Comments on: Music in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, part four

By: Dan Bruno

Dan Bruno — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 03:56:26 +0000

That’s awesome, Frankie. It’s incredibly rewarding to hear that these posts have not just been enjoyable, but actually gotten people interested in music theory. I’m kicking around ideas in my head for how to capitalize on that interest — maybe with pseudo-lessons based on music from video games, or something like that. I hope you’ll stick around and give me your feedback!

By: Frankie Reedy

Frankie Reedy — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 17:49:10 +0000

Dan,
I’ve been playing piano and OoT for about the same period of time, and all these years later I’m still doing both. Your posts (which I found whilst scouring the internet for a good version of the Windmill/Song of Storms theme) have sparked my interest in music theory after having not payed much attention to the field in some time. I’ve nothing that important to add that hasn’t already been touched upon by you or others, so cheers!

By: Dan Bruno

Dan Bruno — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:02:05 +0000

Hi Matthew! Glad you enjoyed the posts. I’ve gotten a lot of requests for analysis of other Ocarina of Time music, especially the Gerudo Valley theme, so there will probably be more of this in the future. In the meantime, there are a bunch of other music posts on the site that you might enjoy.

Thanks for coming by!

By: Matthew

Matthew — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 04:19:54 +0000

Wow! Very nice! I am not much of a video game fan, but I am a classical oboist, and bassoonist. My nephew was playing the game and I heard the backround music for the Gerudo Valley, it was great! I hope you post something about that in the future!

By: Dan Bruno

Dan Bruno — Mon, 05 May 2008 18:17:50 +0000

Hi Daniel. Thanks for your kind words, and for stopping by the site.

I should have gone into more detail about “Girl.” You’re right that the vocals are swung for most of the song. I was thinking specifically about the bridge, where the swing in John’s lead vocal part (”She’s the kind of girl who puts you down when friends are there…”) clashes with the straight eighths in the background vocals (”tit tit tit tit…”). To my ear, that part has the same “swung eighths vs straight eighths” clash as the Lon Lon Ranch theme.

As for your second point, I hadn’t thought to consider the live symphonic versions of the pieces and it’s interesting that they decided to change the part. I doubt there was a technical issue involved, though — the game is almost certainly controlling the music through MIDI or something similar, so it shouldn’t be any harder to trigger a note-on message for one patch over another. I don’t have any other ideas, though…it could be that Kondo just decided later on it sounded better without the rhythmic clash. He’s made that sort of adjustment before — I’ve noticed, for example, that many live versions of the Super Mario Bros. theme have slightly altered rhythms. I might go more deeply into that someday.

Thanks again for your comments!

By: Daniel

Daniel — Mon, 05 May 2008 11:20:03 +0000

I’ve been following your series with great interest. Thanks a lot for putting the time in - it’s been fascinating.

I do have something interesting to add on the Lon Lon Ranch swung/straight issue, though. I’m actually not convinced that the vocal in ‘Girl’ isn’t swung, or at least, that Lennon makes heavy use of triplets and quite slurred phrasing to cover it over to the point of irrelevancy. Second, while the vocal in the game version of Lon Lon Ranch is clearly straight, the recording of it on the Hyrule Symphony release (which Kondo participated in, I believe) is swung. That begs the question - perhaps the primitive ‘voice’ synth wasn’t capable of swinging it?

By: Dan Bruno

Dan Bruno — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 03:57:58 +0000

Ben: As you might have noticed, a bunch of commenters have asked if I’ll continue with the Ocarina music analysis. So no, nothing on Scarecrow for now, but don’t be surprised to see a part five pop up in the future. ;) Thanks again for all your comments throughout this project.

Rose: Thanks! I appreciate the comment, and I’m glad that musical people are finding the posts. The intersection of gamers and music theorists is larger than I had anticipated!

By: Rose

Rose — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 10:48:09 +0000

Fascinating discussion here. One of my less musical friends linked me to this place. I don’t yes understand half of what the notation you are using means! I will eventually be able to come back and give a comment other than just saying how wonderful what you have done is!
Keep up the great work.

By: Ben Abraham

Ben Abraham — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 03:18:39 +0000

Wow, that link to instructions on playing full songs on the Ocarina is pretty handy.

All I ever used to use the “secret controls” for were impromptu remixes of the original tunes - I seem to recall that you could apply them to the trigger motifs and even though horribly out of tune it would recognise the song (unless I am mistaken.)

I also seem to recall that you could program the Scarecrows song to include these note modifiers, which was always fun for a laugh - composing like Schoenberg before I’d ever heard any of his music. ;-)

Are you going to talk about the scarecrows song? Just the fact that you *could* write your own (very basic) song was/is pretty amazing - I’m a huge fan of in game music performance, and I’ve been meaning to check out LotR Online for a long time because one of the few things I heard about it when it first came out was that you could (apparently) just break out the musical instruments and jam some. Online ‘jamming’ is kinda the ‘holy grail’ for a lot of people, and I’ve seen quite a few poor implementations of the idea.

*sigh* So that’s all the music theory and stuff then? It was fun while it lasted *unsubscribes from CruiseElroy.net* j/k

Keep up the excellent standard, Mr Bruno.