Jade Moon Upon a Sea of Clouds/Background
Last updated 2025-07-17
Songs of Travelers
"Songs of Travelers" — Behind the Scenes of the Music of Liyue
The Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and special guest Chinese traditional musicians come together at the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Hall to record the soundtrack for the Liyue region in Genshin Impact, full of the uniquely enchanting sounds of the East.
Genshin Impact music for Liyue is composed by Yu-Peng Chen of the HOYO-Mix [sic] Team. Let's go behind the scenes to learn about the creative concept and recording process for the music of the Liuyue [sic] region.
Combining Traditional Chinese Instruments and Western Orchestral Music
Yu-Peng Chen, Composer and Music Producer: Liyue is the second region in the game world. It has a unique aesthetic with Chinese and Eastern influences. Liyue's music takes a foundation of Western orchestral music and injects Chinese elements and instruments. I think it represents the collision and combination of Chinese and Western culture.
Huabing Tu, Dizi player: Chinese national musical instruments such as this dizi — its sound is graceful and clear and its melody is distinct due to its unique tone.
Jiajun Ma, Erhu player: As for the erhu, this instrument sounds like it is telling a story. It conveys the emotion within a musical instrument like a small mountain brook flowing through a forest or a gentle breeze grazing past on a vast plain.
Mojia Zhao, Guzheng player: The guzheng is usually tuned to the pentatonic scale. These instruments act like a conversation between two people: one usually assisting the melody by laying down the harmony for it.
Wenqing Shi, Pipa player: The pipa's distinct quality is captured by the Tang Dynasty poet Bai Juyi's words in "The Song of a Pipa Player": "The bold strings rattled like splatters of sudden rain; The fine strings hummed like lovers' whispers," "Chattering and pattering, pattering and chattering; As pearls, large and small, on a jade plate fall."
Professor Dong An, Music Supervisor: Actually, Yu-Peng Chen was already trying for a long time to blend modern Chinese national music and orchestral music. What the audience and players care about is whether or not these two types of music seamlessly blend together. "Combining" doesn't simply mean staggering the two in a piece. I think that this is really a question of how beautiful does the music sound and does the music transmit that spirit of Chinese culture. I believe this original music is produced to a really high standard.
Challenges Encountered in Recording
Yu-Peng Chen: This time we invited Professor Xiaoxing Lu 44th GRAMMY Award winner for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Professor Lu has a wealth of experience and a special talent for live surround recording despite the harsh conditions posed by live recording.
Professor Xiaoxing Lu, Recording Director/Consultant: Even headphones present a big challenge since there is often interference. We usually used to record in a recording studio; we had never done this before. Luckily this hall is quiet, with no unwanted noises. The silence is important to make a clear recording.
Professor Dong An: Why do we say that we put in more effort this time? Because when we recorded orchestras before, it was faster to set up and complete. This time, you could say that we moved the entire recording studio in the live orchestral hall. Setting it up took an entire day in itself.
Differences Between the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra and London Philharmonic Orchestra
Yu-Peng Chen: When we previously recorded with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, we were in a church, giving the whole atmosphere a very solemn feeling. This time, we decided to record at the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra Hall where the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra usually performs. The musicians and the conductor were all relaxed and performed exceptionally well in this environment. The Chinese music performed by these Chinese traditional music players felt natural and exquisite. They were able to unleash fiery passion in their performance — I especially like this.
Jiemin Zhang, Conductor: I think Yu-Peng has very high expectations for everyone. When he plays the piano, you also see his high expectations for himself; sometimes playing a piece three or four times is not enough. So I think it's very good that everyone enjoyed working together with Yu-Peng and I hope we have another chance to cooperate in the future.
Songjie Zhang, Associate Concertmaster: I'm delighted to have been a part of the music of Genshin Impact through this recording experience. After rehearsals, some of my colleagues talk about how incredibly immersive the entire game music feels. Not looking at the powerful battle music and the more grand, dramatic pieces, the delicate pieces are really the ones most able to touch our hearts.
Ping Zhou, President, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra: Many people think that symphonic music is elegant, high-class music that is out of touch with ordinary people. But actually I believe it is one of the inclusive forms of art because for centuries it has been able to express what is needed in each generation. Compared with synthetic sounds, live recording produces music that has a kind soul within it. The feeling it gives your heart, the feeling it gives you when playing the game, and the feeling it gives someone else watching you playing the game — these feeling may all be different.
Yu-Peng Chen: Our concept of game music won't change in the future but as we continue to pursue the perfect game music, we will keep working with different music teams around the world to add diverse cultural flavor on top of the foundation of Western orchestral music.
Developer Insight
Final Remarks on the Music of Genshin Impact
Lastly, I'd like to return to the Lantern Rite video. The surprising musical experience it provided viewers was really just a coincidence. In fact, the music wasn't created for the video itself; it was originally a tune used for the main environment of Liyue, so the instruments and melodic structure were all selected with a grander scale in mind.
The music production team actually never received any request to make background music specifically for the Lantern Rite video, nor did we have any idea about the divine deer, fireworks, and other visual elements. Even the video production team wasn't sure what style of music they were looking for. Despite this ambiguity at the start, we were able to find music that exquisitely matched the aesthetics and content.
Selecting the right music not only involves finding the right melody but also the right emotion, the latter of which is most stirring — the viewer's emotion rises as the divine deer leaps and the fireworks launch into the sky, with the music also carrying the emotion to a climactic height from where we can look down on all of Liyue. We marvel at the view below: a joyous, lively, firework-filled paradise. Here we also witness the magnanimity of Teyvat, which, by giving birth to such a city as Liyue, manifests the glory of a people and world in harmony.
Even though this video isn't exactly the final product of careful planning, it magically possesses the artistic sense we hoped to convey. Perhaps this kind of beautiful coincidence is where the intrigue of music production lies.