Analyzing the Orchestration of Skyward Sword - feat.
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- Опубликовано: 28 июн 2024
- Orchestration is one of my weaker points in musical analysis, so I brought on fellow music RUclipsr Christopher Siu to help analyze the orchestration of the Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword's Sky Theme. It's a bit of a more casual format, but I think there's a lot here to enjoy!
Check out Chris's channel for more orchestration tips: / @christophersiu
Check out Chris's 'Orchestration Essentials' here: www.christophersiu.com/8bit
0:00 - Intro
2:21 - Sky Theme Intro
6:48 - A Section
14:46 - A' Section
22:30 - B Section
26:10 - B' Section
28:19 - Ending / Loop Back to Intro
33:15 - Chris's Orchestration Essentials
PATREON: / 8bitmusictheory
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#Zelda #SkywardSword #8bitMusicTheory 
Игры
Thanks so much for having me Ben - this was a blast to nerd over! And thanks to everyone for watching. Really hope you enjoyed it!
Before watching the video, I saw “ft. @ChristopherSiu” and thought “Who’s that?”
And immediately clicked his profile and subscribed. If he’s approved to be on this channel, that’s an insta-sub for me!
@@joshuaj.knowles3664 Haha that's amazing. Thank you so much!
Your commentary was so informative, thank you for sharing your insight!
@@Kithara1117 My pleasure! So glad you enjoyed it. :)
It was awesome! Thank you both.
8-Bit looks EXACTLY how I expected in the video gamey music nerdiest possible way
I don't know what I expected, but a really cute/charming version of Bubbles from Trailer Park Boys was not it. I was smiling uncontrollably from the fact that he's both simultaneously dorky and adorable, with the curly hair and the big grin. Ofc, as you said, I mean this all with the most love I can possibly give
brother what
Saw him perform live at MAGfest this year. He is a joy to listen to honestly.
hes kind of cute 😳
@@BloodReverenceOMG RIGHT 😳😳 my face hurts from smiling😂
Skyward Sword came with a mini-OST to show off the orchestration and it was the last CD I ever used in a car.
We need more videos like this once in a while! Having a guest was a really fun idea, I loved Christopher’s insight in the analysis
Thank you so much!!
What a magical game skyward sword is.
Absolutely wonderful.
Definitely, the sky music is so nostalgic to me I was hit with a wave of memories of playing just listening to it
It's a shame it got so much criticism for its controls and linearity, the story is beautiful
@@eboone I know, right? It's one of my favorite Zelda games.
@@TheRealRidley12 same
In the video you credit Hajime Wakai as the arranger but it should be noted that Super Mario Galaxy composer Mahito Yokota was the orchestration director for Skyward Sword.
Sources:
1. Iwata Asks: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword | Vol. 6: The Dense Script and Direction | 5. ''Record It with an Orchestra!''
2. Iwata Asks: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D Sound
christopher's smile is contagious and every dentist would approve
My family owns a practice. I’ll let them know 😂
Underrated game in both mechanics, environment, and soundtrack. Loved seeing this broken down!
I know you just did a zelda analysis, but could you do some analysis of tears of the kingdom? lol.
The Cumulonimbus, frozen rito villiage, rito villiage (same from botw), wind temple and Colgera fight would be a great group to analyse because they tie into each other so well. I'm big into motifs and this area just freaked me out haha.
AHHH I LOVE THIS. I loved watching the live orchestration of the intro. There's something that just makes you wanna get out there epicly with the horns.
When I heard the first part of the song it reminded me of Star Fox, I had no idea that the composer was the same, but his style is noticeable.
Oh wow, I literally just started replaying Skyward Sword today. I absolutely love the soundtrack
It's easily one of the best Zeldas, so enjoy! No other Zelda has these many important and well written characters + character developments which make the game really organic and emotional which the music ties together nicely!
My favorite Zelda game mechanically. An incredible game in an artistic sense as well. I really wish they would have expanded on the system on the switch. Skyward was such an amazing game.
Its controls (and Twilight Princess's on Wii) are actually really interesting, being able to perform different slashes depending on how you move the Wiimote/right Joy-Con.
Skyward Sword has one of the best overall Zelda soundtracks imo. The Faron Woods theme is probably my favorite Zelda song ever! Those rich woodsy tones
Yeah. This game's music is _so_ good! Thank God this wonderful game exists!
Great video! Love this idea of bringing in other people for topics you don't feel strong about - would happily watch more!
I would love to see more collabs where you geek out about music with other music geeks like this! I love your usual content too but it would be super rad to see more like this
One of my favorite soundtracks ever! Inspired me to study music composition
8-BIT!!! Thank you for coming out with this GREAT content! I absolutely love watching your videos, and an excited you're still enthusiastic about analyzing video game music. Here's to many more videos!
Love this sort of guest-feature format! Both of your guys' analyses and insights are so interesting to listen to
I love this game so much and it’s what originally got me into video game music! Thanks so much for the awesome video!
This is awesome. Thanks for taking the time to add in the chords and all the editing because it makes a huge difference! Really loved this content.
Excelent video! I really like the idea of having guests in your videos. Keep them coming!
Great commentary from both of you! Nice job
One of my favorite games and soundtracks of all time!
Thank you so much for covering this! This is my favorite zelda game
Yes! Please keep these videos coming!
I really like this video format it feels extremely approachable and laid back. Very nice
No way!! One of my favorite channels analyzing my favorite Zelda game of all time? Dude, such a great day!!!
Really great video, as always!
This is the first Zelda game I ever played, and even though I have mixed feelings on the gameplay at this point, the music is still some of my favorite (as well as the characters!). Thanks for this video! Hearing these songs again brought back a lot of memories, and I think I've still got the 25th anniversary medley CD around somewhere
fantastic collab! orchestration is one of the things that really makes the zelda games stand out and im so happy it has gotten its own video, thank you!
This is great! A youtuber I’ve followed before he became recognized and someone I didn’t know talking about the most divisive Zelda game’s music. Today is a good day; tomorrow will be better.
i put this video on to watch while eating but had to turn it off because i kept tearing up! it's so lovely watching people passionately talk about something i also deeply care about. i hope that enthusiasm stays with you forever!
Yes!! I absolutely ADORE this soundtrack! So excited!
I really like this conversation kind of video!
I liked having the additional perspective, but I wonder if it would have been better if it was a bit more organized. Love your content!
I'm from am orchestral musical background, with some branching into music theory beyond orchestral, so there are always moments in most 8bmt where i go 'ok yes cool i dont completely get the theory but it sounds cool'
So having Christopher and his knowledge of orchestral balancing and the different tones each instrument uses, was me very excitedly going 'OH YEAH!' when he points out cool things (like bassoon + oboe + cello OF COURSE are a wonderful blend because of the tones they make and i didnt really have that click UNTIL Chris said that).
Best collab, im going to go back to geeking out about Zelda music.
P.S. Chris, if you see this message, what orchestral instrument would you say you 'main'? Always curious about peoples preference to play.
Haha so glad you enjoyed! Great question - I'm definitely a pianist first, but I've actually dabbled at least a bit in each orchestral section. I played violin from age 7-12 or so, flute and piccolo in middle/high school, and tried trombone for a bit before going into uni for piano performance! I absolutely think it helps to have at least a bit of experience in as many instruments as you can, so you can put yourself in the mind of the player when writing for them.
Chris!! great to see you absolutly smashing it mate! keep it up!!!
Appreciate you DJ!
Thank you! This was my favorite game as a kid, and it’s still the best zelda imo. The score always brings me back.
The nostalgia is real !
So funny how everybody has a different Zelda game as their favourite. I guess it depends very much at what age you played it. Mine is Windwaker, I played it when I was about 12 and there couldn’t be a better one for me.
It's not my favorite, but it was the first game I ever got on launch day and it holds a very special place in my heart. Really delightful video game experience
My first Zelda game :)
Thank you for covering this game!😊
I dig this format. I'm a music nerd, so I enjoy these deep dives and discussions.
The patrons need to tell him to look at battle block theaters music, it's the strangest and I want to say wacky sort of sound and I love it.
I have literally no idea what these two nice men are saying.
My favorite channel covering my favorite OST of all time? I have never clicked on a video faster
"It opens up this expansive view of the sky in front of you" --> "...he worked on Wind Waker before he did Skyward Sword" The Sky is The Great Sea!
Great video as always! I don't know if this would mess with copyright and/or pacing, but I think it would be cool if you ended your videos by playing the entire track alongside the transcription. It would help tie everything together and show how all the details interact to make a cohesive piece of music.
What a coincidence! I was just watching Christopher's reviews of Thomas Bergersen's Humanity albums. And now he's in your video!
Hey hey!!
I'm glad to see this game get some love!
I don't think I can physically express how much Zelda as a series means to me, especially the music. As an orchestral musician I'm a sucker for huge majestic orchestration, and the constant tugging on my heartstrings definitely doesn't hurt.
A have a great memory of having the 25th anniversary soundtrack and trying to play along on my euphonium back in middle school
okay now he HAS to cover the pikmin soundtracks
Another one of the videos where I have absolutely no idea what most of the terms mean, although it is nice to hear it explained!
I love Skyward Sword so much! I would love if you could look at some more of its music, specifically Ghirahim's theme.
I think it would have been a great meme to have the webcam be 8bit(or him being represented by an 8bit character) even just for 10sec before face reveal
That would have been neat
Yeah, what Chris said at 19:54 is crucial for orchestration; you need to keep in mind what your lower interval limits are, or else the chord will sound muddy. The more terse the interval the higher up the lower interval limit is: octaves sound consonant no matter what so they don't have a lower interval limit, but something like a major 3rd can't be played as F2 and A2 without there being a bit of mud because of the way the overtone series works. Since the major 3rd is the 5th overtone in the series, putting a major 3rd in the second octave would drop the fundamental down to like, F0, which is really only desirable as an explicitly intended effect, just like using a b9 extension
Yup!
I've always loved Skyward Sword's soundtrack in general (mostly because of nostalgia lol), and I'm so glad I could finally find someone going into detail on it
Very cool! Love these breakdowns. Are we ever going to get a Mario and Luigi song breakdown?
i recently found your channel through your touhou video when my touhou interest was at an all time high and i think it would be cool if you talked about some music from the len'en project series! the series similar to touhou in the sense that its a danmaku series made by one guy but i feel like jynx does some really crazy stuff in their music.. eternal dance engine and mo-na-d-2 (and mo-na-d-1 being mo-na-d-2 but vastly more threatening) are the most interesting to me
man i wish i could have that christopher guys house! it looks really quaint and perfect for me!
If you're talking about at the beginning of the video, I wish I had that house too 😅
I think the loop back is fine. The transition to C#m in the first place seems like a deliberate choice to set up the C# and D movement in the opening bars. The loop back sets up that alternating pattern in the backdrop of a kind of D tonality which then resolves to the same movement over the G tonality of the intro. Either way, really cool to learn how these harmonies were enhanced by the instrument choices and why sparsity was used to emphasize the sections with lower register melodies/instruments.
Glad you enjoyed it - thank you!
YESSSS I'm glad ss finally gets love it often didn't back in the day
yooooo !!! i love skyward sword! seeing this video made me excited lmao
the OST for this game is everything to me. most of it being orchestral was so amazing i loved it. this vid was very cool (even if i'm not very good when it comes to analyzing music lol;;; most of the time i'm like: song good. i love it a lot
Skyward Sword was my first Zelda game and it was absolute magic from start to finish, it changed my life
The B-section really reminds me of Star Wars. I think it might be very close to one of the soundtracks of the original trilogy.
Skyward Sword has some of the best composed music in the series; it’s a toss-up between that, Breath of the Wild, and Wind Waker. You could spend ages just listening to the Romance in the Air cue and never get tired.
botw has shitty music. and that isn't a bad thing it fits the game. but having music that fits doesn't mean it is good music. Saying that botw is up there with masterpiece osts like in ss and ww is stupid.
@@homosapien7316 HEYYY, I get where you're coming from but do NOT diss my boy kass' theme (indirectly)
Bless my favorite game
7:35 Ive been doing a remake if Final Fantasy I’s music and one of the battle themes on the like final part, I had every melody, harmony, and bass line quadrupled and it just gave it such an epic feel!!
10:43 the call and response line made me remember that I did a similar thing in the same orchestration right before where the brass and strings take turns on the melody as a call and response before building to the quadrupled lines! Its really cool to essentially be affirmed that you are orchestrating music correctly
Excellent, in-depth video as always! And great new format for this channel. However, this being an audio/music video I do have to mention the stereo issues on Siu's mic are quite jarring.
My apologies! Yes I agree, I should have triple-checked the processing before exporting my vocal file. I think it's the de-esser causing the issue. Appreciate your feedback!
@@ChristopherSiu cheers mate, great analysis otherwise! :)
At the very end, there's some sort of xylophony thing that sounds like the Pikmin end of day count down. I'd never noticed that before, but dang if that doesn't make sense now.
Please do a followup on the compositional techniques of Tears of the Kingdom's non-atmospheric tracks.
into this video style
Just want to start by saying I have no idea if there's a particular element of this that you would want to look at, but the whole thing is amazing, so I figured I'd mention it. If there is something to talk about then you have a new video idea, and if not then I've just shared a soundtrack that I think it really good and hopefully let more people discover it.
I have a suggestion for a game soundtrack to look at: the Dyson Sphere Program soundtrack. It's amazing, and I think should be interesting to look at. My personal favorite track is Auroral, but every track is amazing, and there's people with every track as their favorite.
It'd be interesting to see a video on the Radiant Silvergun OST by Hitoshi Sakimoto. He gets a lot of mileage out of the same melody.
Wow, awesome video guys! But I have to disagree slightly on the looping point, to my ears it sounds really fresh and interesting. That jump from c# to g makes the intro repetition have this... diminished? dominant quality that isn't there when you listen to it for the first time, which completely tricks my ear into hearing it as a new section. I actually missed the looping point the first time I relistened to that score because of that.
I wanted so badly ballad of the goddess 😭
Two experts discussing their passion
5 best songs in the game:
Sky Island Theme
Sealed Temple
Lanaryu Sand Sea
Impa’s Fate
Fi’s Farewell
I got a star wars vibe from this song, which I understand now, from you saying it's based on a march
A lot of things about the orchestration scream Star Wars tho. It's this sort of neo-Romantic approach. Listen to The Planets by Gustav Holst (the Boston Symphony Orchestra) for some of the OG flavor. It's an incredible piece.
@5:45 I think it's called _tresillo_
"Spending too much time on too little music" is the whole point :)
Great conversation guys! I’ve been playing with a new format for presenting orchestral scores which I think could have been helpful here, which is to present one stave per FIGURE instead of one stave per orchestra SECTION as is done here. That way, you can use text notes or color coding to show what instruments are assigned to each line. So for example, the A section could be summarized as a MELODY figure assigned to (probably) V1, V2, clari and oboe, a HARMONY figure assigned (probably) to tenor trombones, bassoon and French horns, and a BASS figure assigned to cellos and basses. This essentially borrows on the frameworks from Alain Mayrand’s “Orchestrating The Line” and Rovshan Asgarzade's “Secrets of Orchestration” courses. Any thoughts on that @ChristopherSiu?
Hey Gavin, thanks for checking it out man! Yeah that sounds like a great idea! Maybe if there's a next time? 😄
@@ChristopherSiu Hahaha nice! Yeah I realized that it would get pretty complicated in certain scenarios, but could be a nice format for something like this where you’re trying to visually summarize each section as succinctly as possible while still having all the notes (ie more than a piano reduction).
Look at these two absolute Chads!
Gets new 8bit notification
Sees its on skyward sword
SEES ITS 34M
LETS GOOOOO
Skyward Sword's soundtrack is so different than the "traditional" zelda sound that it often gets overlooked, but I think it really stands on its own when divorced from its predecessors. If this soundtrack didn't belong to a zelda game, I feel like it would oddly be a lot more popular because it wouldn't come with all of those prior notions of what a fan thinks the music is "trying" to sound like. Great ost, my personal favorite track is the sand ocean area.
Is there any chance you'd do a video on video game tavern music? The theory behind medieval fantasy tavern music like Jeremy soul's bannered mare? Seems to be nothing on yt about it
❤
Anyone else hearing similarities to Tanaka's work on One Piece? I'm hearing that big time!
Game came out with the anniversary symphony cd, but even as someone who grew up listening to classical music and playing cello, never been a big fan of the orchestra arrangements.
The Telophany Times End album came out about the same time and it's maintained a much bigger presence for me.
Skyward sword music works but it isn't something I look up to
The whole game felt rushed and mediocre to me. There's about four pieces I like (the game's intro, the ballad, Fi's theme and Ancient Cistern) and everything else felt like washy ambient with no defining or redeeming features (where BotW would use all kinds of interesting gestures and textures in a way that was far more daring *and* expressive).
I guess piccolos are like the Tobasco sauce of the orchestra.
😂 I'm stealing this
Please talk about Tears of the Kingdom already. I cannot get enough of the Construct Factory and Spirit Temple themes!!!
That B SECTION OH WOW
My favorite game & zelda soundtrack! 😍
hey, could you do a video on the music of rain world?
What program are you using for the transcription?
goat
oh, thats what he looks like
Omg thank u for this video 😍😍 i hope Someday u can read what i say here ;-; i wanna be a professional composer, and i study by myself for years
7-4-23
Uh, 8-Bit, I was trying to watch your video on the Halo 3: ODST Song Rain and my computer was lagging up a storm. I accidentally sent feedback, so please ignore it.
The theme from Super Mario 64 is AABBC.
I’ve never watched wrestling, but I love your videos on the topic
What I just was realizing is……. Is wrestling the irl version of one piece? These storylines that just happen and ass the fans respond to them the creators change things, but storylines keep coming back and inform the current storylines? Idk if I’m misinterpreting the wrestling scene but it seems very similar lol