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.

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A Quick (Relevant) Tangent: Chiptune and Its Advantages

When we think about how video game music has advanced over the years, one thing people often point to is the evolution from chiptunes to sampled midi to finally live, orchestrated music. While it’s certainly true that composers for games have taken advantage of technological advances to offer a more “real-sounding” musical experience, I hesitate to call this change a musical “evolution,” because it implies the older ways of writing music have become obsolete. In fact, there are many musical features of chiptune music that are unique to chiptune. For me, one of the most important features is the ease of isolating individual tones, and as a result, the strength of contrapuntal writing using chiptune. The Battle Themes from Pokemon Red and Blue are some of the best showcases of these unique strengths:

vs Wild Pokemon:

0:14 is a section of music where all 3 voices are all within the same octave range, but note how easily you can pick any one of the 3 voices and easily find and isolate that particular voice in your head. You have (1) the main melody, (2) the fast chromatic pattern right underneath, and (3) the 2-note repeating pattern underneath that:

If this passage was played with any organic instrument, it would sound like a muddled mess. The reason this works with chiptune is because raw waveforms can be digitally bound to a fairly restricted frequency range. Look at how a single note on the piano looks in a frequency visualizer, and then compare that to how that same note looks when played by a raw sine wave:

Piano (Reason Pianos sample library) playing A4:

Gameboy Sine wave (SocaLabs PAPU VST) playing A4:

Because chiptunes can generate sound within a narrow frequency range, there’s much less “overlap” in frequency when multiple notes are sounded simultaneously and thus less muddiness.

I bring all this up because the above has a profound effect on our perception of this music—our ability to hear the individual voices and focus on what each one is doing, separate from the others, is a big part of what makes these sets of tracks interesting and gives them their unique character and musical strengths.

end tangent

Part 1: Commonalities

Before we examine the differences that makes each of these battle themes unique to its purpose and function, we need to first understand the common language of these tracks. In other words, what makes a Pokemon battle theme a Pokemon battle theme?

vs Wild Pokemon: the Introduction

Let’s first look at the introductory flourish, or the bit of music that plays when a battle is initiating (0:00 – 0:03):

This may look like a lot to digest, but there’s really only a couple of musical “events” happening here.

First, let’s look at all of the notes in red—these denote chromatic movement, or movement by a minor 2nd, the smallest interval that can exist between two notes in a standard 12-tone scale. (One famous musical example that features extensive chromaticism is Flight of the Bumblebee, which may give you a sense of the musical effect that chromaticism has).

The second thing to notice are the notes in blue, denoting the notes C and G—which is a recurring interval of a 5th that defines the bare-bones harmonic framework for the entire track.

But still—that’s a lot of notes up there. Let’s do something to visualize what’s happening aurally. The key here is to realize that, even though these are the notes that are being played in the track, the ear doesn’t quite have the capacity to hear each individual note separately. At this speed, what we ultimately perceive is the movement of notes over time:

In this view, we can much more clearly see 3 distinct voices moving chromatically—one repeating at the top (yellow: the one we hear most clearly, as it’s the highest in pitch), while the lower 2 voices (purple and red) move toward and cross each other (perhaps like two Pokemon about to do battle?). Surrounding all the chromatic action are the lowest and highest notes, C and G, forming the interval of the 5th that we talked about earlier and grounding the track harmonically in C.

Then we enter the introductory section (0:03):

In the bottom voice, we again have our interval of a 5th with the C-G repeated bassline figure, in blue, that grounds this track harmonically in C. The harmony is completely carried by this bassline—you can clearly see and hear when the harmony moves by when the bassline steps up from the repeated C-G figure to the Db-Ab figure (0:07). This is also the first time the rhythm in the bassline is broken up, which naturally calls attention to the shift. The combination of harmonic and rhythmic change here creates tension—like the musical equivalent of bouncing on a diving board—indicating it’s about to move somewhere new.

Meanwhile, the 2 upper voices (purple) are creating rhythmic energy. By putting these rhythmic “stabs” on off beats, the resulting syncopation creates a feeling of uncertainty that keeps this section interesting despite the lack of a real melody. This rhythmic pattern pervades the entire track and as you’ll see, all the Battle Themes in this game (and even subsequent games!):

While this opening flourish + intro goes by pretty quickly, it actually establishes our three major musical areas of interest—ones that recur throughout these four battle tracks:

1. the pervasive chromatic movement (red)
2. the interval of the 5th being used as harmonic grounding (blue)
3. the syncopated rhythmic pattern (purple)

Now that we’ve established our 3 major points of commonality, let’s look at how these musical ideas are developed and expanded upon as we move through our 4 tracks.

On to the main “theme” of vs Wild Pokemon (0:14 to 0:29):

(0:14 to 0:40 below:)

This section of music is a great example of all 3 of our musical ideas working together:

First, the syncopation in the upper voice—let’s look in detail at how this rhythm is constructed. In each bar we’re getting 3 notes of the melody, where the first 2 notes are of equal length, each a quarter and a half (3x 8th notes). This leaves the last note with only a full quarter note (2x 8th notes) before the bar ends a new note comes in, which creates a very distinct feeling of this 3rd note getting “cut off” early. (Mathematically, you’re dividing a bar of 8 counts into 3+3+2.) The emotional effect of this 3rd note being cut off is a sort of lurching forward at the end of every bar, as though the rhythm is rushing forward. This forward momentum is key to how these battle themes feel full of energy and tension.

Next, let’s look at the middle voice with the chromatic 16th note runs. Again, with so many notes and so much going on, let’s just rewrite the middle voice visually—with the goal of seeing how exactly these chromatic runs are written, and how they interact with the other musical events:

A couple of things that I noticed from doing this exercise:

1. These chromatic runs perform a similar role, and behave in a similar way, to the way drums would—and the fact that these battle tracks don’t have a percussion section (not that the Game Boy wasn’t capable of it) is an interesting point in itself.
   Note how in bars 15-18 (0:19 to 0:25) when our 3-note melodic figure is rising up, the chromatic middle voice is moving back and forth at a steady rate except at the end of the bar, where it rises higher than usual—functioning in a way like a drum fill would, by creating just a little more tension at the end of phrase.
2. Movement back and forth = “static”, prolonged, one-direction movement = “interest”
   This is something you can really see by examining the relationship between the main melody and the chromatic middle line. Note how when the main melody is “active” — i.e. when the 3-note melody is playing, the chromatic middle voice is in its “static” state, moving back and forth over a small interval. On the other hand, when the melody is holding out long, drawn out notes (bars 13, 19-24) the chromatic voice is moving from the lowest to the highest notes in its range—and its this prolonged movement in one direction that really calls attention to it, creating interest during the lull in the main melody.

Lastly, the bassline. In the same way that the 16th note run patterns match what the melody is doing, so does the bassline:

In this entire track, the bassline only occupies 3 distinct harmonic spaces:

1. C (&G) (Home)
2. Db (&Ab) (Increased Tension)
3. Bb (&F) (Relaxed)

The main theme starts at “Home” and moves to “Increased Tension” at key high points in the melody (0:17 and 0:25), which matches up with the increased movement in the middle voice.

At 0:30, we move to our 2nd theme—this section can be thought of as a lull in the action, a brief respite from those running chromatics before quickly returning to the fray. Aside from the missing chromatic 16th note runs, we also have the repeating bassline dip below the C&G pattern for the first time, into Bb&F (“Relaxed”), which acts as a sort of harmonic reinforcement for this lull in the track. Since we’ve mostly been moving upwards chromatically between C and D-flat in the bass (which creates tension), a full step down to B-flat creates a sense of calm and release. Melodically, this is the first time we’ve really strayed away from our syncopated rhythmic pattern—we’ve now moved to a rhythmically steady melody, which again reinforces the stability and calm in this section. Note however, that the defining “battle rhythm” hasn’t disappeared—it’s just gone into hiding in the middle voice.

One last key thing to realize is that throughout this time we’ve been talking about harmony, note that we’ve never really talked about the quality—that is to say, is the piece in C Major? C Minor? C something else? The music is actually written in a way that this is ambiguous—all we can really say is that we’re moving from C-something to Db-something and then down to Bb-something.

Now, let’s keep each of the characteristics of these 3 key musical elements in mind as we now move onto the next track:

Part 2: Evolution

vs Trainer: Harmonic and Melody Direction

Now that we’ve looked in detail at this first Vs Wild Pokemon track, we now have the terms, tools, and context to compare and contrast the other Battle Themes. Let’s look at Vs Trainer now:

The biggest contrast that immediately stands out to me is how melodic this track is in comparison to Vs Wild Pokemon.

This difference is clear even from the introduction section:

While the opening of Vs Wild Pokemon sounded “busy”, it was melodically “static”—in the same sort of way that a police siren is “busy” but not particularly melodic. Vs Trainer, on the other hand, has a very clear downwards melodic movement, and more of a harmonic motion as well—you feel as though the introductory section is “moving” somewhere and that it resolves at the end of its phrase, when the main track begins at 0:04. This is largely due to the bass movement that starts on B and moves down chromatically, finally resolving to B an octave down at the start of the main melody. The difference in perceived movement is even more obvious when you look at the “aural” view:

What’s cool about this view is that you can see how the top, middle, and bottom voices, while all moving downwards, are moving down at different rates—which is shown by the gradual opening up of interval distance so that by the end of the intro, the voices are much farther apart than when they started (it kind of looks like a pair of jaws opening up). This interval expansion naturally builds tension which is then resolved at 0:04 when the main track begins:

This first section from 0:04 to 0:14 is an introductory passage that sets up the new variation of our familiar syncopated rhythm:

The rhythm from vs Wild Pokemon:

vs the rhythm from vs Trainer—circled note gets broken out into 2 separate notes:

It’s a simple little change, but it’s just another level of complexity that builds upon our 3 basic concepts, which we will see more and more of as we progress through the 4 tracks. (Note, by the way, how the motifs above are the same, just inverted.)

Over this syncopated melody, the lower voice is a simple walking bassline that’s repeated every 2 measures, highlighting the interval of a 5th (in blue) that’s been characteristic of our basslines so far.

The middle voice takes this rhythmic motif first, and is then joined by the upper voice at 0:09, which moves up an octave at 0:12, again creating that interval expansion that we saw in the opening flourish, setting up for the intro of the main melody at 0:14:

Below is the first phrase of the melody, with our characteristic rhythm highlighted in purple. In red is the same sort of chromatic 16th note run we’ve seen before, while our familiar bassline is back in blue, this time with B as our “home”:

What stands out about this melodic section, compared to the previous vs Wild Pokemon track, is that we don’t have this constant “buzzing” of the chromatic runs in the middle voice anymore. Instead, the chromatic 16th notes only come out during the pauses in the melody to create interest during the lull, much like in the previous track. What’s important to note here is that in this track, these chromatic runs are now being “reserved” for this purpose and are not constantly buzzing away, which actually creates more textural contrast and makes this section sound much more interesting than its counterpart in vs Wild Pokemon.

What also stands out is the fact that the harmony in this track is much more fleshed out than in vs Wild Pokemon. Recall how in our first track, when we spoke about harmony we really just talked about 2 notes in the bassline creating an interval of a fifth. Note that two notes can only really suggest a harmony—while a triad, or group of 3 notes, is actually needed for a fully formed harmony.

For example, let’s take that repeating C&G bassline from vs Wild Pokemon. Those two notes suggest a C chord of some kind, but it’s ambiguous whether it’s C Major, C Minor, or something else. It’s only by having the 3rd note that we can really determine the quality or color of the chord—in our example, if the third note were E, it’d be a Major chord, and if it were E-flat, it’d be a Minor chord.

In vs Trainer, this missing third note of the triad is filled in by the middle voice. This means that I no longer have to talk about how this track moves “from B to C to B to A”—I can say that it moves from B minor to C Sus4 to B minor to A major.

It’s not that the specific qualities of these notes is important here—it’s the fact that they have quality at all, compared to sort of the empty “shell” harmonies that we had in vs Wild Pokemon. More important, it’s that this change in harmonic quality represents a shift in narrative energy. What do I mean by this?

Typically speaking, harmonic progression implies movement toward an ultimate goal, a resolution (of course, this is not always the case, but it’s helpful to think this way generally. More on this in my Chrono Trigger analysis). In our vs Wild Pokemon track, we only had 3 harmonic “shell” states (Home, Increased Tension, Relaxed). As you begin to fill in those harmonies with richer color and quality, you can begin to build more of a story, with increasing amounts of tension leading to bigger, more satisfying resolutions.

And so of course this makes sense given the difference in function of these 2 tracks. Wild Pokemon encounters are random and endless—out of our 4 tracks, it has the least “narrative” value. While your average trainer battle is not usually essential to the narrative of the game, at least there’s a finite amount, and a sense of progression as you defeat each one—and so appropriately, the harmonies in vs Trainer are fleshed out to support that greater narrative drive. As we move on, you’ll see this trend continue as harmonies become more and more complex to fit the appropriate narrative function of the track.

The last thing I want to point out before we move to vs Gym Leader is that while we looked at how syncopation drives the main melody, it also shows up in a new way in our middle voice and bassline.

Theme B (0:57 – 1:24):

Let’s examine the notes in purple in the middle line here. Where before the middle line was primarily used for the 16th note chromatic runs, they’re playing a much bigger role now in creating stronger harmony as we discussed above. But what’s interesting is the pattern—note how the middle voice is playing a repeated 3 note pattern, but because each bar can only accommodate 8 counts we get the same 3+3+2 pattern as our key battle rhythm. This exact same pattern occurs again at the end of the section in the bassline. It’s just another example of taking these building blocks (in this case the syncopated 2+2+3 pattern) and using it to generate new ideas.

vs Gym Leader: The Power of Contrast

The intro to the vs Gym Leader track, by itself, is a statement. Thinking about to how the intros to the other earlier tracks sounded (and looked), take a look now at the aural view of vs Gym Leader:

The first thing to note is how short each of these voices are, relative to how they were in the previous intros. Where our last 2 images looked like 4 steady melodic lines, this introduction looks more like a barrage of lightning bolts! As you’ll see, silence and space between our identified musical elements become more and more common as we move into the territory of boss battles. Why?

Because tension and release, or the shift between two contrasting things, is the basis of what makes music dynamic and exciting. The more often and more pronounced these contrasts are, the more “exciting” our music sounds. While vs Wild Pokemon and vs Trainer can be heard throughout the game constantly, there are only 8 Gym Leaders in the whole game, and so of course the music needs to feel different, special, elevated.

This change can be heard immediately in the bassline at 0:04, which mirrors the bassline of vs Wild Pokemon. Both basslines have this repeating figure that moves back and forth between an interval of a fifth, but notice how the length of the notes has changed—and how by simply shortening the length of the bass notes in vs Gym Leader, we suddenly have a much more “energized” bassline:

Compare vs Wild Pokemon (0:04):

to vs Gym Leader (0:04):

Theme A (0:13 – 0:23):

At 0:13 we have the main melody come in, and one thing should stand out immediately—this is the first time the 16th note runs in the middle voice are not chromatic:

What they are instead is an additional layer of harmony on top of the bassline, in the same way that middle section of vs Trainer was set up. In addition to that, there’s the same 3+3+2 syncopated rhythm going on here, except since this is at double speed it’s more like 2+3+3+3+3+3+3+3+3+3+3 (that’s 10 sets of 3) for a total of 32, across 2 bars (purple highlighted notes let you see this pattern more clearly).

In the same way that we had a more fleshed out harmony in vs Trainer, we can actually label the chords in this section as B Major and A Major.

By changing up the 16th note runs so that they now support the harmony instead of the dissonant “buzzing” that was the chromatic runs, the function of this middle voice has changed—it now plays a critical role in driving the harmonic progression of the track, which becomes a more and more interesting feature of these tracks as we progress.

Bridge to Theme B (0:24 to 0:28):

At the bridge, there’s a cool little callback here to the Pokemon Title Screen intro (compare the notes in green to 0:03 – 0:14 in the below example):

Title Theme

The reference here is purposeful—by quoting the game’s Main Theme, the track is elevating its importance and highlighting it for the player.

The other little thing to highlight here is how the notes in purple above break up the steady 1-2-3 pulse of bottom 2 voices and force the pattern to be “off phase” for the 2nd half of the bridge—just more rhythmic trickery to give the track more sense of urgency and drive.

Theme B (0:29 to 0:38)

This section looks and sounds a lot like our Theme A from vs Wild Pokemon, with one major difference: the bass is almost completely absent, save for a blip at the beginning of each bar. In the same way that the bassline at the beginning of this track sounded more “energized” due to the shorter note lengths, by putting just a blip in the bass at the beginning with stretches of silence, there’s a lot more tension in this section than before. Again, this is all about using increasing amounts of musical contrast to build drama.

Bridge to loop start (0:39 to 0:56)

There’s even more rhythmic contrast in this section, with the full 3-count pauses in the first 2 bars. But it’s the last 8 bars of this section, right before we loop back to the beginning, that are especially beautiful. The high point (not technically the highest but definitely the “important” one) in this track is the B in measure 37—it’s first resolved to with a simple B Major chord, but the second time we come to that B at measure 41, we’re expecting a new harmony, but we don’t quite get it. Instead, we get this insane cross-relation with the B-sharp at the end of bar 42 in the middle voice (0:54), followed by A and C# in the upper voice, extending this B Major chord into a B9 chord.

What’s important about this moment is it’s really the first time we’re seeing some more complex harmony, with the cross-relation and the dominant 9th chord working in conjunction with the climax of the track (that high B) to create a new level of harmonic drama that didn’t exist in the previous tracks.

vs Champion: Transformation

The vs Champion track is the real standout of the 4, which makes sense as it’s essentially the Final Boss music. The introductory flourish immediately makes this obvious:

While the chromaticism is still present in the middle voice (red), the main feature here is the upper voice (purple), which is just wild, zigzagging back and forth. The fact that the movement here isn’t chromatic (they’re 3rds and 4ths) is the primary reason this flourish sounds so different from the other 3. There’s actually a very cool mathematical progression here where every jump to that high C (marked in the bold purple line) is increasing in interval by exactly 5 semitones each time (first 5, then 10, 15, 20). The bassline in blue moves in 2 sets of half steps, creating the harmonic progression here.

The introductory passage to this final track, like vs Gym Leader, begins with some familiar music cast in a “super-energized” state—this time, each note is both halved in value and doubled up. Again, like in vs Gym Leader, this passage is a callback to the Main Theme (in Green), which elevates the gravitas of these two tracks over the others—there’s nothing like referencing the opening Theme at the very end of a game to signal importance:

Our harmony-defining fifths are still here (in blue), but what’s interesting is that while the harmony here is moving from E to F, then to G and G# (this is in fact a repeat of the blue voice in the opening flourish), the top and bottom notes are holding out E throughout this passage. The result is a blending of the two different harmonies, which creates a much stronger sense of harmonic tension at the end of this phrase than anywhere we’ve seen in the previous tracks. Again, with each successive track we see more and more harmonic complexity and with it, rising tension.

The following section uses these 16th note runs as a way of building upon what the upper voice was doing prior, this time filling out the octave jump from E to E with G and C, creating a C Major chord. This static C Major chord in the upper voice juxtaposed against the changing bottom voices adds even more to the harmonic tension:

At 0:15, we finally get our theme for this track—a descending chromatic line, with the last note jumping down. (This should look familiar—it’s the orange voice in the opening flourish.) This set of 3 successive chromatic movements is important as it not only defines the main melody of the track, but also the harmony.

In fact, what stands out most about the specific “sound” of vs Champion compared to the other battle themes is how important minor 2nds are to the harmonic progression. In the below passage, the highlighted notes in red show how the entire harmonic structure is moving down chromatically along with the melody:

In the next section beginning at 0:34, the chromatic harmonic movement continues—we begin an ascent that starts with an E dominant 7#9 chord, ending up all the way at Db7 (one half step shy of a full octave) before coming back down (in red):

What’s interesting about this chromatic harmonic movement is that while it differentiates vs Champion from the other 3 tracks, it’s still built on the same building blocks we identified at the very beginning—it’s just that the chromatic movement has shifted from the middle voice as a percussive “filler” to defining the actual harmonic structure of the track.

In the same passage, we’re also seeing syncopation play a big role in the upper voice:

What’s cool is that while this pattern looks different from our 3+3+2 pattern before, it works in the same way: here, we can think of a single rhythmic unit as an eighth note followed by a quarter (boxed):

The result, much like the syncopated pattern from the previous tracks, is this “leftover” 8th note at the end creating a sense of an incomplete bar, and a lurching forward as we speed into the next part of the phrase. The effect is even stronger than before because this time the rhythm is split up into 3+3+1 compared to 3+3+2—there are 7 total counts because the first 8th note count is being “stolen” by the note coming before it. Essentially, this is to say that the “lurch forward” effect of the syncopation is even stronger because the leftover note is even shorter than before. Like every other “Battle Building Block” that we’ve looked at in this analysis, vs Champion takes the established simple initial pattern and stretches it to its furthest, most high-drama state.

Takeaways: As is often the case, things are not as complex as they seem

These four Battle Themes are (like many good Gameboy tracks), stunningly economical. While there’s certainly more going on than what I’ve covered in this analysis, structurally there are just a few pillars that hold all the tracks together, and a steady natural progression and evolution of those pillars as we move from random encounter, to battle, to boss battle, to final boss. It’s an excellent example of how composing economically can imbue a soundtrack with a sense of unity.

To summarize how each musical element has evolved:

1. Chromaticism started out as a sort of filler tool for the middle voice to create a sense of “busyness” in vs Wild Pokemon. We saw this being dialed down and used more judiciously in vs Trainer and vs Gym Leader to generate contrast as opposed to a constant “buzzing.” Finally, in vs Champion, we shifted from using chromaticism melodically to actually defining the harmonic progression of the track.
2. Harmonies started out as simple shells, defined by an empty fifth in vs Wild Pokemon. In vs Trainer we begin seeing them fleshed out to Major and Minor chords, and in vs Gym Leader we see our first real extended harmony in the climax of that track with a dominant 9th chord. In vs Champion, extended harmonies pervade the music and we see uses of pedal points and suspensions as well, all to create a heightened sense of tension and resolution.
3. Syncopation in the form of our “3+3+2” pattern defines much of the rhythm for the first 3 tracks. As we progress from vs Wild Pokemon to vs Trainer, we see embellishments on this 3+3+2 pattern, and in vs Gym Leader we see that pattern blown up to double speed. In vs Champion, our “3+3+2” pattern becomes “3+3+1” with the first beat “stolen” by a hold-over note from a previous bar.

In addition to the above, we saw how by shortening the lengths of notes, or by doubling them up, we can add energy and tension to track without even rewriting the music (vs Gym Leader and vs Champion). We also saw how bringing in motifs from the Main Theme can imbue the track with an elevated sense of importance.

I hope you enjoyed this analysis! Let me know your thoughts in the comments, which battle track is your favorite, which melody gets stuck in your head more than the others, or any other thoughts on the Pokemon soundtrack—I’d love to hear them!

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