Cruise Elroy

During my last semester of college my composition professor went on sabbatical, and the music department brought in a temporary replacement from another school. While my old prof had a frivolous experimental streak — he once had us write pieces to cover up the nameplates outside people’s offices — the new guy was much more traditional.

One day I went to his office to show him a piece I was working on for class. It was just melodic fragments with some chord symbols sketched out underneath, but I wanted his opinion on the direction I was taking. He looked it over and asked, “What’s the instrumentation?”

I hadn’t decided yet, and told him so.

He stared back quizzically. “I don’t see how you can compose without knowing what you’re composing for,” he said. “I always keep the instruments in mind.”

I don’t really work that way, I said, and we got to talking about The Real Book.

The Real Book is a bible for jazz musicians. It contains hundreds of pages of music like this one, called lead sheets. Lead sheets are stripped down transcriptions that contain just a melody and chord symbols; no instrumentation, no dynamic markings, no detailed arrangements. And it is this tradition, not the classical one, that has informed my compositional thinking — much to my new professor’s chagrin.

The Real Book’s lead sheets are based on separating content from form, somewhat like the functional division between HTML and CSS. The written part — melody and chords — contains the core identity of the piece. This must be present in some respect for the performance to be recognizable. However, virtually all of the formal considerations — what the instruments will be, how the chords will be voiced, how long the solos will last, and so on — are at the discretion of the performers.

As someone from a jazz and popular music background, I typically consider a piece independently of a particular recording’s qualities. When I listen to Thelonious Monk play “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” for example, I hear the angular melodic lines and playful reharmonizations in the context of a baseline “regular” version (say, George Harrison’s), but I still keep the two separate. Whether or not Monk is too dissonant for your ear is a completely separate issue from whether you think “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” is a good song.

That separation, incidentally, is why I argue for the quality of old game music — as far as I’m concerned, focusing on the “fake,” low-fidelity sound misses the point. The music is there; the rest is aesthetics.

(UPDATE: Be sure to see Tommy’s response to the following criticism in the comments; as it turns out, we’re on the same page.)

Here’s a snip from game composer Tommy Tallarico’s interview with Guinness World Records:

Isn’t video game music just a constantly repeating loop of blips and bleeps? How can this be a full-time job?

This is actually a huge misconception among people who haven’t played a game in awhile. The reality is that when I first got involved in the game industry over 18 years ago a lot of the music was short repetitive bleeps & bloops. This was because the technology at the time didn’t allow for real music and live musicians. [...] In the mid 90’s DVD’s became a viable storage medium for games. Once this happened, composers and musicians could now use real instruments to create game music. It was an exciting time because no one had ever hear [sic] their video games make these kinds of sounds before.

And this is from the biography on his website:

Tommy Tallarico is a veritable video game industry icon. As one of the most successful video game composers in history, he has helped revolutionize the gaming world, creating unique audio landscapes that enhance the video gaming experience. He is considered the person most instrumental in changing the game industry from bleeps & bloops to real music now appreciated worldwide by millions of fans.

Tallarico rightly dispels the misconception that game music hasn’t evolved past “bleeps and bloops”, but he perpetuates another misconception in the process: namely, that game music before the DVD era was not “real” music.

I have a lot of respect for Tommy — he is, after all, the most prolific game composer of all time. But the idea that old game music was not “real” is a load of bull.

Yes, some of the lasting appeal of old game music can undoubtedly be attributed to nostalgia — but not all of it. There is artistic merit to the pieces of the 8- and 16-bit era that is irrespective of the technical limitations imposed by the hardware. The fact that they are performed by now-antiquated synths does not preclude them from categorization as “real music.”

As the co-creator of Video Games Live, Tallarico must have noticed the continued popularity of Mario and Zelda music. I think that, in his excitement over the new possibilities afforded by modern consoles, he has underestimated the compositional quality of older game music. He has conflated content with form.

(By the way, that lead sheet up above is actually the Koopa Beach theme from Super Mario Kart. Out of context, its harmonic language is indistinguishable from a bona fide jazz standard. But hey, it’s all just bleeps and bloops, right?)

Today, a bit of wanton silliness.

Take a look at Robo’s theme from Chrono Trigger:

I want to draw your attention to two things: the IV-V-V-vi harmonic progression, and the rising melodic contour using scale degrees 1-2-2-3.

Now listen to number-one hit and internet sensation “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley:

As you can see (and hear), both feature the same progression and melodic contour. The only significant difference is that Robo’s theme resolves to a tonic or tonic substitute in bars 4 and 8, while “Never Gonna Give You Up” continues to cycle through the IV-V-V-vi progression. (As such, it never resolves to I; my Roman numeral analysis is in the relative major for the sake of comparison.)

So in effect, you’ve all been getting rickrolled for years longer than you thought — for certain values of rickroll, anyway.

(And yes, I know I’m not the first person to make the connection. But I suspect I am the first to do a comparative harmonic analysis!)

Back in April, Michael Abbott had this to say on one of my Ocarina of Time music posts:

I’m wondering how you feel about the whole MIDI versus recorded orchestrated music question. It’s a no-brainer to me, but I was surprised to receive a couple of responses on my blog recently in defense of the MIDI approach to music in the Zelda series and the hope that it wouldn’t change. Is this just preciousness about the old games, or is there really something preferable about triggered music samples?

I suspect Michael is right that his readers’ preferences are fueled by nostalgia, but his comment touches on an issue that I’ve been meaning to talk about: the conflation of fidelity with quality.

When Ocarina was released in 1998, recording live orchestra was not an option — there’s simply not enough room on an N64 cartridge for audio data. With the advent of massive digital storage media like DVDs and Blu-Ray discs, though, such things are possible. The common wisdom is that the latter is an improvement. It is, but not in the way you might think.

Specifically, digital audio is an improvement in fidelity over sequenced music. The percussion will sound like a drumset instead of radio static; the strings will have proper vibrato instead of the silly wobbling that synthesizers often spit out; the choir will have real people singing real words. In short, the sound quality will be purer, and the instruments will sound more real.

But there are two things to keep in mind here. First, these improvements have no bearing on the quality of the music itself. As an old professor of mine once observed, “You can play a shitty song on a Steinway, but it’ll still be shitty.”

Second, high-fidelity sound is an aesthetic choice, not an objective improvement. If you’re a fan of popular music, you’ve probably heard someone criticize a pop song’s production values as “slick” or “overproduced” while lauding a lo-fi artist’s amateur recordings as “honest” or “authentic” — making no reference to the actual songs the two artists performed. If you listen to hip-hop, you know that the TR-808 is still sampled extensively even though “better” drum samples are readily available. Even the sound of a distorted electric guitar is really just a sacrifice in fidelity for aesthetic reasons. In short, sound quality comes with its own set of connotations and preconceptions that are independent of the quality of the music itself.

Getting back to games: the Super Mario Galaxy score has a number of newly composed, fully orchestrated pieces, such as the Good Egg Galaxy and Gusty Garden Galaxy themes. These are great pieces, emblematic of the new Mario sound. At the same time, Galaxy also features a number of sequenced songs, such as the Toy Time Galaxy and Sweet Sweet Galaxy themes, which are nostalgic remixes of old Mario tunes. Are the new songs better? Maybe — but if so, it’s not because they feature an orchestra.

First things first: a mission statement.

So far my music posts have been straight-up theoretical analysis. While I think there’s a lot to be learned from studying music on its own terms, context is important also. And since this is purportedly a blog about video games, I’d like to move beyond the self-indulgent theory posts and provide something more topical. In other words, I’ll keep doing the hardcore analysis, but I’d also like to talk about why game music matters.

All right. With that said, let’s look at that most important category of video game music: the 1-up jingle.

Here’s a brief audio sample of a Super Mario Bros. play session. The player earns a 1-up at the seven-second mark.

Iconic as it is, the Mario 1-up jingle is pretty unremarkable. Its total length is only a second, and it’s not exactly attention-grabbing. Here, for example, it’s sandwiched between the “emerging power-up” noise (5.5 s) and the “Super Mario got hurt” noise (9.5 s), and none of the three sounds stands out as the most important one. Sonically speaking, earning a 1-up in Super Mario Bros. is a fairly pedestrian event.

Now listen to this sample of a Sonic the Hedgehog play session.

The attentive listener may have noticed the player earning a 1-up at the five-second mark.

Not only does this jingle silence the rest of the game’s audio, but features a dramatic horn and timpani fanfare that lasts for three and a half seconds. Sonic doesn’t want to just draw your attention to the 1-up; it wants to herald a momentous occasion.

The cool thing is that the prominence of the 1-up sound is tied to the games’ design.

In Super Mario Bros., extra lives are relatively easy to come by. Your coins automatically carry over from one level to the next, so collecting 100 of them is almost an inevitability; green 1-up mushrooms are hidden, but frequent. This is balanced, of course, by the fact that it’s also relatively easy to get Mario killed. Each individual life is not so important, and the subdued 1-up jingle reflects this.

In Sonic the Hedgehog, the dynamic is reversed. Since Sonic won’t die if he’s holding rings, a smart player will effectively have infinite hit points. On the other hand, 1-up item boxes are rare, and collecting 100 rings is difficult because it’s so easy to lose them. Extra lives are therefore more precious than in Super Mario Bros., so the jubilant fanfare that accompanies a 1-up is somewhat deserved.

[Part one | Part two]

7/9 — Three Final Fantasy IX pieces and one Chrono Trigger piece added.

6/22 — Three Final Fantasy VIII pieces added.

The first irregular meter post has gotten so many updates that I’m starting a new one. Thanks for all your suggestions!

On a tip from Peter I checked out the soundtrack to Final Fantasy VII, composed by Nobuo Uematsu. Here’s a snip from “Hurry Up!”:

There’s a nice mix of four- and three-beat patterns here, somewhat reminiscent of the Road Rash 3 Australia theme in the last post.

Here’s “Cinco de Chocobo:”

The obvious influence here is the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s “Take Five,” composed by Paul Desmond.

See what I mean? Same rhythm, similar harmony, crappier melody!

The neat thing about “Cinco de Chocobo” is that when it switches into 6/4, it actually feels less natural because the 5/4 rhythm is so strong.

Finally, here’s a very brief snip from “One-Winged Angel”:

Just a little bit of 7/8 in a primarily 4/4 piece. A tiny section of irregular meter is actually one of the less interesting features of “One-Winged Angel,” but what the heck, right?

6/22 update: Moving right along, here’s a quick update on the pieces I’ve culled from Uematsu’s Final Fantasy VIII soundtrack.

Here’s the beginning of “Don’t be Afraid,” the battle theme:

The piece continues in 5/4 throughout, mostly with the 3+3+2+2 eighth note subdivision.

This is the beginning of “Dead End”:

Though it starts in 7/8, after four bars “Dead End” drops into 4/4 and never looks back. In this case the irregular intro is just an attention grabber — though certainly an effective one.

Last up is “Premonition,” which I want to discuss in a bit more detail. The piece features a recurring rhythmic figure that goes like this:

Notice how each bar begins with two notes in the space of three beats, and ends with a straight eighth note rhythm that allows for some variation.

After that pattern is established, the figure changes:

Pretty neat, right? The “rules” are the same as before, but now every other bar now has an extra beat; if you were expecting the earlier figure, this sounds unbalanced.

Finally, a bit further into the piece, we get this:

The rhythmic figure’s malleable ending has already been introduced; now Uematsu has room to play with it even more. Here the variation makes it difficult to predict how many beats any given measure will have.

7/9 update: All right, let’s close the door on Uematsu (for now) with some pieces from Final Fantasy IX.

Here’s a snip from “Ambush Attack”:

This is an easy one. The metric subdivision is a very slow 2+2+2+3, and I’ve beamed the eighth notes accordingly.

Here’s the beginning of “Feel My Blade”:

I wrote the introductory rhythm in 5/4 with a caesura to emphasize its similarity to another famous 5/4 piece, Gustav Holst’s “Mars, The Bringer of War” from The Planets. Have a listen:

As you can hear, it’s very nearly identical; the only significant difference is that the last two beats are swapped. Even though it’s a bit slower, it retains the same martial (ahem) feel as Holst’s piece.

Later on in “Feel My Blade,” we hear this lively little section:

This one touches on a discussion I had with Peter down in the comments on the nature of irregular meter. If you add up the beats in the first four bars, it’ll come out to an even sixteen quarter notes — meaning that I could have simply transcribed the thing in 4/4. (After that, though, it gets a bit more complicated.)

So why am I calling this irregular if it can be written in common time? I’m just using my judgement, to be honest. Whereas a relatively simple subdivision like the 3+3+2 in Coldplay’s “Clocks” is easily understood in 4/4, I think the complexity and unpredictability of this rhythm makes it well-suited to a mixed meter transcription. (My conflation of mixed meter with irregular meter is a topic for another day.)

Here’s a snip from “Run!”:

If “Feel My Blade” was inspired by “Mars,” “Run!” owes a debt to Lalo Schifrin’s Mission: Impossible theme:

Of course, the 5/4 theme isn’t all that’s going on here. See that random measure of 7/8 (bar 12)? That has the effect of sounding like half a beat is missing — as though we were moving along in 4/4 and then had a measure of 3.5/4. Try tapping your foot to that part and you’ll see what I mean.

Skipping fractions of a beat is one of my favorite rhythmic tricks, and Uematsu seems to like it too. Take a look at this later section of “Run!”:

The alternation between 15/16 and 4/4 is effectively removing a quarter of a beat, which is even more difficult to wrap your head around. Then, after a brief bit of insanity in 15, we’re home free. Piece of cake, right?

To close out this little Uematsu extravaganza, here’s the one and only irregularly-metered piece from Chrono Trigger. Most of Chrono Trigger’s music was scored by Yasunori Mitsuda, but Uematsu contributed a couple of pieces, including “Closed Door”:

Nothing too mind-bending here, but it’s neat how the arpeggios seem to move in double time.

Well, it seems that Nobuo Uematsu is the reigning kind of irregular meter in video game music, at least so far. As always, if you have other soundtracks you think I ought to look at, drop me a line. Thanks again to Peter for tipping me off to the PSX-era Final Fantasy games. See you all in part three!

[Part one | Part two]

6/4 — One On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness piece added. (Hi, Brainy Gamer readers!)
5/20 — Two Road Rash 3 pieces added.
5/15 — Two Jet Force Gemini pieces added.

Most music theory nerds I know have a certain musical feature that really gets them excited — an unusual harmonic progression, a favorite chord, a particular rhythmic figure. For me, that feature is irregular meter. In my experience irregular meter is fairly uncommon in video game soundtracks, so I thought I’d collect what few examples I’ve come across here.

Remember the race results screen in Mario Kart 64? Most likely you skipped past it with barely a glance at the scoreboard, but if you stuck around for a moment you’d have heard this gem from composer Kenta Nagata:

Despite being in 11/8, I think this rhythm feels pretty natural. Kudos to Nagata for smoothing over the strange time signature.

Here’s something neat — take a look at this bass part from the Grammy-winning “Almost 12,” a piece by modern jazz quartet Béla Fleck and the Flecktones:

Notice anything? Aside from the halved time values, it’s metrically identical to the Kart 64 bassline — an eleven-beat pattern subdivided as 2+2+3+2+2. Even the rhythm is the same. (”Almost 12,” incidentally, was released about a year after Mario Kart 64. Maybe the Flecktones are Nintendo fans.)

The earliest example I could find of irregular meter in a video game is the final battle music from The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, composed by Koji Kondo:

Nothing too complicated here. The bass arpeggio is fast and perhaps a bit hard to follow, but the percussion and the chords of stacked fourths reinforce the time signature pretty strongly.

In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Kondo wrote a similar piece for the game’s penultimate battle (Link versus Ganondorf):

While this piece uses many of the same musical ideas as the Link to the Past one — the fast bass arpeggio, the descending melodic contour, the quartal harmonization — the rhythm has changed from merely “quirky” to “murderously complicated.” I had to slow down the tempo in an audio editor just to figure out what was going on.

In a nutshell, the bass’s 3+3+3+3+2 pattern has been replaced by the decidedly spicier 3+3+3+2+2+3+3+2+2. I’ve notated that as alternating 13- and 10-beat measures. Even better, the chords sometimes cut across those subdivisions (m. 3, 7), and the chorus’s part (m. 10ff.) seems to ignore the meter altogether. Good luck trying to perform this one!

My final example, also from Ocarina of Time, is the “fairy flying” theme from the beginning of the game:

The two main sections are a 13/16 part (subdivided as 3+3+3+2+2) and a 10/16 part (subdivided as 2+3+2+3). Thankfully the bass and string parts actually reinforce the meter here, so it’s pretty easy to hear where the beats fall. Heck, compared to that Ganondorf battle theme it’s downright elementary.

That’s all I’ve got for now. If you know more of video game pieces with irregular meter, I’d love to hear from you.

5/15 update: Thanks to a tip from Daniel in the comments, I’ve got two more irregular meter pieces for you. Both are from the Jet Force Gemini soundtrack, composed by Robin Beanland and Graeme Norgate.

Here’s a snip from the Water Ruins theme:

Since the rhythmic pattern is so long (30 beats), the metric subdivision isn’t particularly instructive here. (It’s 2+2+2+3+2+2+2+3+2+2+2+3+2, if you’re curious.) I think the easiest way to understand it is “7/8 with a 2+2+3 subdivision, and every fourth measure has an extra two beats tacked on.” (Tacking on extra beats every so often, incidentally, is another one of my favorite musical features.) For what it’s worth, this piece is big on mixing meters; immediately following the part I transcribed is a section in plain 7/8 (3+2+2, no funny business), and shortly thereafter is standard 4/4.

The boss battle theme has a similar case of rhythmic schizophrenia. This chunk falls between a duple 6/4 section and a triple 9/16 section (whose beginning I included; see mm. 13-14).

Yeesh. I slowed that one down in the audio editor too, if you were wondering.

Here we have a 24-beat pattern which subdivides as (deep breath) 2+2+2+3+2+2+2+3+2+2+2. More simply, we might call it “9/16 with a 2-2-2-3 subdivision, and every third measure loses the last three beats.” Even that’s a bit of a mess, but if you drum your fingers along with the piece you should be able to get the hang of it. At least the melodic line has the decency to use a reasonable rhythm, unlike the Ocarina of Time Ganondorf battle theme.

5/20 update: Two more quick examples for you, from the 1995 Genesis title Road Rash 3. The game’s distinctive heavy metal soundtrack was composed by Don Veca.

Here’s a snip from the Italy race background music:

It’s fast, but fairly simple. Note that the pattern can also be written in 21/8 without triplets if that’s your thing.

Here’s a snip the title screen track, which doubles as the Australia race background music:

This one is mostly in straight 4/4, actually, but every so often it skips a beat and briefly feels like 7/4 instead. This effect is most pronounced in measures 11-14 of the transcription.

6/4 update: Below is a snip from the splash screen menu music for Penny Arcade’s On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, composed by Jeff Tymoschuk:

A five-beat pattern subdivided as 3+2 is pretty standard fare; in fact, that’s the metric basis for Paul Desmond’s “Take Five,” perhaps the most famous irregularly metered piece of all time. So why does this one sound a bit odd?

It’s because of the quarter note pulse in the middle staff. It stretches over the barlines and also shifts its position halfway through the transcription. (Look at where the quarter notes land in measures 1-4, as opposed to in measures 5-8.) The upshot is that the meter is ever so slightly concealed, giving the piece a layer of rhythmic ambiguity.

[Part one | Part two | Part three | Part four]

This post, the last in the current series, comes in two parts.

First, some trends I’ve found while analyzing the twelve ocarina songs, along with a few miscellaneous observations that didn’t fit in anywhere else:

• Seven of the twelve songs use D as their tonic — “Epona’s Song” and “Prelude of Light” are in D major, while “Song of Storms,” “Song of Time,” “Serenade of Water,” “Requiem of Spirit,” and “Bolero of Fire” are all in D minor or D Dorian.
• Three songs use tonics that are not part of the five-note trigger motive palette (D, F, A, B, D): “Zelda’s Lullaby” (G major), “Saria’s Song” (C major), and “Minuet of Forest” (E minor).
• The other two songs are special cases. “Nocturne of Shadow” has no functional triadic harmony until the end, when it suddenly cadences in D♭ major. “Sun’s Song” is never harmonized and has no obvious tonic.
• All six of the warp songs end on major chords, despite the fact that only one of them (”Prelude of Light”) is actually in a major key. The others use what’s called a Picardy third to create a major ending to a minor piece.
• “Prelude of Light” is the only song that doesn’t end on a triad. (It ends on a major seventh chord.)
• Five songs have trigger motives consisting entirely of the pitches in a D minor triad (D-F-A): “Sun’s Song,” “Song of Storms,” “Song of Time,” “Requiem of Spirit,” and “Bolero of Fire.” Of these, “Sun’s Song” is the only one that isn’t actually harmonized in a D minor mode (owing to the fact that it’s not harmonized at all).
• The Lon Lon Ranch theme and the Hyrule Castle Courtyard theme, based on “Epona’s Song” and “Zelda’s Lullaby” respectively, are the only pieces of the twelve that modulate.
• The guitar part in the Lon Lon Ranch theme is swung but the vocal part is not, so the two don’t quite match up. This sort of rhythmic clash has occasionally been exploited in popular music; see, for example, “Girl” by The Beatles. Also, the Lon Lon Ranch theme is the only place swung eighth notes are found in the entire game.
• Even though it’s in the key of G major, the Hyrule Castle Courtyard theme only actually has one G major chord — and even then it’s during the modulatory C major section, so it’s functioning as a dominant. The piece therefore has the odd distinction of never using its tonic chord “normally.”

Second, a bit about the in-game ocarina as an instrument.

As you’ve probably noticed, the music in Ocarina of Time is all synthesized, meaning that the sounds are all generated by the game and not recordings of actual musicians. (If you haven’t noticed, go back and listen to the “voice” in the Lon Lon Ranch theme again.) As it turns out, whoever designed the in-game ocarina had a little fun blurring the line between electronic and real instruments.

Below is a picture of the joystick on my Korg DW-6000 analog snythesizer:

Moving this joystick left or right bends the pitch of the note(s) you’re playing; moving it up triggers an oscillator, and moving it down triggers a filter.

Flip the x and y axes and you’re pretty close to the in-game ocarina’s “secret” controls. While playing the ocarina, up and down gives you pitch bend, while side to side gives you a vibrato-like oscillator. Both, to my ear, sound hilariously exaggerated and inappropriate for an ocarina. It’s a great Easter egg, and even better when one considers the software synthesizer that’s actually creating the sound.

The addition of pitch bend, of course, has another implication — even though I’ve made a big deal out of the five notes that correspond to the controller buttons, it’s actually possible to play other ones. The joystick can raise or lower the pitch by a whole step;¹ similarly, the Z and R buttons, respectively, will raise or lower the pitch by a half step. Combining these two features gives you all the notes in between the five default ones, for a total of one and a half octaves:

There’s not any practical use for this, of course. To be honest, it’s tedious enough that there’s barely an impractical use for it either, but that hasn’t stopped anyone…

I hope you’ve all enjoyed this series. I’ll be back with more music analysis soon.

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1. Actually, it doesn’t quite go a full whole step, so the pitch bend will always put you slightly out of tune. C’est la vie.

[Part one | Part two | Part three | Part four]

All right, back into the fray! It’s time to finish off the analysis of the twelve ocarina songs. We’re down to the last six.

As fans of the game will remember, adult Link learns six “warp songs” from Sheik. From a gameplay perspective, these songs work the same way as the earlier ones — the player must perform a trigger motive using the controller buttons, and then the game takes over and finishes the song. There are a few important differences, though.

First, the warp songs are orchestrated as soon as you trigger them. With the child songs I had to dig into Ocarina of Time’s background music to find chords to analyze; thankfully, the adult songs are harmonized right away.

Second, the trigger motives themselves are more varied. You might have noticed that all of the child songs feature a six-note motive, and that each of those motives is made up of a three-note idea, repeated twice. By contrast, the warp song trigger motives vary in length from five to eight notes.

Third, the warp songs all have the same call-and-response structure. Sheik states the trigger motive melody on the harp, and Link repeats it on the ocarina. The piece then quickly moves to a cadence, often with both instruments in unison. One whole piece is only six or eight bars long.

Fourth, the warp songs actually stop. Video game background music, like the pieces we’ve analyzed so far, loops indefinitely. This structure requires that they be harmonically open — in other words, they end on a dominant chord (or something similarly unresolved) so that the harmonic progression can cycle back to the beginning. The warp songs, by contrast, are self-contained and have full cadences at the end.

There’s a lot of fun music theory nuggets in here, so let’s move on to the specific examples. First up is “Prelude of Light”:

Take a look at the E♭ma7 chord in the sixth bar. Typically when there’s a chord built on scale degree ♭II, it’s a tritone substitution for the V chord. I’ve left this one as ♭IIma7 because it’s a major seventh chord, not a dominant one, and therefore functions a bit differently; it doesn’t have the tension-filled tritone between the third and the seventh.

So how does it function? I say it’s as a subdominant minor. Take the upper three notes of the Em7 and E♭ma7 chords and you’ll have G-B-D and G-B♭-D — G major and G minor. Analyzing those gives us IV-iv-I, which is a very common pop music cadence.¹ I think that’s the harmony Kondo is after here; the bass notes are just there to provide a chromatic descent to the tonic.

I want to look at these next two pieces together. Here’s “Minuet of Forest”:

And here’s “Serenade of Water”:

Look at the Roman numeral analysis — they have the exact same chord progression!²

This may seem like a bit of a copout, but remember that Kondo wrote the first four bars of both pieces with the same five pitches. “Serenade of Water” had available scale degrees one, three, five, six, and one. If you’ve been reading this whole series, you’re now familiar with the minor triad and the raised Dorian sixth that a D tonic provides. “Minuet of Forest,” though, uses E as its tonic, so the pitches are scale degrees seven, two, four, five, and seven. Those are not easy pitches to write with, to put it mildly — and, indeed, the trigger motive sounds a bit off. If you play it without the chords, it sounds like it might be in G major. The interest of the piece, then, comes from the tension between the melody and its slightly awkward harmonization.

Speaking of awkward harmonization, let’s look at “Nocturne of Shadow”:

This one is a doozy — it’s easily the least tonal of all the songs in Ocarina of Time. For the first four bars there’s no functional harmony to speak of; the strings move in chromatic parallel fourths and preclude any definite key center. This harmonic uncertainty is what gives the piece its characteristic uneasiness.

My favorite part is the F in bar 2 (and again in 4). It’s coincident with a A♭-D♭ fourth in the harmony, which creates a D♭ major triad (D♭-F-A♭) — the most innocent harmonization imaginable. In context, though, it sounds incredibly dissonant. Kondo has pulled off a very cool trick here — it’s quite hard to make a major chord sound “wrong.”

One more thing about “Nocturne.” The ♭VI-♭VII progression — which I discussed in detail in “Koji Kondo’s favorite cadence” — is used twice in a row here, one a half step higher than the other. This is a technique that an old theory professor calls “planing,” and is a common move in jazz — see, for example, Charlie Parker’s “Blues for Alice,” which has four consecutive ii-V progressions that descend chromatically. The planing here is another example of how broad Kondo’s influences are.

Next let’s take a quick look at “Requiem of Spirit”:

As you can see, I’ve written this one out fully instead of doing my usual attempt at a piano reduction. The top staff features the melody, played on the harp and ocarina and doubled by strings; the other three contain the various accompanying string parts.

Harmonically there’s nothing to write home about here; I just want to draw your attention to the second staff. Starting in the third bar, you’ll notice that there’s a contrapuntal idea exactly identical to the trigger motive, but at half the speed. (If you’re not a great music reader, you can verify this with careful listening; listen for the string part that begins right when the ocarina takes the melody). This is what music theorists call rhythmic augmentation — the extension of a musical idea in time. Normally counterpoint like this is difficult to do well, but since the motive here is just an arpeggiated D minor triad, there’s not really any way to mess up the harmonies. Anyway, nothing too special — just a fun bit of trivia.

Finally, here’s “Bolero of Fire”:

I’ve transcribed the percussion part here as well, and if you’re a classical music fan, you can see why. In fact, you’re probably already laughing.

What am I talking about? There’s a snare drum ostinato in Maurice Ravel’s famous Boléro which is repeated ad nauseam throughout the entire piece. Here’s a sample:

Kondo, as you can hear, has appropriated this pattern for his own bolero. Sneaky!

Well, that does it for our in-depth look at the twelve ocarina songs. In the next and last post of this series, I’ll wrap up with some general observations about the music and a few tidbits about the in-game ocarina as an instrument. I hope you’ve enjoyed this little project.

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1. See, for example, Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” or Oasis’ “Don’t Look Back in Anger.”
2. Well, to be fair, “Minuet of Forest” actually just has a bare fifth for its tonic chord (E-B) instead of a full triad (E-G-B), but I’m inferring minor harmony from all the ♭3s and ♭7s in the melody.

[Part one | Part two | Part three | Part four]

This post continues analyzing the songs in Ocarina of Time and theorizing about Koji Kondo’s intentions with them.

Before reading, I encourage you to check out the comments on my last post. Hopefully the discussion between Ben Abraham and I can clarify what I was saying, as well as point out where I might have gone wrong. I’m grateful to have the perspective of another music student on this, and I’d like to thank Ben for engaging with me.

Now, on to business! We have three more songs to look at from the “child Link” portion of the game. Here’s the solo ocarina version of “Zelda’s Lullaby”:

And here’s a harmonized version, transcribed from the Hyrule Castle Courtyard background music:

The harmony is, in my opinion, very well done — there’s a great chromatic bassline from C down to A in measures 4-7, seamless modulations between G major and C major, and a somewhat rare (for Kondo) tritone substitution in the penultimate bar. But that’s not what I want to focus on here.

With the conspicuous absence of the iconic “Hyrule Overture,” “Zelda’s Lullaby” is the closest thing Ocarina of Time has to a theme song. Link is required to play it more often than any other piece, and the melody can be heard during several plot points throughout the game.

Significantly, it’s also the only ocarina song that isn’t an Ocarina of Time original — “Zelda’s Lullaby” was in A Link to the Past as well. That means it’s the only piece that we know predated the five-note restriction.

Why is that significant? Given its prominence, I think it’s very likely that “Zelda’s Lullaby” dictated — at least in part — which pitches were chosen for the five-note palette.

My guess is that Kondo knew he would at least need A, B, and D to work with for “Zelda’s Lullaby,” and added the lower D and F so that he would have the minor triad D F A to work with also. It’s just my pet theory, but it would explain why five of the twelve ocarina pieces are written in some form of D minor harmony.¹

Next let’s look at “Song of Time”:

There’s nothing too complex going on here; in fact, this phrase functions very much like “Song of Storms.” The trigger motive is an inverted D minor triad (A D F) which firmly establishes the harmonic area, and the answer motive continues in the same vein. Let’s move on to the Temple of Time background music, which features the “Song of Time” melody:

There are three things to note here, and two of them are obvious just from looking at the score. First, there’s no harmony. In music theory we call this monophonic texture — a single melody without accompaniment. Second, the phrases are of irregular length. You’ll note that I transcribed the piece without meter, and if you count up the number of beats in each phrase you’ll see why — there are no consistent metrical divisions. (I used bar lines to separate phrases.)

The third item of interest is the strong sense of modality. While in “Song of Storms” we could only deduce the D Dorian mode through analysis of the harmony, here it’s placed front and center in the melody. Every time a B♮ appears, Kondo has approached it by half step from above. The upshot is that the Dorian raised sixth is emphasized, and any sense of modal ambiguity is obliterated.

The monophony, irregular phrase length, and strong modality are all characteristic of a genre of music called plainchant, of which Gregorian chant is the best known variety. I think Kondo has captured the spirit of the style quite well; he really shows off his range with this one.

Finally, let’s look at “Saria’s Song”:

Like “Epona’s Song,” this is a bit ambiguous without harmony. The trigger motive outlines a tritone (F-B), and the answer motive cadences with an arpeggiated E minor triad (B G E). Here’s the Lost Woods background music, which features the “Saria’s Song” melody:

This is one of my favorite pieces of Kondo’s. Harmonically, it’s dead simple.² The only real surprise is the turnaround on the III chord at the end, and even the III-IV progression isn’t so unusual.

It’s the melody that makes this one of the catchiest songs in the game. The F-B tritone over the F major chord is a great hook, and the insistent “ti-ti ta” rhythmic pattern is arresting. There’s a remarkable amount of intensity generated in a very short piece. I don’t have any greater point to make here, but Darunia is right — what a hot beat!

Next time we’ll take a look at the songs Link learns as an adult.

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1. Having two octaves of the same pitch available — D, in this case — is also compositionally useful. Two of the ocarina songs are in D major, which means that nearly three quarters of the pieces use D as a tonic.
2. So simple, as it turns out, that several of the chords sound to me like they’re missing thirds. I’ve reflected that in the transcription, but have assumed diatonic harmony in the analysis for the sake of convenience.

[Part one | Part two | Part three | Part four]

Koji Kondo on his experience writing the music for Ocarina of Time:

I had to create all of those memorable tunes with only five tones of the classic do-re-mi scale. Specifically: re, fa, la, and ti (and the higher-scale re). Since each of those songs, like Zelda’s Lullaby or Epona’s Song, had a particular theme, it was quite challenging, but I think it all felt really natural in the end. Then as soon as I was finished with those Ocarina songs, I had to create even more for Majora’s Mask—I got a lot of milage out of just five tones!

A lot of milage indeed. In this series of posts, I’m going to try to see what he’s up to. If you’re up for a little musical excursion, read on.

There are twelve songs you learn in Ocarina of Time (not counting the improvisatory “Scarecrow’s Song”), and all of them are ostensibly based on the pitches D, F, A, and B, and D an octave above.¹

Why ostensibly? Because although Kondo laments the four-pitch limitation, he has more freedom than it might initially seem because of how the game works.

To have Link perform a song, you take out your ocarina and play the beginning of the melody — a motive five to eight notes long, depending on the piece — using the controller. Playing this section, which I’ll call the trigger motive, causes the game to complete the rest of the tune automatically with what I’ll call the answer motive.

The upshot is that Kondo is only limited to four notes for the beginnings of the ocarina pieces. This is a significant distinction.

Take a look at “Sun’s Song,” transcribed below. I’ve put a double bar line between the trigger and answer motives.

As you can see, the trigger motive is constrained by the four-note palette, but the quick run in the second part has other pitches. After the player triggers the melody, the limit is removed, and Kondo has more compositional flexibility.

Why am I making a big deal about this? Well, “Sun’s Song” is an edge case; it’s the only piece you learn to play that never gets harmonized. Every other song is either filled out with orchestration when you trigger it, or is heard elsewhere in the game as part of the background music.

In other words, these melodies are not only written to be ocarina solos — there are harmonic considerations too. I’d like to suggest that that the the tonal restriction Kondo talks about influences how the pieces are written.

Let’s look at “Song of Storms.” Here’s a transcription of the piece as Link plays it, with a double bar line as before:

Even without any orchestration there’s not much harmonic wiggle room here. Kondo uses the octave Ds to firmly establish the tonic, and the flatted third (F) in the trigger motive sets up the unambiguously minor answer motive.

Here’s the Kakariko Village Windmill background music, which features the “Song of Storms” melody:

The harmony indicates that we’re in the Dorian mode, which is the mode most strongly suggested by the available pitches; there’s a complete minor triad (D, F, A) and the characteristic raised sixth (B♮). In layman’s terms, Kondo has found the easiest mode to compose in with these notes and exploited it. “Song of Storms,” then, is one of the most basic ocarina pieces; Kondo has allowed the pitches to dictate the trigger melody, and the consequent phrase in the Kakariko Village Windmill theme doesn’t break any new ground.

Everything can’t be as simple as the Dorian mode, though, and things get more interesting when Kondo breaks out into other harmonic areas. Let’s look at “Epona’s Song.” Here’s the solo ocarina version:

Out of context, this is a harmonically vague phrase. The tonic is most likely D, but not necessarily; even so, it’s impossible to pin down a key using only scale degrees one, five, and six. Without the third, we can’t even definitively say if it’s major or minor.

More importantly, note how Kondo continues to use the same pitches in the answer motive, even though other options are available. In other words, the piece is composed — intentionally, perhaps — so that you can’t discern the key from the ocarina solo alone.

Now let’s turn to the Lon Lon Ranch background music, which uses the “Epona’s Song” melody:

The harmony reveals that the tune is in D major, but as we saw above, we couldn’t determine that from the first four bars of the melody. My theory is that this delay is intentional.

Because there’s no obvious key to the “ocarina solo” portion of the song, the harmonic content of the first phrase unfolds relatively slowly. (Indeed, if we were to look at the melody alone, the key doesn’t become completely obvious until the eighth bar.) This protracted development creates a richer, more nuanced melody than “Song of Storms,” which repeats a single phrase ad nauseam. That melody, in turn, provides a basis for the modulation into F major and its new musical idea.

And thus Kondo’s stated difficulty with the limited pitch material ended up helping him out. Restriction breeds creativity.

I hope you all could make some sense of this. I’ll have a few more posts about music from Ocarina of Time over the next couple of weeks; in the meantime, I look forward to your responses.

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1. Looking at those solfège syllables, it seems like Kondo’s a fixed do kind of guy.