There are few video game melodies more burned into the collective gamer conscience than the Battle Themes from the original Pokemon games for the Game Boy. In this Deconstructing article, we’ll look in detail at the cohesive construction of the Battle Themes from Pokemon Red and Blue, and how these themes evolve as the battles become more intense—from vs Wild Pokemon, to vs Trainer, vs Gym Leader, and finally to vs Champion.
A few weeks ago, I reached my $100/article Goal on Patreon! As promised, I wanted to start a series of shorter (and free) articles, focusing not on a game’s soundtrack, but rather a specific music theory concept. The idea is that these can act as supplementary reading that will help readers expand their vocabulary when reading and talking about music theory in works of music. This is the first of such articles, and the topic (that I’ve more or less chosen by random, or rather “whatever I felt like”) is Harmonic Rhythm.
A few weeks ago, I did a talk on the History of Zelda music at the offices of Twitch, which included some post-talk Q&A. I had just finished explaining a key difference between video game music and other forms of music, which is that video game music has to repeat, that it has to play on loop for a potentially indefinite amount of time—when I got a really good follow up question:
“Do you think that games could ever move out of those kinds of constraints [of needing to loop indefinitely]?”
At this time of writing, I am one of many eagerly awaiting the release of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which is now less than a week away. In the meantime, I’ve consumed an unhealthy amount of Breath of the Wild media (though avoiding spoilers!)—and of course, my focus quickly turned to the music. I realized two things:
So without further ado—let’s have a closer look at the Theme of Breath of the Wild!
The music of the 8 dungeons in The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening is the subject of this Deconstructing article, where we’ll take a look in detail at a work of music and break it down into its disparate parts, with the ultimate goal of enhancing the reader’s experience with the music.
The 11th track in the Original Sound Version (OSV) of Chrono Trigger is “Secret of the Forest” and is the subject of this Deconstructing article, where we’ll take a look in detail at a work of music and break it down into its disparate parts, with the ultimate goal of enhancing the reader’s experience with the music. As a composer/producer myself, I also find deconstructing songs very helpful for inspiring ideas in my own work. Continue reading
This article is the 2nd half of a 2-part article on leitmotifs in UNDERTALE and how they inform the narrative. The first half was published on March 31 and can be found here. If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, it is highly recommended that you do so before reading this article.
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This is the 1st half of a 2-part article on leitmotifs in UNDERTALE and how they inform the narrative. The second half is here. Continue reading
Two articles I wrote in 2012 using tracks from the Cave Story OST to explain some music theory and harmony concepts–republished here.
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