(The example game in question I'll be examining is The Last Story, composed by Nobuo Uematsu - a famous composer responsible for scoring much of the Final Fantasy series, Chrono Trigger and an assortment of other games)
Music is always a tricky thing to talk about since the ability of people who "like music" ranges from "tone deaf" to "perfect pitch", but I'll do my best to bring a good amount of detail while keeping it accessible.
Using The Last Story (Wii, 2011) as a case study, I'm going to examine the appropriate use of music in different scenarios - and why it's effective. Nobuo Uematsu is regarded as one of the best composers around and this game was no exception to his good streak, containing some of his best pieces to date.
Yet The Last Story is a different case. For the first time since his work on Final Fantasy 1 on NES, The Last Story almost made Uematsu quit working on the game. He submitted a batch of songs and ideas that were very much in the classic RPG mould, which was outright rejected by his long-time friend and director of the game, Sakaguchi. During his second music submission, which happened a month after his first was rejected, Uematsu said in an e-mail to Sakaguchi that he might leave the project if Sakaguchi still felt the compositions didn't fit his vision of the game.
For a veteran composer to "fundamentally change the way [he] approached the task" is no small feat, which is why I'm taking The Last Story in particular as a case study.
The Last Story tries to strike a balance between traditional game music and movie music. Rather than the traditional video game emphasis on melodies, jingles and motifs that are a common constant throughout different songs, The Last Story focuses far more on ambience. This is evident from the theme of the town itself, one you will hear quite a lot. Take a piece of town music from Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask - two games renowned for their music aside from everything else.
- In Kakariko Village, the main melody repeats in a varied form after just 36 seconds, clearly in an attempt to have a recognisable motif (a recurring idea) throughout the song while maintaining a bit of variation.
- In Clock Town from Majora's Mask, the first motif is set up and is then repeated immediately afterwards. Then a short second melody is brought in and repeated. Finally, a short string interlude is repeated a few times before reprising the main melody from the start. A surprisingly straightforward composition, almost too simple for some people! The song, excluding the jingle at the start, spans from just 0:17 to 1:14 before looping - less than a minute long. Clock Town clearly focuses on a melody, and this is used to good effect as the melody is re-introduced in different parts later in the game in twisted, more sinister pieces. It is by no means a bad piece because it is short, but it is a prime example of melody-based composition in games.
So let's look at The Last Story's town theme for a comparison. A very different approach; there is very little in the way of a recurring melody. There is no recognisable "jingle", but a very ambient and atmospheric sound that tries to present the idea of a town in the form of music. There is, however, one use of a musical motif; at 2:05, the game's main theme is briefly mentioned as the only recognisable part of the song. Otherwise, the song is both constant and evolving. The song uses much of the same sound, dominated by a flute and clicks and clacks (meant to simulate the sounds of a town) for the first two minutes before moving on to another "section" that sounds totally different.
The transition is smooth, but from just before the two minute mark, a change is obvious. A marimba is brought in to populate the sound scape, and a woodwind instrument plays the game's main melody over it. A short interlude breaking up very different sounding sections of the same piece.
Once that section is finished, a string-dominated section comes in. If you pay attention, a flute can be heard in parts of the background, but the piece is otherwise made up of a variety of string instruments for the next minute before a simple "clack" sound brings us straight back to the beginning.
That's three minutes of very contrasting and different music. Yet all of it fits in the style of a town. Indeed, the music does an excellent job of conveying a town that is not futuristic, nor antiquated; it is clearly set in an older time, with a scorched look on many of the bricks and rocks as the town seems to be denied some of its beauty by overbearing sunlight. In my opinion, the atmospheric approach the music takes in this game is very effective.
So how about a different type of music? I'll examine a few other extremes - sad music, crazy music, romantic music and battle music.
To begin with, The Last Story has quite a few elements of tragedy; without spoiling anything, one is when Zael achieves his goal of becoming a knight to help people, only for his very first mission to be mercilessly raiding a civilian village with other knights. To quote the narrator's introduction to Chapter 29 of the game:
"And with that, the Lazulis [knights] broke into Gurak Castle. However, what they saw were not enemy soldiers, but women and children, panicking as they tried to flee."
This clearly sets up a horrible, twisted tone as well as sadness and anger; Zael's dream of helping people as a knight comes to a horrible conclusion and his protests are in vain as the other knights ransack the city. As a cutscene plays demonstrating the horror of their actions, this music plays in the background. Using a poignant piano as the leading instrument, with nothing extra for the beginning of the song except a slow, melancholic melody and minor chords to convey sadness.
The sharp raises the note by a semitone, so the only difference in their sound is that the middle note is raised. So by introducing D# instead of D, the song tries to create a happier, major sound in what is clearly a sad piece. Not only that, but immediately afterwards, the song continues to sound minor. Why? Well, there's actually a very clever explanation for this. The next resolution (the point at which the song tries to find a sense of finality usually in the first chord of the key) is at 2:30... and resolves to E major. What the game has just done is modulated (changed key) with incredible subtlety. Had I not stopped to break this song down, I would not have noticed at what point this song shifts its key; but it is this subtle movement and change of direction that makes this piece really shine, and separates it from any sad song with a bit of incredibly clever composition to subvert your expectations. It not only changes key by quite some distance, but resolves a very sad, mostly minor song to a major chord that is almost half an octave away from the original base. It's incredibly clever, subtle and a powerful piece of music.
(I think after all of that writing I can be spared a comparison.)
So after that essay, it's time for another one. Insanity is a very interesting thing to try and convey through music, because you have to create a song that sounds erratic and discomforting but it has to be coherent and "work" as a musical piece. Here are two pieces from The Last Story; this is one from an evil character who is consistently unlikeable throughout the game and the game has to try and demonstrate that in music. Here is one of his main themes on his descent to madness, and here is the music that plays during your final encounter with him. While the ambient songs of The Last Story tend to use atmospheric ambient sounds rather than use motifs and melodies, characters tend to have common motifs that change in their style with the characters themselves.
Firstly, breaking down Declining Nobles. This song starts in F minor. The music sets up disease from the very beginning; the melody jumps from F up to E flat (Eb), which is a distance of a minor 7th away. This gives it an unresolved sound. After a few jumps to Eb, it jumps to G, breaking the expectation, then does it one more time before jumping to E. This is a really strange progression; while Eb and G are both in F minor, E is an odd note as it is just one semitone below the tonic (main note of the key), F - which sounds unusual in a minor key and is often used for suspension, as we saw in the sad piece. So within the first 10 seconds, we have quite a lot of discomforting melody work, but it gets even better. This melody repeats, but jumps to Bb then Ab instead of E. This actually does resolve the chord of F minor, which is brilliant. The listener expects E here, but instead, the song ironically makes us uncomfortable by throwing that expectation of tension out and providing unexpected resolution. The next melody (0:26-0:34) is not offensive, but is important for setting up something that is. With a guitar sprinkled in the background to provide a bit of variance, this melody changes significantly on its reprise at 0:39. It starts on the same note, but changes so dramatically that it changes key. It uses a clever piece of musical technique called tri-tone substitution to change key. The explanation is complicated, but put it this way; the melody the first time around starts as Ab, F, Eb, and this time it goes Ab, Gb, E and descends in its new key. In other words, the notes shift up a semitone. But while this change might give the impression of moving to E major (a weird change indeed!), it returns to F minor before it even finishes. The full melody for the second time is Ab, Gb, E, Eb, Db, Ab, Bb, C. Up to the Ab here, you might think it has gone to E major, as this suits the new key up to this point. However, it throws in Bb, which is interesting as this is a tri-tone (the furthest possible distance between two notes) away from E, moving our key back, and resolves to C - which is the dominant note of F minor. So we have smoothly transitioned between F minor, E major and back within one phase!
The final part of this song worth talking about is at 1:11, the final 6 notes before an interlude brings us back to the beginning. These notes are the most important in the song because they throw any hopes of a consistent key out the window! They are D, Gb, E, repeated once. D is not just out of both Fm and E, but E7 - the most suspended possible chord of E, looking to move anywhere else - is E with D at the end of it! So clearly, even though Gb and E are fine in the key, D throws us off. It’s a song full of musical twists and turns that I could make a video on, but my video skills are poor and I did promise an article!
Fortunately, the battle version of this theme reuses most of the trademarks of Declining Nobles. However, it introduces one or two parts worth talking about. To begin with, this song should be very recognisable but very different in its battle form, now in the key of E minor as well. It brings back the motifs established in his normal character theme in an aggressive form, backed with the unusual help of an orchestra and a distorted guitar in the style of surfing music! Up to 2:42, it is basically a revamped version of this character’s old theme. However, it introduces an interesting new progression at 2:42.
Not only that, but the fact it changes to A minor immediately afterward breaks things even further. Am is the relative minor of C, so the song does manage to connect in that way, and furthermore Am to F is a nice progression. However, it’s when we get to Em to B at 2:50 that things get really interesting. Em -> B is the same thing as we heard in the sad song, a major dominant progression, and the way the game plays it here is one of the strongest, most suspenseful ways possible. The violin plays a sustained G note while the distorted guitar hammers the note B (the common note) for our chord of Em, before the violin slides down a half-step to Gb, bringing us to B. Finally, every other instrument goes silent and a flute plays F# and B to complete our chord of B - before the song brings us straight back to the beginning without skipping a beat! The brilliant thing about this is that the flute, finishing on B, can seamlessly bring us back to E minor - our main chord.
Well, that brings us to the end of this article. I'm sure there are points here where anyone would get lost - that's the nature of a 15,000 character article about something as confusing as music. However, if there's anything to take away from this, there is an immense amount of depth in the best pieces of video game music that go well beyond the surface level to create the sound the composer and designers want. Thank you for reading.
Music is always a tricky thing to talk about since the ability of people who "like music" ranges from "tone deaf" to "perfect pitch", but I'll do my best to bring a good amount of detail while keeping it accessible.
Using The Last Story (Wii, 2011) as a case study, I'm going to examine the appropriate use of music in different scenarios - and why it's effective. Nobuo Uematsu is regarded as one of the best composers around and this game was no exception to his good streak, containing some of his best pieces to date.
Yet The Last Story is a different case. For the first time since his work on Final Fantasy 1 on NES, The Last Story almost made Uematsu quit working on the game. He submitted a batch of songs and ideas that were very much in the classic RPG mould, which was outright rejected by his long-time friend and director of the game, Sakaguchi. During his second music submission, which happened a month after his first was rejected, Uematsu said in an e-mail to Sakaguchi that he might leave the project if Sakaguchi still felt the compositions didn't fit his vision of the game.
For a veteran composer to "fundamentally change the way [he] approached the task" is no small feat, which is why I'm taking The Last Story in particular as a case study.
The Last Story tries to strike a balance between traditional game music and movie music. Rather than the traditional video game emphasis on melodies, jingles and motifs that are a common constant throughout different songs, The Last Story focuses far more on ambience. This is evident from the theme of the town itself, one you will hear quite a lot. Take a piece of town music from Ocarina of Time or Majora's Mask - two games renowned for their music aside from everything else.
- In Kakariko Village, the main melody repeats in a varied form after just 36 seconds, clearly in an attempt to have a recognisable motif (a recurring idea) throughout the song while maintaining a bit of variation.
- In Clock Town from Majora's Mask, the first motif is set up and is then repeated immediately afterwards. Then a short second melody is brought in and repeated. Finally, a short string interlude is repeated a few times before reprising the main melody from the start. A surprisingly straightforward composition, almost too simple for some people! The song, excluding the jingle at the start, spans from just 0:17 to 1:14 before looping - less than a minute long. Clock Town clearly focuses on a melody, and this is used to good effect as the melody is re-introduced in different parts later in the game in twisted, more sinister pieces. It is by no means a bad piece because it is short, but it is a prime example of melody-based composition in games.
So let's look at The Last Story's town theme for a comparison. A very different approach; there is very little in the way of a recurring melody. There is no recognisable "jingle", but a very ambient and atmospheric sound that tries to present the idea of a town in the form of music. There is, however, one use of a musical motif; at 2:05, the game's main theme is briefly mentioned as the only recognisable part of the song. Otherwise, the song is both constant and evolving. The song uses much of the same sound, dominated by a flute and clicks and clacks (meant to simulate the sounds of a town) for the first two minutes before moving on to another "section" that sounds totally different.
The transition is smooth, but from just before the two minute mark, a change is obvious. A marimba is brought in to populate the sound scape, and a woodwind instrument plays the game's main melody over it. A short interlude breaking up very different sounding sections of the same piece.
Once that section is finished, a string-dominated section comes in. If you pay attention, a flute can be heard in parts of the background, but the piece is otherwise made up of a variety of string instruments for the next minute before a simple "clack" sound brings us straight back to the beginning.
That's three minutes of very contrasting and different music. Yet all of it fits in the style of a town. Indeed, the music does an excellent job of conveying a town that is not futuristic, nor antiquated; it is clearly set in an older time, with a scorched look on many of the bricks and rocks as the town seems to be denied some of its beauty by overbearing sunlight. In my opinion, the atmospheric approach the music takes in this game is very effective.
So how about a different type of music? I'll examine a few other extremes - sad music, crazy music, romantic music and battle music.
To begin with, The Last Story has quite a few elements of tragedy; without spoiling anything, one is when Zael achieves his goal of becoming a knight to help people, only for his very first mission to be mercilessly raiding a civilian village with other knights. To quote the narrator's introduction to Chapter 29 of the game:
"And with that, the Lazulis [knights] broke into Gurak Castle. However, what they saw were not enemy soldiers, but women and children, panicking as they tried to flee."
This clearly sets up a horrible, twisted tone as well as sadness and anger; Zael's dream of helping people as a knight comes to a horrible conclusion and his protests are in vain as the other knights ransack the city. As a cutscene plays demonstrating the horror of their actions, this music plays in the background. Using a poignant piano as the leading instrument, with nothing extra for the beginning of the song except a slow, melancholic melody and minor chords to convey sadness.
At 0:20, it uses F# major in the key of B minor. This is a very important chord because it represents suspension; a major dominant chord (dominant: 5th note of a key; do, re, mi, fa, so) in a minor key creates a suspended sound and creates tension. This is a further contrast because the rest of the song uses minor chords almost exclusively - and you can hear it. The strings largely play second fiddle to the piano for the first two minutes, but from around 1:50, they swell and become a more important part of the arrangement. They are made louder, more dramatic and add extra emotion and much-needed dynamics and variation to a piano melody. Also, at 2:00, something interesting happens as the strings become more prominent; without changing from the key of B minor, D# is introduced as the song resolves. What's the significance of that? Well, D# is not in B minor, but not only that - D# is one of the main things that separates B minor and B major. The chord of B major is B, D#, F#, and the chord of B minor is B, D, F#. What do you notice?
The sharp raises the note by a semitone, so the only difference in their sound is that the middle note is raised. So by introducing D# instead of D, the song tries to create a happier, major sound in what is clearly a sad piece. Not only that, but immediately afterwards, the song continues to sound minor. Why? Well, there's actually a very clever explanation for this. The next resolution (the point at which the song tries to find a sense of finality usually in the first chord of the key) is at 2:30... and resolves to E major. What the game has just done is modulated (changed key) with incredible subtlety. Had I not stopped to break this song down, I would not have noticed at what point this song shifts its key; but it is this subtle movement and change of direction that makes this piece really shine, and separates it from any sad song with a bit of incredibly clever composition to subvert your expectations. It not only changes key by quite some distance, but resolves a very sad, mostly minor song to a major chord that is almost half an octave away from the original base. It's incredibly clever, subtle and a powerful piece of music.
(I think after all of that writing I can be spared a comparison.)
So after that essay, it's time for another one. Insanity is a very interesting thing to try and convey through music, because you have to create a song that sounds erratic and discomforting but it has to be coherent and "work" as a musical piece. Here are two pieces from The Last Story; this is one from an evil character who is consistently unlikeable throughout the game and the game has to try and demonstrate that in music. Here is one of his main themes on his descent to madness, and here is the music that plays during your final encounter with him. While the ambient songs of The Last Story tend to use atmospheric ambient sounds rather than use motifs and melodies, characters tend to have common motifs that change in their style with the characters themselves.
Firstly, breaking down Declining Nobles. This song starts in F minor. The music sets up disease from the very beginning; the melody jumps from F up to E flat (Eb), which is a distance of a minor 7th away. This gives it an unresolved sound. After a few jumps to Eb, it jumps to G, breaking the expectation, then does it one more time before jumping to E. This is a really strange progression; while Eb and G are both in F minor, E is an odd note as it is just one semitone below the tonic (main note of the key), F - which sounds unusual in a minor key and is often used for suspension, as we saw in the sad piece. So within the first 10 seconds, we have quite a lot of discomforting melody work, but it gets even better. This melody repeats, but jumps to Bb then Ab instead of E. This actually does resolve the chord of F minor, which is brilliant. The listener expects E here, but instead, the song ironically makes us uncomfortable by throwing that expectation of tension out and providing unexpected resolution. The next melody (0:26-0:34) is not offensive, but is important for setting up something that is. With a guitar sprinkled in the background to provide a bit of variance, this melody changes significantly on its reprise at 0:39. It starts on the same note, but changes so dramatically that it changes key. It uses a clever piece of musical technique called tri-tone substitution to change key. The explanation is complicated, but put it this way; the melody the first time around starts as Ab, F, Eb, and this time it goes Ab, Gb, E and descends in its new key. In other words, the notes shift up a semitone. But while this change might give the impression of moving to E major (a weird change indeed!), it returns to F minor before it even finishes. The full melody for the second time is Ab, Gb, E, Eb, Db, Ab, Bb, C. Up to the Ab here, you might think it has gone to E major, as this suits the new key up to this point. However, it throws in Bb, which is interesting as this is a tri-tone (the furthest possible distance between two notes) away from E, moving our key back, and resolves to C - which is the dominant note of F minor. So we have smoothly transitioned between F minor, E major and back within one phase!
It gets better, though. At 0:52 we hear another tri-tone - B in the key of Fm - and the melody goes B C D C B A Ab A Ab Gb Ab E. Notice the amount of chromatic movement (moving in half-steps, or semitones) in this; B and C are a semitone away, and so are A and Ab. Chromatics create a sense of unease, and even without spelling out the notes you can hear the disconcerting sound it goes for. Even more importantly, multiple notes break our key; B, D and A are all not in F minor, giving us a very odd sound. The reprise of this melody at 0:59 actually brings us into E major! The melody this time goes B C D E D C B Bb Ab Gb E. The bass line moves in just two notes; F to E. Isolating the notes, B, Ab and E is a complete chord of E major. Combined with the bass line accompanying it, we get a clear key change to a key that is not just a semitone away, but is also now a major key. It’s very disconcerting and effective.
The final part of this song worth talking about is at 1:11, the final 6 notes before an interlude brings us back to the beginning. These notes are the most important in the song because they throw any hopes of a consistent key out the window! They are D, Gb, E, repeated once. D is not just out of both Fm and E, but E7 - the most suspended possible chord of E, looking to move anywhere else - is E with D at the end of it! So clearly, even though Gb and E are fine in the key, D throws us off. It’s a song full of musical twists and turns that I could make a video on, but my video skills are poor and I did promise an article!
Fortunately, the battle version of this theme reuses most of the trademarks of Declining Nobles. However, it introduces one or two parts worth talking about. To begin with, this song should be very recognisable but very different in its battle form, now in the key of E minor as well. It brings back the motifs established in his normal character theme in an aggressive form, backed with the unusual help of an orchestra and a distorted guitar in the style of surfing music! Up to 2:42, it is basically a revamped version of this character’s old theme. However, it introduces an interesting new progression at 2:42.
From 2:42 to 2:56, the chord progression goes A, C, Am, F, Em, B! Some musicians might spot how odd that is right off the bat. A major and C major are very different chords that are dissonant between them; A major is A, C# and E, while C is C, E, G. They share one note in common, one note a semitone away, and one note a tone away! So the result of combining these two is an unsettling sound.
Not only that, but the fact it changes to A minor immediately afterward breaks things even further. Am is the relative minor of C, so the song does manage to connect in that way, and furthermore Am to F is a nice progression. However, it’s when we get to Em to B at 2:50 that things get really interesting. Em -> B is the same thing as we heard in the sad song, a major dominant progression, and the way the game plays it here is one of the strongest, most suspenseful ways possible. The violin plays a sustained G note while the distorted guitar hammers the note B (the common note) for our chord of Em, before the violin slides down a half-step to Gb, bringing us to B. Finally, every other instrument goes silent and a flute plays F# and B to complete our chord of B - before the song brings us straight back to the beginning without skipping a beat! The brilliant thing about this is that the flute, finishing on B, can seamlessly bring us back to E minor - our main chord.
Well, that brings us to the end of this article. I'm sure there are points here where anyone would get lost - that's the nature of a 15,000 character article about something as confusing as music. However, if there's anything to take away from this, there is an immense amount of depth in the best pieces of video game music that go well beyond the surface level to create the sound the composer and designers want. Thank you for reading.
hmmm I'm a terrible pirate lol
