{What I Love!}
Hello!
I’m Scruffy, and today I’m returning to Hyrule, in its largest incarnation to date:
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
The expanded dimensions of its terrain, combined with the wildly open-ended new abilities and
quests Link receives, make it so that every player will be experiencing the game differently,
solving problems by their own ingenuity and noticing the littlest details to the broadest
brushstrokes at their own pace.
Today, without any spoilers, I’d like to take the broad view, and reflect on an overarching
facet of the soundtrack to Tears of the Kingdom that helps it stand out, become memorable,
and find its footing in the library of Zelda music.
I’m calling it “musical main characters.”
I don’t quite mean a leitmotif, which is a passage of music for any instrument that
becomes tied to a character or idea by association, even though all Zelda games are full of leitmotifs.
By “musical main character,” I mean a specific instrument that acts as a linchpin
and a throughline throughout many parts of the soundtrack, kind of like a characteristic
spice that you can taste throughout many dishes.
And that dictates the overall “character” of the soundtrack!
So it stands to reason that a particularly memorable musical main character might be
an instrument outside the standard classical orchestra, or at least an instrument beyond
what one might expect in a particular setting.
And not all of the soundtrack would be a full-on “concerto for this and orchestra:” the
main character isn’t always in every scene, or sometimes the main character is the only
thing in a scene.
This concept has existed before in Zelda games’ soundtracks, although perhaps not for the
same reasons.
For example, there’s clearly a musical main character in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina
of Time… the Ocarina of Time.
It contrasts from the general orchestral samples used to score the rest of the game, and it
pervades the soundtrack with at least a dozen memorable melodies that have become leitmotifs
in the Zelda series.
But, that kind of happened by necessity, right?
The player is the one who plays the ocarina, it gives Link the major magical abilities
he wields in the game, and the diegetic instrument itself is a major plot point.
So, of course it’s going to be a musical main character.
And some people, myself included, would also argue that a ROM chip collection of MIDI samples
on a MIDI synthesizer, colloquially called a “soundfont,” can also become a musical
main character.
In earlier Zelda games, it was necessary to use MIDI sounds for music that could perform
efficiently on console, but there’s something about a MIDI impersonation of an instrument
or sound that gives it a distinct character, to the point that playing that specific MIDI
sound will evoke the game where you first heard it.
Composers for those console games would definitely seek out unique, often unexpected MIDI sounds
and samples for that reason.
But now we’re dealing with Tears of the Kingdom, where musical instruments are not
part of the plot, and we’re on a console with virtually no restrictions on the type
of music played.
Which instruments might you choose in an otherwise grand orchestral soundtrack to help this game
stand out?
I’ve identified three musical main characters in this game.
I wonder if those of you who have played the game can guess what the most prominent one
might be…
Ready?
It’s the piano!
A grand piano pervades the whole soundtrack at all sorts of dynamics and registers, just
as it did in the previous game, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
In fact it was THE musical main character in that game, and a great deal of music from
there has just been exactly carried over to here, unchanged and scoring the same locations.
But, why choose a grand piano?
Well, for one, piano has a rich history of application for the sort of loose, cloudy,
impressionistic harmonies that we see in these games.
Those have been going on for at least the past century and a half.
And if I may, the personality of a piano’s sound is also kind of… "liquid," per se.
A professor of mine used to say pianos sound “transparent,” which is a very apt term.
That is to say, there may be physical sound differences between pianos if you listen closely
to them, especially as they age, but a clean, tempered sound of a note on the piano… is
kind of ambiguous on its own.
And playing this music with a specifically ambiguous mood as you venture around Hyrule,
you really start to wonder how you’re supposed to feel, what the music is trying to convey.
And I think that’s a perfect analogue to our protagonist Link, especially in Breath
of the Wild.
He awoke from a hundred-year stasis to a world he only barely remembers that has fallen into
ruin, and yet there’s a faint but certain call bestowing him the destiny of a world-saving
hero.
And then the game opens up: you could immediately become a hero, but you could also be an archaeologist,
or a treasure hunter, or master swordsman, or a fisherman, or a photographer, or a humble
homeowner, or an island castaway.
There’s so many paths to take even if they eventually converge, and the plasticity of
piano makes it a great choice to weave into each of them seamlessly.
Of course that’s not to say piano can’t have character of its own, especially at the
extreme ends at extreme dynamics.
I mean, all I have to do is begin this passage, even just the first note…
[high B piano note] and anyone who’s played Breath of the Wild
is instantly at attention, head swarming with imagery.
That a piano can do all that, across two games even, is the mark of a musical main character.
And now, let’s move on to our supporting cast.
The first one I’d like to mention is a very unusual sound: reverse choir samples.
It’s not used as often as piano, but it immediately has a more defined character,
wouldn’t you say?
A creepy one, at that.
It’s not as applicable in many situations, so it’s powerful in a few.
These samples of mixed choirs are reversed, or at least, a slow attack into a sudden release
gives off the impression of a reversed sound.
And they seem to mainly score two types of encounters, both related to the mysterious
mythology of Hyrule.
Right from the beginning of the Tears of the Kingdom, as Link and Zelda descend deeper
below Hyrule Castle, you can hear a melody of these voices adaptively crescendo.
[choir melody plays] And you’ll hear them later on in the spookier,
deadlier, more gloom-ridden combat encounters in the game, but for spoilers’ sake I’ll
leave it at that.
These are voices surrounding the Demon King, Ganondorf, the sound of the scourge of Hyrule,
similar to how the previous game introduced reversed piano as the influence of Calamity
Ganon.
Getting surrounded by these unknowable voices across the stereo pan, at least in my experience,
is a fair bit more unnerving, so it makes sense these voices are reserved for him.
The other type of reversed voice you’ll hear are these soprano voice samples, employed
as a “voice” for the Zonai shrines you encounter.
The same sound source, the same reverse effect, but presented in a context that can put the
player at ease.
In fact, given that each shrine message comes with a few of these vocal samples and a background
of Zonai runes, it’s neat to infer that these messages are being sung to you.
All in all, ever since the first trailers for Tears of the Kingdom, those reverse vocals
became musical characters that really helped this game stand out.
And now, the final musical character I’ve noticed is sometimes subtler, but such a lovely,
fascinating choice for a Zelda game: alto saxophone.
Once again, I’d argue that the sax has inherently more character than an equal note from the
piano, just given that breath goes into it, determines how loud it gets, when it starts
and stops.
You won’t get the exact same sound twice, and why would you want to when you can get
such a huge variety of sounds out of that one instrument?
That said, most of the instances of alto sax in Tears of the Kingdom keep it on softer
end without ornamentation.
Sax takes over with support from other woodwinds when you’re exploring the sky islands above
Hyrule.
It mainly plays these long, soft tones in the sweet spot of its range.
And, as is usual when you put woodwinds together, they blend beautifully.
But then the sax gets more of a spotlight when you’re transitioning between ground
and sky: it plays the main melody in the cutscenes where you activate a sky tower and add some
data of Hyrule’s terrain to your map.
[Skyiew Tower melody plays] And it offers small, nimble gestures during
the dynamic looping music that cues whenever you’re skydiving.
[Skydiving saxophone gesture plays] And I certainly hope we’ve all heard it
crooning and wailing in the main themes for the game.
[excerpt from the 2nd trailer for TotK plays] So, what prompted the choice of saxophone?
Well first off, what better instrument for a scene of soaring through the winds than
a wind instrument?
But, given so many wind instruments to choose from, I think it comes down to: the saxophone
isn’t like other wind instruments.
Its shape, construction, the reed, its history, the particular player’s history with their
instrument, they all feed into a specific, bright, personalized sound that just isn’t
found in other woodwinds, certainly not the ones considered standard in a scoring orchestra.
So, they put that unique sound in front of or blended into the orchestra to make the
flavor of the whole stand out a bit more.
Because even perfectly blended, sax is a spicy instrument!
And there’s one more thing I want to mention before wrapping up.
It’s about flutes accompanying the piano on the ground level of Hyrule.
When I first heard that.
I considered it a big difference from Breath of the Wild, where the piano played its gestures
solo.
I think that not only speaks to the musical main characters in these games, but to character
development across them.
In Breath of the Wild, the solo piano is meant to feel ambiguous, but certainly lonely as
well.
These vast plains and yawning chasms are more condensed than they seem, but there are lots
of moments where Link feels small in this abandoned landscape, and the tempoless piano
music could be interpreted as Link alone with his thoughts.
But in Tears of the Kingdom, the land is not abandoned, and Link isn’t alone.
There are plenty more people roaming Hyrule, setting up shop or defending against monsters,
trying to rebuild it from Calamity Ganon’s time.
And some of them actually know your name this time around, and are aligned to your cause!
So it made me very happy to hear that these new loose, transparent piano gestures get
accompanied by more distinctive woodwinds now.
Suddenly these musical gestures have more of a direction, and feel more uplifting, than
they did in the previous game, and that’s musical character development I can get behind.
I mean, all I do in this game is test out all the wild ways I can "uplift" things and
launch them in all "directions!"
So those are my observations about the musical main characters in these Zelda games.
That’s not to say these instruments are now taken and couldn’t be used in other
works—I mean Zelda’s definitely not the first to highlight piano or saxophone.
But these choices certainly distinguish Tears of the Kingdom in the Zelda series' musical
gamut, and the game’s soundtrack will live longer in our memories thanks to it.
So, if you’re writing a collection of music or just listening through a game’s soundtrack,
it’s worth considering what instruments or voices could weave the experience together,
and how those characters develop over time.
And now, I’d like to thank my patrons on Patreon, who help keep my video making process
sustainable.
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And with that, I'm Scruffy, and thank you very much for watching.