Last time I discussed the music of Ocarina of Time, we went over the title track, and how it was essentially two chords in the key of C major, creating a Plagal Cadence, but because of Koji Kondo's use of extended chords, it blurred the relationship, making it sound more "dreamlike," which is one of the major reasons to use extended chords like that.
Today, we'll discuss the Deku Tree's Theme, and how the use of tension and release can really make a piece very somber, but with a slight tinge of hope.
Just so there's no ambiguity, here's the piece in question.
A very powerful, if short piece, but there's a lot to unpack.
Right off the bat, I'm hearing this song as in the key of F minor. F minor has four flats in it. In traditional staff notation, this piece's key signature would be Ab major, but the Tonic or the chord that the whole music revolves around demonstrates this to be in F minor.
Confused?
Let's educate y'all on some keys.
Keys in music are generally split between major and minor keys, but for the sake of simplicity when writing music down, we notate the key signature as if it's major.
This lets us know straight away what the notes we should expect to play in the piece are.
Now, each key has a specific number of sharps and flats. Generally, you'll only have keys with sharps in them, or only flats in them, and it's only in specific cases where flats and sharps are notated.
To make staff notation easier to read, we generally notate the general number of sharps and flats, the "signature" of the piece, and notate accidentals (sharps and flats) as they arise in the music. Makes things much simpler and easier to read.
How do we know what keys have sharps, which have flats?
Well, that's with a tool called the Circle of Fifths.
The circle is quite straightforward, even if this looks complicated.
We start at 12 o'clock, which is the key of C major, which has no sharps or flats whatsoever, all of the notes are natural.
As we go clockwise around the circle, we add sharps, and we add sharps in this order:
F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#, B#.
You can memorize it by this mnemonic device:
Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle.
Thus, if our key was G major, for example, we know there's one sharp, F#, with all of the rest of the notes being natural.
As we go counter-clockwise in the circle, we add flats, and we add flats in this order:
Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, Cb, Fb.
You can memorize it with this mnemonic device:
Battle Ends And Down Goes Charles' Father.
Thus, if our key was say, F major, we know we should add one flat, and that would be Bb.
Now, for every major key, there exists a minor key that contains the same notes in it, and these are called relative major and minor keys.
They are notated in the Circle of Fifths above on the inside of the circle.
Let's apply this logic to the Deku Tree's Theme.
Here's the sheet music, for reference.
The key signature shows this song to have four flats. There's only two keys that have four flats, Ab major, and F minor.
Now, how do we determine major, or minor?
Simple, we look at the chord progression, and that's where this whole piece gets.... complicated. In F minor, the V chord would be a C maj chord of some type, but in this piece... there is no resolution.
So if there's no resolution, say to the Tonic chord, how did I determine the key? Context. Listening to this piece, it doesn't sound uplifting, full of hope, or triumphant. It sounds... sad, somber, and foreboding. That's a cue to me that this is in a minor key.
Which plays perfectly into the piece itself and how it functions in game.
See, it's split in three acts, for an eight bar loop. Act 1 deals with introducing the Deku Tree. Act 2 introduces the most tension, is the longest section, and is meant to convey the darkness and sadness overcoming Hyrule, and how Ganondorf has cursed the Deku Tree to die. And finally, Act 3 is meant to convey the somber reality of the Deku's Tree fate, yet a glimmer of hope because Link broke the curse afflicting the tree.
So how does the music serve these themes?
Well, the piece starts off with a bold choice of a chord, the very complicated Db maj7(#11)/C chord. A very tense, dissonant sounding chord, which makes perfect sense, considering it's an altered seventh chord, with C in the bass. The more astute amongst you likely noticed that C and Db are a distance of a half step apart, an interval that's already very tense sounding.
This, of course, builds tension. Half steps are very dramatic and tense sounding.
Kondo resolves such tension quite quickly moving to a C maj7 chord, which in the last post we learned that C maj7 is a very stable sounding chord.
What's interesting here is Kondo's use of harmony. Specifically, he harmonizes his melody line with parallel fourths, which is what he does when he wants to convey a sense of dread or foreboding.
That's due to the perfect fourth actually being somewhat dissonant. It wants to either resolve down to the major third, or it wants to resolve up to the perfect fifth, the two notes that are the most stable.
So this subtle build of tension, then a slight release of it conveys a sense of awe and reverence, which works perfectly for the Deku Tree.
When we move to the next act, the bass has moved up from C to Db, a move that we'll come back to, and the chord being played over it is the same. But instead of releasing the tension, the piece builds more tension by moving to a big, fat, nasty Db diminished chord.
Diminished chords are triads that are created by stacking minor thirds on top of each other. In the key of C, a C dim chord would contain these notes:
C Eb Db.
By the nature of how these chords are built, they carry a lot of tension, and often in most keys they serve as a dominant function chord, which points back to the Tonic chord.
But here, it's used differently to build more tension, which one can argue because of how tense and dissonant diminished chords sound, is the climax of the piece, the moment of maximum tension.
Indeed, almost as if this is when Ganondorf has cursed the Deku Tree to die.
The piece then uses a C sus4(b9) chord, with C in the bass to walk down to our resolution of C maj7. But the way this sounds, it doesn't sound like an instant release of all that tension caused by that Db dim chord, but more like a wilting of that tension.
Indeed, this is almost as if musically we're hearing the Deku Tree slowly wilting and dying, even though Link broke his curse.
We finally reach our final act. We have a Db6 chord with an ascending bassline to slowly walk up to our resolution of a C7(b9) chord, but with the third of the chord omitted.
This is actually really poignant, because while we ultimately reach a resolution, it's not a complete one, which leaves a sense of sadness and somberness still lingering.
That's because omitting the third of a chord is taking away the very note that determines the chord's quality of major or minor. By taking that note out or "suspending" it, the chord itself sounds as if it's almost homeless in a sense. It doesn't have the resolution of a tonic chord, they don't really function as chords that set up another, they just kind of, don't have a clear resolution.
Which is, of course, the whole point, isn't it? Sure, in game, you broke the Deku Tree's curse, we heard and witnessed him wilting and dying, and the sad reality hit us. While we are a hero that smites pure evil, the Deku Tree was doomed before we started. So now the sad reality hits us.
The music is a perfect reflection of what we experience in the game, hence why Koji Kondo's a very underrated composer in the grand scheme of things.
So, hopefully, this piques your interest in this kind of stuff, and do know, I do plan on covering everything musically in Zelda games I can, which is going to take a while.
Cheers!
Today, we'll discuss the Deku Tree's Theme, and how the use of tension and release can really make a piece very somber, but with a slight tinge of hope.
Just so there's no ambiguity, here's the piece in question.
A very powerful, if short piece, but there's a lot to unpack.
Right off the bat, I'm hearing this song as in the key of F minor. F minor has four flats in it. In traditional staff notation, this piece's key signature would be Ab major, but the Tonic or the chord that the whole music revolves around demonstrates this to be in F minor.
Confused?
Let's educate y'all on some keys.
Keys in music are generally split between major and minor keys, but for the sake of simplicity when writing music down, we notate the key signature as if it's major.
This lets us know straight away what the notes we should expect to play in the piece are.
Now, each key has a specific number of sharps and flats. Generally, you'll only have keys with sharps in them, or only flats in them, and it's only in specific cases where flats and sharps are notated.
To make staff notation easier to read, we generally notate the general number of sharps and flats, the "signature" of the piece, and notate accidentals (sharps and flats) as they arise in the music. Makes things much simpler and easier to read.
How do we know what keys have sharps, which have flats?
Well, that's with a tool called the Circle of Fifths.
The circle is quite straightforward, even if this looks complicated.
We start at 12 o'clock, which is the key of C major, which has no sharps or flats whatsoever, all of the notes are natural.
As we go clockwise around the circle, we add sharps, and we add sharps in this order:
F#, C#, G#, D#, A#, E#, B#.
You can memorize it by this mnemonic device:
Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle.
Thus, if our key was G major, for example, we know there's one sharp, F#, with all of the rest of the notes being natural.
As we go counter-clockwise in the circle, we add flats, and we add flats in this order:
Bb, Eb, Ab, Db, Gb, Cb, Fb.
You can memorize it with this mnemonic device:
Battle Ends And Down Goes Charles' Father.
Thus, if our key was say, F major, we know we should add one flat, and that would be Bb.
Now, for every major key, there exists a minor key that contains the same notes in it, and these are called relative major and minor keys.
They are notated in the Circle of Fifths above on the inside of the circle.
Let's apply this logic to the Deku Tree's Theme.
Here's the sheet music, for reference.
The key signature shows this song to have four flats. There's only two keys that have four flats, Ab major, and F minor.
Now, how do we determine major, or minor?
Simple, we look at the chord progression, and that's where this whole piece gets.... complicated. In F minor, the V chord would be a C maj chord of some type, but in this piece... there is no resolution.
So if there's no resolution, say to the Tonic chord, how did I determine the key? Context. Listening to this piece, it doesn't sound uplifting, full of hope, or triumphant. It sounds... sad, somber, and foreboding. That's a cue to me that this is in a minor key.
Which plays perfectly into the piece itself and how it functions in game.
See, it's split in three acts, for an eight bar loop. Act 1 deals with introducing the Deku Tree. Act 2 introduces the most tension, is the longest section, and is meant to convey the darkness and sadness overcoming Hyrule, and how Ganondorf has cursed the Deku Tree to die. And finally, Act 3 is meant to convey the somber reality of the Deku's Tree fate, yet a glimmer of hope because Link broke the curse afflicting the tree.
So how does the music serve these themes?
Well, the piece starts off with a bold choice of a chord, the very complicated Db maj7(#11)/C chord. A very tense, dissonant sounding chord, which makes perfect sense, considering it's an altered seventh chord, with C in the bass. The more astute amongst you likely noticed that C and Db are a distance of a half step apart, an interval that's already very tense sounding.
This, of course, builds tension. Half steps are very dramatic and tense sounding.
Kondo resolves such tension quite quickly moving to a C maj7 chord, which in the last post we learned that C maj7 is a very stable sounding chord.
What's interesting here is Kondo's use of harmony. Specifically, he harmonizes his melody line with parallel fourths, which is what he does when he wants to convey a sense of dread or foreboding.
That's due to the perfect fourth actually being somewhat dissonant. It wants to either resolve down to the major third, or it wants to resolve up to the perfect fifth, the two notes that are the most stable.
So this subtle build of tension, then a slight release of it conveys a sense of awe and reverence, which works perfectly for the Deku Tree.
When we move to the next act, the bass has moved up from C to Db, a move that we'll come back to, and the chord being played over it is the same. But instead of releasing the tension, the piece builds more tension by moving to a big, fat, nasty Db diminished chord.
Diminished chords are triads that are created by stacking minor thirds on top of each other. In the key of C, a C dim chord would contain these notes:
C Eb Db.
By the nature of how these chords are built, they carry a lot of tension, and often in most keys they serve as a dominant function chord, which points back to the Tonic chord.
But here, it's used differently to build more tension, which one can argue because of how tense and dissonant diminished chords sound, is the climax of the piece, the moment of maximum tension.
Indeed, almost as if this is when Ganondorf has cursed the Deku Tree to die.
The piece then uses a C sus4(b9) chord, with C in the bass to walk down to our resolution of C maj7. But the way this sounds, it doesn't sound like an instant release of all that tension caused by that Db dim chord, but more like a wilting of that tension.
Indeed, this is almost as if musically we're hearing the Deku Tree slowly wilting and dying, even though Link broke his curse.
We finally reach our final act. We have a Db6 chord with an ascending bassline to slowly walk up to our resolution of a C7(b9) chord, but with the third of the chord omitted.
This is actually really poignant, because while we ultimately reach a resolution, it's not a complete one, which leaves a sense of sadness and somberness still lingering.
That's because omitting the third of a chord is taking away the very note that determines the chord's quality of major or minor. By taking that note out or "suspending" it, the chord itself sounds as if it's almost homeless in a sense. It doesn't have the resolution of a tonic chord, they don't really function as chords that set up another, they just kind of, don't have a clear resolution.
Which is, of course, the whole point, isn't it? Sure, in game, you broke the Deku Tree's curse, we heard and witnessed him wilting and dying, and the sad reality hit us. While we are a hero that smites pure evil, the Deku Tree was doomed before we started. So now the sad reality hits us.
The music is a perfect reflection of what we experience in the game, hence why Koji Kondo's a very underrated composer in the grand scheme of things.
So, hopefully, this piques your interest in this kind of stuff, and do know, I do plan on covering everything musically in Zelda games I can, which is going to take a while.
Cheers!
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