it is impossible to have a precise idea of how music sounded in Ancient Egypt. We have some clues, and we know what kind of instruments they played (i.e. kawala, sistrum) but that’s all.
We’re talking about 5,000 years old music passed down from generation to generation through oral tradition (i.e. live performance). So, we have barely any trace of it.
I guess the lack of trace led Keith Zizza and Henry Beckett to make some artistic choices. Overall, Pharaoh’s soundtrack reflects what Middle Eastern music is or used to be in Ancient Egypt from a Western perspective. So what I tried to do is to give the opportunity to Middle Eastern traditional musicians to play the music in their own way, which is a fair choice in my opinion.
Louis: Middle Eastern music is extremely varied. So we tried to rely on their knowledge of Egyptian traditional music as much as we could. The result is a beautiful mix of Western and Middle Easter music. And I believe that’s also what Keith and Henry aimed for when working on Pharaoh in the 90s.
What kind of challenges did you deal with when composing this track?
Louis: Well, while transcribing Khepera, I realized the song was written in the "key of B", which is a difficult key for some instruments. For example, the low strings ostinato in the introduction features a "low B" - a note that doesn’t exist on real contrabasses.
So, I decided to raise the whole song half a step up, allowing it to have a "loc C" that does exist on contrabasses and cellos - making it sound more natural and realistic when played by a symphony orchestra software. The song turned a little brighter but became easier to play for some instruments. However, I kept the song in "B" for the archaic cinematic since the arrangement was shorter.
How would you describe Khepera? What kind of tone or feeling did you want to express with this track?
Louis: To be honest, Khepera is one of my favorite tracks along with KHU and RA. This song is very interesting because there’s a lot of variety and different sections that tell a story from beginning to end.
It starts with a dark and mysterious feeling, driven by that low strings ostinato, supporting a very somber, haunting flute solo (we used two different instruments for that one - ney, and kawala) that dialogues with the violin, in a nice ambiguity between "C minor" and "C hijaz" (Phrygian dominant for the music theory geeks).
Then, after an overblown kawala effect, the whole orchestra and rhythm section begins and we dive into a melody played in unison by the oud and the qanun. Both instruments dialogue with the orchestra’s strings section. And that gives a nice contrast with the first part in regards to the timbre.
Then there is this majestic building-up section (that has a certain progressive rock energy in it when you pay attention) with a determined palm-muted oud ostinato in unison with strings, and choirs in the background. Those heavy low hits on beat 3, supporting an expressive violin melody always raising until the ultimate earworm, the main Pharaoh theme, but played faster than in other tracks (you can hear it playing slower than in Egypt, SETUP, etc.). At this moment, it really sounds like a celebration. That’s why I decided to let the musicians play the melody as they wished, to give it a real celebration-like and spontaneous feeling.
The end of Khepera is a long decrescendo with a violin line that sounds like a short improvisation. So I ask our violinist to play something he felt was right to conclude the track.
Kais: Hi everyone. My name is Kais Siala and I played violin and viola on Pharaoh: A New Era’s soundtrack. At the end of Khepera, I played taksim which is a free improvisation using a certain scale or makam. In this Taksim, I used a particular makam called Hijaz Kar, which is frequently used in traditional Middle Easter music. In Western music theory, we’d call it “double harmony scale” or “Ionian flat 2 flat 5”, “byzantine" you name it…
Here’s another example of a Taksim played on the out while using this makam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0ekco4BcuA
Louis: This is a beautiful scale! Recently, Hans Zimmer (the one and only) also used it in Dune’s (movie directed by Denis Villeneuve) original soundtrack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdtiYwSP9ko
We ended up with a violin solo that was longer and different from the original version, and yet, sounded more natural. It also helped to bring the percussion loop to a natural end, instead of using a fade out. Overall, I’d say this track tells what Khepera is in Ancient Egypt mythology, a symbol of the rising sun, and the renewal of life. We start from nothing, raise to the top, and then we go back to dust before being reborn, and so on.
I hope you will enjoy my rendition of the track as much as I enjoyed working on it!
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Follow Louis Godart on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/louisgodart
How about checking his Soundcloud?
https://soundcloud.com/lgodart/khepera
Wishlist Pharaoh: A New Era on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1351080/Pharaoh_A_New_Era/