The Arreat Summit - Files: MP3 of the Week

Matt Uelmen in the control room with Emil Niznansky and Hubert Geschwandter at the board.

Earlier this year, a composer and crew from Blizzard North went to Bratislava, Slovakia to record the Diablo II: Lord of Destruction score with the Slovak Radio Philharmonic. Kirk Trevor of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra conducted and "Siege" is one of the tracks that resulted from these sessions.

"This roots of this piece go back to a tune dubbed "March of the Sparkies" in the hazy, distant days of 1995, when the first musical sketches for Diablo were being written. I was attempting to get the sound of a big orchestral march from a somewhat skimpy library of samples without much of a result. Though I stubbornly refused to give up in my quest to get the proper sound, ending up with a decent march as the opening theme for the original Diablo (and a not-quite-so-decent leftover used in "Hellfire"), it was not until this was recorded in February 2001 that I felt I had realized the proper formula. Of course, having the help of ninety or so skilled musicians often helps in situations like these.

This one was an absolute bear to record, largely due to my amateur notation of time values and a high violin part, but it ended up being the single track which I am most proud of from the sessions recorded in Bratislava. I felt like I was employing every other musician in Slovakia on the day of this recording, as we called for an extra set of percussionists to handle the snare part, which I insisted needed to be at least tripled. Though classic marches like Ravel's "Bolero" or Holst's "Mars" call for only one snare drum, I was aiming for the more Hollywood drum chorus effect, best shown in soundtrack patriarch Alfred Newman's original Fox theme."