Пол Ромеро специально для GoodGame.Ru: поздравления с годовщиной HoMM III и интервью

Hello! My name is Paul Anthony Romero. I am the composer of Heroes of Might and Magic III.

This is the 21 anniversary of the game and… you are still playing the game, creating maps, and you’ve been having tournaments! You are the largest active community of Heroes of Might and Magic III in the entire world.

Thank you so much for years of support, playing the game and I’m so happy you are still enjoying the game. Here at Goodgame.ru we would like to thank you for all the years of support and love and we hope to see you at the 22 anniversary of Heroes of Might and Magic.

I will be in Russia in June, I think, May too of this year, and perhaps I will have a chance to meet somebody of you.

Thank you guys again. Continue to enjoy the game. God bless. Have a wonderful 2020! Take care.

Hello there! I am Paul Anthony Romero and I want to say hello to you from Los Angeles California. I want to answer a few questions that I have received from Goodgame.ru and I’ll do my best. The question is…

1. Which Heroes 3 theme is your favorite?

I have to say that… I really think from a composer point of view, a music that we write we feel it very personal and I feel like all my music is like my children. So it’s hard to say which child I like better than another, but one piece that particular is called Stronghold from Heroes 3 that was really interesting for me and I really do love this piece of music because it was inspired directly from a Hollywood movie called “The valley of the dolls” in the 1960s. There was a song it that movie. Song by Dionne Warwick that I loved. And this part from Stronghold *music* was directly inspired by it *music*. So if you hear the song from the movie “The valley of the dolls” you’ll hear one of my favorite songs from childhood. And then I used it as an inspiration for a Stronghold.

So that is an interesting thing for me.

Another question is… Well…

2. What was your inspiration for writing this beautiful music?

Well, that was the inspiration for Stronghold. Another tune *plays* was inspired by the symphonic dances by Rachmaninoff. I love the waltz in the second movement of the symphonic dances. Rachmaninoff is one of my favorite composers and so to write in his style was a great opportunity for me. I loved it.

Another piece was the Necropolis from Heroes 3 that particular piece was inspired from my childhood going to a theme park called Disneyland. Disneyland had a ride called “The Haunted house”. That was one of my favorite rides of all times. When I was a kid, I used to go on that ride all the time and I loved the music in the Haunted house. So Necropolis is directly inspired by the Haunted house in Disneyland.

3. Was it easy to write this music?

No, it’s not easy. I mean it wasn’t hard to write the music, because growing up and playing the piano since I was 3 years old I am always inspired by many different types of music. But if I can hear something that I like from a movie or from Chopin or from Prokofiev or anything I hear or see I’m directly inspired to try to… not duplicate it, but to write music that sounds similar to it. So I like the music so much that I’d like to create more of it for myself. For instance if I like some of Prokofiev’s music from Romeo and Juliet, and I love the sound of it. I try to write something that sounds like it and inspired by it, so I can have more of it. It’s almost like when you eat a piece of pastry and it tastes so good to so that you want to learn how to make it so you can eat a lot of it or eat it whenever you want. And for me it’s the same as being inspired by other music from other composers.

Lets see…

4. Have there been any funny moments?

Yes, it was a very funny moment when I was doing I believe Heroes 3. They told me not to use the saxophone. I used saxophone in Heroes 2. And I was told not to use any saxophone in Heroes 3 because it irritated some of the fans and it did the saxophone sounded like it was from the 20th century even though the gameplay is really supposed to take place a long time ago. So I had to have a contract that said no saxophone, but then saxophone came back in Heroes 4. I decided to use it again.

When I come to Russia in May and June Dr. Brock Summers who is the saxophonist will play some of the concerts with me. Not all of them unfortunately – he has to come back to Los Angeles but he will play some of them me. It will be wonderful. I love it when he plays.

Lets see.

5. Feedback. Was there anything particularly memorable?

There is always feedback from producers because when we give them music from Green Street Studios everybody on the team who are the developers, they listen to the music. Some of them like it, some of them don’t.

Oh! Actually, some of the music that I write for areas of the game that supposed to be for one particular area or another they ended up swapping out. They thought that maybe the music that I wrote for Stronghold would be better as Necropolis or vice versa. That specific thing didn’t happen but a lot of times the music was composed for very specific areas, even after I saw the graphics and then it has been chanced for another area.

So sometimes, you know, you do a painting and you think that it’s going to look good here but then the designer comes along – who is planning the house. He said: “you know, this painting actually is gonna to look better over here”. And you’re like: “okey, well than, that’s how it’s going to be”. So that is a little bit of insight.

As far as creativity goes from the fans… Oh my God! I love the Heroes fans. I love meeting them, I love seeing the artwork that they do. As a tribute to Heroes I have some wonderful paintings and some wonderful souvenirs done by the fans. I did one project, Heroes 6, where I actually wanted to include a Heroes’ fan. One of my fans from Greece is a young composer and he grow up his whole life playing Heroes since probably the age of seven. So I thought: “let’s do something together for the Heroes 6 game”.

What I told him to do was to write a couple of little melodies, I would pick out which one is my favorite, and I will include that melody within one of the tunes for Heroes 6. So that tune was called “Infernus Stamatus from Heroes 6” (здесь и далее Пол имеет в виду Героев 7, а не 6. Поэтому в расшифровке и переводе сразу указана правильная часть) and it was supposed to be the Inferno area of Heroes 7. I think it’s on YouTube so you can hear the very opening is based on melody written by the fan. Anyway, that’s really fan for me to kind of include fans along the way if it works.

Oh! Then I got to work with Magda Urbanska from Poland on Heroes 7. She grew up playing Heroes and she’s a great violinist. I got to meet her one year in Poland and I asked if she would consider doing a violin part or a solo on an upcoming Heroes soundtrack, so she did on Heroes 7. She played the violin along with Corinne Michigan who was my mezzo-soprano from Heroes 2 and Heroes 7 and I think Heroes 4.

It’s nice to me to actually include friends and family and fans into the process.

Anyway thank you very much for your questions. I hope to see some of you or a lot of you or... any of you in Russia and also in Poland. I’m gonna be playing with a Heroes’ orchestra for the first time in Warsaw. So that’s be great coming up on February 25th. That’s just gonna be I think a one-night-only special event because my friend maestro Mateusz Alberski is going to be graduating from the University of Chopin with his conducting degree, so this will be his graduation concert. Very-very excited to that.

Anyway, I hope to see you guys soon. Take care. Thank you so much for everything.