Music in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, part five
July 30, 2008
[Part one | Part two | Part three | Part four | Part five | Part six]
Yes, that’s right — even more posts on Ocarina of Time, by popular demand! Having finished Link’s ocarina pieces, we’re going to move onto analyzing the game’s background music, starting with the Kakariko Village theme.
Here’s the piece (I hope you like scrolling):
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The top bracket in each system covers the melody and its countermelody, while the bottom covers the guitar part and its tablature.
The music itself is mostly unremarkable from an analytical standpoint. The I-vi-ii7sus4-V7 progression at the beginning is a variation of I-vi-IV-V, also known as the “50s progression,” also known as one of the most hackneyed chord progressions in popular music. The melody is pleasant but nondescript; the only unusual feature is a strongly accented tritone in measure 33. I like the one-measure elision at the end, but there’s not much else to talk about with regard to the arrangement. What I really want to talk about the guitar accompaniment part, and the extent to which it simulates a performance on a real instrument.
You may remember the Kakariko Village theme from A Link to the Past, where a generic string orchestra patch played the arpeggios. But now that it’s been replaced by a guitar, how convincing is the arrangement? Could it reasonably be played by a real guitar, or was it put together in a sequencer with no regard for verisimilitude?
The voicings aren’t too bad. Keeping an interval of a fifth or an octave between the bass note and the rest of the chord is a common way to build guitar chords. In fact, if you play guitar at all you can run through the tab and feel a lot of familiar open chord shapes under your fingers.
If you do play along, though, note that we’re not in standard tuning because ince the guitar part goes down to a low D (m. 32). Since most of the chord voicings are traditional, though, my transcription has all of the strings dropped a whole step (as opposed to a partial retuning that would change the chord shapes, like drop D).
Even so, there are a couple of suspicious-looking chords that make me think this arrangement isn’t from a guitarist. The F7 arpeggio (m. 4, 8, 12) includes two notes on the same string which prevents you from keeping the same fingering through the arpeggio. It’s certainly not unheard of for an arrangement to work that way, and it does allow all four notes of the chord to be included, but it’s not necessary here — leaving out the fifth in a dominant seventh chord is quite common.
More troublesome is the B♭7 chord in measure 29. You’ll note that it has the same issue as the F7 chord, but is about ten times as awkward to play. There’s simply no good way to get that voicing out of the guitar with a tuning based on the standard intervals. (You could move the F down to the A string, but the big stretch there is hardly less awkward.) Besides, no guitarist in his right mind would double the seventh to lose the root there anyway.
Final verdict: though the part sounds believable in-game, this was not a piece written for a guitar — and if it was, it wasn’t arranged by a guitarist. Still, the open-voiced arpeggios allow it to sit fairly well on the instrument, and with a couple of minor adjustments it can certainly work.
Next up: Gerudo Valley.
[Part one | Part two | Part three | Part four | Part five | Part six]
16 comments
Lovely analysis, as per usual. Very elegant. ;-)
It is an interesting issue isn’t it – non instrumentalists composing for synthesised instruments and not needing to make it ‘physically’ playable in the normal ‘human’ sense. I once read a short section of a book about drum sequencers, and the authors point was basically that it’s up to the composer to decide if they want to be ‘authentic’ to simulating a drum performance or whether they want to compose for synthetic drum performance – the proverbial drummer with seven arms, as it were.
I personally have very little ‘authentic’ musicianship, with all my skills and training based in the realm of the digital, so I can totally appreciate and understand Kondo’s motivation here. I also appreciate the fact that he probably tried to give it some ring of authentic performance – as you said he splits the bass notes out form the rest of the chord, which seems like a deliberate choice probably motivated by knowledge of real world guitars and guitar playing. It is another Koji Kondo piece isn’t it?
His (and others more generally) application of the knowledge of how guitars are played seems to pay off because unless you are one you’d probably not pick up on the impossible difficulty of some of the chord shapes! (The crafty devil snuck it by me, after all) But I do think that a larger number of people would likely pick up on it sounding ‘wrong’ if he didn’t do the bass/chord spreading. Interesting…
Again, great post – and thanks for getting me thinking.
by Ben Abraham on July 31, 2008 at 1:53 am #
Sounds like we’re on the same page, Ben. I’m glad the post made sense to you, as it was a little bit guitar-centric. Not like inaccessibility has ever stopped me before, of course.
I’m still unsure to what extent the arrangement was influenced by the nature of the guitar; the arpeggios were largely the same when it was a string orchestra patch in A Link to the Past, so it’s certainly possible that it’s just a coincidence.
A better test would be the Gerudo Valley theme, since that also uses Ocarina‘s guitar patch but is a newly composed piece. I’ll be looking at that one next.
by Dan Bruno on August 2, 2008 at 1:15 pm #
Wow! What a great point. The hidden impossibility of the guitar writing echoes other ways in which video games conceal impossibility. When Link falls 30 feet and rolls unharmed back onto his feet, it looks relatively natural. It’s only when you imagine yourself in his place that you realize how impossible it is. (Even more so for a game like Prince of Persia!) Likewise, the music sounds natural until you try to imagine playing it on a real guitar.
Well, maybe that’s a stretch!
P.S. Wouldn’t the progression be I-vi-ii-V?
by Peter on August 3, 2008 at 12:34 am #
Peter: I wouldn’t go so far as to call the guitar part impossible; just occasionally awkward. It’s certainly playable, but it’s just strange enough that I feel confident saying it wasn’t written by/for a guitarist.
Regardless, your point about video games concealing impossibility is well taken, though. Once you’ve adapted to a game’s rules, it’s hard to bring your mind back out — there’s nothing more disappointing than watching the X Games after playing Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. :-)
Regarding the progression: Kakariko Village is indeed I-vi-ii-V (I have the exact chord qualities listed underneath each system in the transcription), but many consider that a variation of the more common doo-wop progression I-vi-IV-V. They’re effectively the same changes, though.
by Dan Bruno on August 3, 2008 at 10:58 am #
Well, you’re right — I just looked, and the Wikipedia article describes ii as a substitution for IV. Still, that seems backward to me: ii-V-I has been taught as a cadential archetype at least since Rameau, and continues to be in jazz theory, so I’m used to thinking of it as more common. Either way, your analysis is really interesting.
Years ago, I heard a conference paper on the piano music of Galina Ustvolskaya, the main point of which was that her music inflicts pain on the performer. Maybe there’s a parallel here? :)
by Peter on August 3, 2008 at 10:49 pm #
Pain on the PERFORMER? As in, deliberately?
Wow… gotta think about that one for a bit…
by Ben Abraham on August 4, 2008 at 3:22 am #
I’m not a guitarist, but whenever I pick up a guitar to try to learn some chords, it feels like the tendons are tearing out of my wrist. So that’s the basis for my association of awkward guitar chords with intense physical pain. Apparently it’s different for you as a guitarist!
by Peter on August 6, 2008 at 1:01 pm #
Peter: You’re quite right about
ii-Iii-V (whoops — ed.) being the more common progression, but there’s a long tradition of popular music ignoring established harmonic conventions; an incessant focus on major chords — especially I, IV, and V — is particularly characteristic.I feel your pain regarding the guitar — or rather, I felt it, as now I don’t have quite so much of a problem. It does get better eventually!
by Dan Bruno on August 8, 2008 at 12:06 am #
Hey Dan,
I just read all five of your OoT posts after stumbling upon them on Google (I don’t even remember what I was looking for), and they’re great! I never realized how well-put-together those simple ocarina warp songs were. As another videogame/music enthusiast, I’m definitely looking forward to your next one about the Gerudo Valley theme, which is one of my favorites..
As a random/trivial side note, I think measure 5 of your Hyrule Castle Courtyard background and/or Zelda’s Lullaby transcription (from Part 2) should be iii7 instead of IV. (You had the Bm7, so you probably just overlooked this.)
Anyway, keep ‘em coming!
by Kyle on September 14, 2008 at 3:27 am #
Ooh, nice catch, Kyle — I’ll roll that in when I update these posts. Thanks for reading, and I’m glad you’re enjoying the site!
by Dan Bruno on September 16, 2008 at 6:32 pm #
The ending of this piece (mm 22 ) gets conflated in my head with Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance” — which rises towards its end for one last valiant hurrah. Don’t have time or the skills to do a full analysis, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the melodic & harmonic structures were very similar.
by Leigh Walton on February 11, 2009 at 3:49 pm #
Leigh,
Out of curiosity I looked at the score for “Pomp and Circumstance” (http://www.easybyte.org, specifically 3) to compare the two.
Upfront, I would like to say that you made a great observation. I only took the time to consider the chord progression and here’s what I noticed about their endings (I’d call it a “coda”).
The analysis for P&C (ignoring inversions) is:
I (V7/V) | V (iii) | IV – V | I – V | IV – V7 | I – vi | ii7 | V7 | I
The KV theme analysis provided by Dan from m 22 is:
IV … | I … | ii7 – V7 | I – V7/IV | IV … | I – V/ii | ii | V | I
(I took the liberty of lining up the progression for comparison. For convenience I’ll refer to chords bound between two vertical bars as a “set”).
Here are some take aways that support your observation:
1) Set 1-2: Ignoring the embellishing chords (in parentheses) of P&C, you can hear a fifths relation with the chords in both pieces (I to V, IV to I).
2) Set 3-4: The chords have the same function of predominant/dominant leading to tonic (IV-V-I, ii7/V7-I). Not only the ii7 chord actually contains the IV chord (and a scale degree 2), so it’s no wonder they sound so similar!
3) Set 5: Both start off with a IV chord for the last phrase.
4) Set 6: Tonic chord and a chord built on scale degree 6. That second chord might look different (in terms of analysis), but “V/ii” is basically the the major sounding version of “vi”.
5) Set 7-9: That said, both logically lead two “ii”, and the last three chords, as may notice are the same (give or take a seventh).
Well, that’s about all I had to say about this. I’m sure Dan or someone else could provide even more insightful comments.
by Rafi on February 11, 2009 at 7:03 pm #
I’ve just discovered this blog and have been reading nonstop. I’ve played music all my life, but haven’t had much exposure to theory beyond simpler chord progressions. I’ve always been a huge fan of video game scores, and you’ve explained what gives them their appeal to me. Your pieces, especially this series and your piece on “irregular” or “asymmetric” meter in Uematsu’s FF works were wonderful to read.
The guitar parts in question are not impossible to play, or even uncomfortable. The only movement of fingers in the arpeggios in m. 4, etc. is a pull-off between the last two notes. It’s easy for a guitarist to make that change, and it’s actually fairly common to end a phrase that way since the note won’t sound as strongly as the ones which are plucked/picked.
by Zach on June 28, 2009 at 12:33 am #
Zach: It’s certainly not impossible to play; the rest of the chords are voiced such that they can be played without any pulloffs, and I thought it was odd.
I actually think measure 29 is a better example of why I don’t think this was written with a guitar in mind; that voicing doesn’t make any sense to me. Well, that, and the fact that the whole thing requires you to tune the guitar a whole step down. :-)
by Dan Bruno on July 14, 2009 at 8:39 pm #
I disagree on measure 29. Only the tabbed version requires releasing the ntoes, if you play the same notes on different strings, it is possible to hold the complete shape:
–0–
—–
–3–
–5–
—–
–6–
by dwarduk on August 19, 2009 at 6:09 am #
Actually, trying that again, it’s rather fiddly, even if you use a third-fret bar Bb chord. I was just being pedantic above… and failing
by dwarduk on August 19, 2009 at 9:43 am #