Welcome to our newly released music pack Songs of the Homeland!
With Songs of the Homeland, you step back in time to the transformative world of the Victorian Age where you are immersed in an era of bold national identity, the rise of modernism, and the birth of the truly international era!
Now, I wonder which flag they are waving? Could it be a real one, or an imagined representation to be unspecific to a country? The German Unification flag at the Hambach Festival? Or is it just a horizontal Belgian?
Songs of the Homeland features the following evocative tracks:
A New Day Awakens
Walking Through Mist
Approaching Tempest
The Secret Glade
Old Ruins in the Forest
Sicilienne
Dance of the Shepherds
A Nap in the Fields
The Pride of People
Ode to the Night
Evening Lights
You can pick up the pack right now on Steam through Expansion Pass 2 or standalone, PDX Store. Let us know which tracks were your favourite, mine is Approaching Tempest!
And the people behind the music itself have some words to share about working on this pack, so I will hand it over to Robin and Yannick!
Hello!
We are Robin and Yannick from Audinity, we are the composers behind Victoria 3 – Songs of the Homeland.
We have been in charge of the soundtracks for the main Victoria 3 game and Melodies for the Masses, as well as for many other Paradox games. But working on this music pack has been a really special ride for us.
When we heard what this music pack was supposed to be about, we were really excited. Instead of writing music tied to specific gameplay content, we were able to write music much more freely alongside the overarching theme of „Songs of the Homeland“. So, first, we had to find answers to some pretty important questions: How can „Homeland“ sound, and what would be our approach for this theme? And how can we fit that into the existing soundtrack of Victoria 3?
We looked at artists and composers from the era of romanticism and how they depicted their country, their homeland. There are a few outstanding examples in the musical repertoire from that time that are a musical interpretation of the composer‘s „Homeland“. Think for example of Smetana‘s wonderful symphonic poem „Má Vlast“ (My Fatherland), musically picturing many aspects of his home region Bohemia. Many musical compositions of the romantic era are themed around nature, the countryside, landmarks, legends and history, or wandering
through your homeland. We also looked for inspiration in such typical romantic themes and tried to translate this into music that fits for Victoria 3. We are really thankful that our lovely partners at Paradox trusted us with a lot of creative freedom for this soundtrack!
The song titles of this album might spark your imagination already, and we hope that, when listening to the music, you can as well hear the first rays of sunshine glancing over the mountain summits in „A New Day Awakens“, a wild boat ride on the river in „Approaching Tempest“, or the world and nature slowly coming to rest at nightfall in „Evening Lights“.
Of course, this is still music written for the game, so it has to fit to the musical framework of the existing music in Victoria 3. The musical spectrum in Victoria 3 goes from string quartet pieces to symphonic music, usually with some kind of „soundtrack-classical“ vibe. We did not want to focus fully on one end of the spectrum, and rather decided to split the music for this soundtrack in two parts: one part of the music is composed for full symphonic orchestra, and the other compositions are for a smaller chamber ensemble. That allowed us to work with musical colours of different ensemble sizes and keep the variety of the soundtrack as big as possible.
The first raw versions of music for soundtracks are usually crafted on the computer using virtual instruments. Sometimes this can even end up to be production of choice for the final versions. But for this soundtrack, and with this musical direction, it was clear from the start that the music will only truly come to life if real musicians perform it!
For this project, we had the honor to work with the amazing team and musicians from FILMHarmonic Orchestra Prague under the baton of Adam Klemens again. We had recorded our music for Melodies for the Masses (and other Paradox soundtracks!) with them, too. They truly are some of the best musicians in the world when it comes to performing and recording both soundtracks and concert music! So it only made sense to pack our bags and travel to Prague again to record with the orchestra! A really nice chance to see the real-life inspiration for Smetana’s „Ma Vlast“, too! :)
We hope you enjoy listening to this soundtrack as much as we enjoyed writing and recording it. And maybe you can even hear something in our music that means „Homeland“ for you, too!
If you like our music, feel free to follow us on our Audinity YouTube channel. You can also find more behind-the-scenes videos and music from our other work for Paradox there!
Thank you for listening to our music!
Best regards,
Yannick and Robin from Audinity
Thank you so much Robin and Yannick! It was lovely to work with you again and the result is wonderful!
Next time we will see you is next week, not for a dev diary, but for the start of the Anniversary week for Victoria 3’s 3rd Anniversary!
We hope to see you then, and that you enjoy what we have in store for you starting on Monday!
* Please note this release is Update 1.11, named “Chamomile’, with the music pack being the only additions in this update.