Game:

Civilization VI (2016)

Duration: 13:50

604 views

22

NOTE: This is a fan-made work, made out of love for Geoff Knorr, Roland Rizzo, and everyone involved with the Civilization VI soundtrack. This piece of music is not affiliated with any mod for Civ 6. This video is not intended to offend any culture, race, or religion. Thank you.

For my 3rd track, I wanted to tackle one of the civilizations that, despite it's historical significance, has never made it into a civilization game. That Civilization is Burma, a large state in southeast Asia that at it's peak under Bayinnaung, controlled 1.5 Million square miles of land. Another reason I choose Burma was because the Khmer's theme from Civ 6 is one of my favorites in the soundtrack, and I started this project wanting to replicate that style (Although it deviated significantly towards the end.)

I never would have expected the difficulty that came in making the music for this civilization. The "Mahagita", lit. "Great Songs", is a collection of classical Burmese music from the time of the Burmese empire. I thought that it would be perfect to use a song featured in that collection. The problem is, and believe me I looked, is that it's impossible to find any full sheet music from any of the thousands of songs in the Mahagita. What I eventually resorted to doing was trying to find illegal rips of the songbooks on Burmese websites, which was not easy, because I don't speak Burmese at all. I managed to find a few images of single pages from these songbooks, so instead of basing the composition off of one song, 10 different songs are featured in this piece. This includes, but is not limited to, "University Once Upon a Time", "Thida Thida", "Htan Tya", "Thi Ta", "Wei Ba Giri", "Pzann Tuang Tan", "Htan Taya", "Mya Man Giri", and "Shwei Pin Shwei Phone".

Stylistically speaking, I wanted a very heavy percussion focus for this song, as many traditional Burmese instruments are heavily drum focused. That drew me to one of my favorite concert band pieces, "Undertow" by John Mackay. I took inspiration from that piece in writing Burma's theme, including the lack of any stringed instruments for a full big-brass and militaristic style. Aside from the issues finding a good reference, I like how this one turned out.

All art in this video is done by me.

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0:00 Ancient
1:46 Medieval
5:06 Industrial
9:26 Atomic

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