picked out the ones that most effectively grabbed my attention,
and in this video I'm going to talk about how they did it.
Hey everybody, welcome back to the channel.
My name is Ryan. I've written music for nNetflix and Disney and this is
where I talk about the craft of writing music.
I'm pretty excited about the release of Skyward Sword on the Switch.
I grew up playing games like A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening and I've spent
way more hours in Breath of the Wild than I would ever publicly admit,
but I've never actually played Skyward Sword.
So since Skyward Sword is the introduction to the Legend of Zelda story,
I thought it would be appropriate to make this video about introductions.
I went through the whole soundtrack and picked out nine to talk about.
I'm gonna start by breaking them into three basic categories of gestures, crescendos, and vamps, and
then we'll look at some more complex introductions that combine those different elements.
A gesture introduction is where you have a little lick or fill that's not part of the main song.
Ideally it's going to be a little piece of ear candy that grabs our attention.
For example the intro to Inside a House has this falling pizzicato line.
It's a nice little gesture but I think there are two
little things that actually give it an extra edge.
The first note has this little grace note lifting into it, which is one of those
things I was talking about that grabs your ear because it accents the very first thing we hear.
Something else that's interesting is that the first note of the gesture is on an offbeat.
The majority of music we hear starts on a solid downbeat, the first beat of the measure,
so starting here on an offbeat adds some lightness to the intro
and actually makes the destination of the main theme feel even more solid in contrast.
Irregular rhythm lengths is actually something we're going to come back to several times.
Batreaux's theme starts with these sudden pizzicato and timpani chords.
They're loud and the fact that they're quick,
so there's a little bit of space between the notes, really helps to make them stand out.
Notice the basses also have this little descending fill into the downbeat,
which just so happens to start on an offbeat.
Now let's look at some examples of crescendos, which is where we go from quiet to loud.
The Opening theme starts with this dramatic
hit and then immediately drops down before building back up.
That strong hit is really important because it wakes us up
and it snaps us out of whatever we might be thinking about and compels us to pay attention.
The crescendo is helped not only by getting louder but by having these rising scales in the strings.
So if you want something to build and rise you don't just tell your players to play louder.
You tell your drummers to roll because it creates nervousness and excitement.
You also literally rise in pitch and you add in more instruments as it builds.
The run starts in the violas and then the violins join in
as the line rises and the intro is getting louder.
Oh, and as a final thing notice that the intro is three measures long instead of the usual four.
The intro to Farore's Courage does a few similar things.
It has these rolling drums to build anticipation.
It stacks instruments as the crescendo builds in what we'd call a pyramid.
But what it does differently
is grab our attention with this piccolo trill which is really high in shrill.
Then the whole thing comes to a stop for a brief moment
and the silence is this powerful moment before the main theme begins.
Part of what I liked about this intro was how it was so different from the actual theme.
So it started out feeling all doomy and dark and ended up being a pretty light and happy piece.
Oh yeah and it's also three measures long.
A vamp can be a really nice way to set the tone for your piece and help people settle into it.
The easiest way to do this is to take the accompaniment from the
beginning of the theme and basically start it early.
In Crimson Loftwing the intro is using the same
harp and string pattern that we hear under the melody just two bars later.
But to make it a little more interesting the vamp
is not exactly the same as the first two bars of the melody.
While the second chord in the melody is four major,
for the intro we have four minor which gives it this mysterious and slightly sad touch.
Usually when you do a vamp I think it's better to have some
sort of foreground material that won't be there when you play your main melody,
especially if your accompaniment is a bit empty feeling without anything on top.
In Ballad of the Goddess we have this rocking strings pattern as well as a high pizzicato pluck,
and both of those things are not there anymore once the melody starts.
And instead of using the chord progression from
the theme it just holds down the one chord the whole time.
At the very end of the vamp we have this crescendo in the brass and then a beat of rest.
both of which are a really easy but effective way to give the intro some more personality,
more than just copy pasting the accompaniment pattern from under the theme.
So even though it started with a vamp,
that last one is actually a bit more like the complex intros that I'll talk about next.
In Groose's theme we get this drum and brass gesture in octaves which crescendos into a vamp.
Note the trill which creates shimmer and excitement.
Although the accompaniment pattern here is the same as what comes in the theme, the gaps are
filled with this little clarinet figure which isn't there anymore once the melody starts.
It's another one of those ways to make the composition feel crafted
and not just like we're stacking layers as time goes on.
The Sky has a similar intro with a crescendo into a vamp.
The ear candy in this case is the fourth chord, this unexpected G7b5.
The C# in the melody makes us feel like we're in the Lydian
mode and so unconsciously our ear is already expecting there to be an F#.
So when we get this F natural it sounds really dissonant and it manages to break our expectations
,even though we've hardly had any time to expect anything.
We then go into a vamp that is roughly the same as the accompaniment pattern under the theme,
but the harp is a bit busier to fill in the space.
Girahim Battle 2 starts with a dramatic timpani gesture and then a run into these
shrieking high violins and woodwinds, with low strings holding down the accompaniment pattern.
The vamp has these unexpected hits that keep us on our toes and disorient us from the main beat.
Worth noting that the timpani gesture is only one measure long.
Something I thought was interesting about these introductions overall was that I
couldn't really find a pattern between the type of introduction and the type of track it introduced.
For example, some of the bigger epic tracks like the Opening theme just had
this simple crescendo introducing it, whereas something simpler and
smaller like Groose's theme actually had a more complex introduction .
I you think there is a pattern there that I missed let us know in the comments!
And if you enjoyed this video there's a pretty good chance you'll like the one
where I talk about harmonic rhythm and use music from a bunch of different Zelda games.