Genre/Style: Epic, big adventure, God of War, Bear McCreary-style video game theme.
Creative Vision for the Track: In 2018’s God of War, nearly every character has their own musical theme. But Atreus, despite being the other main character, does not. At first, I wanted to imagine what Atreus’ theme might sound like. Then I decided to try to make it a prediction of what his theme might sound like once God of War Ragnarok comes out. By then Atreus will be a teenager and he knows a lot more about who he is, so it would make sense for him to have a theme in the upcoming game.
I started with the idea that Atreus’ theme would likely be a combination of Kratos’ theme (his father) and Faye’s theme (his mother). Then I looked through the 2018 soundtrack for any sliver of a melody that might belong to him. Then I looked to the music from the Ragnarok trailer. I did manage to find one brief moment in the soundtrack from a track called “The Reach Of Your Godhood” that had a solo french horn playing a melody at the moment Atreus is told he is part god. I reworked this into a lively action melody and mixed in some of the trailer music, and the parent themes for good measure.
The other part I felt was necessary to pull this off was a big epic choir singing Old Norse. Unfortunately I don’t know Old Norse. So I wrote some lines and translated them to Icelandic, which is apparently the closest modern language to Old Norse. Then I asked a few friends from a couple different Discord servers for help building a virtual choir. I wrote parts for a 3-part choir with a tenor, a baritone, and a bass. I multiplied each part, changed some formants, and slightly offset them to make 5 people sound like 25.
The main goal was to make it sound authentic. I wanted it to sound like I had pulled this music straight out of Bear McCreary’s head.
Composition Details (Tempo, Key, Main Chords etc):
Tempo ranges from 115 to 58, spending most of its time around 113.
Changes keys a few times, mostly in Cm or Gm.
Main Instruments used:
Full orchestra from BBCSO and Hollywood Orchestra.
Homemade virtual choir.
And here is a video where I walk through the process of making this: