Music of Ocarina of Time Examined

Music theory makes my brain hurt. The furthest I ever got with the subject was picking up a guitar, learning how to play a handful of Bright Eyes songs, and using my limited knowledge to swoon girls at any sort of gathering where an acoustic guitar was made available. Dan Bruno of Cruise Elroy, however, has a completely different viewpoint. He doesn’t care about playing simple little chord progressions to impress strangers; instead, he passionately and critically discusses the music of video games simply because he enjoys it.

Take the lovely sounds of Ocarina of Time for example. Apparently, Koji Kondo created each of the Ocarinas twelve songs using nothing but five tones of the well-known do-re-mi scale. With this information in mind, Dan went to town on each piece, examining them to high hell, all while dropping words like motive, harmonized, Dorian, octave, and chromatic. Beats me what the hell the dude is talking about, but according to some of our more musically inclined staff members, the article is well-thought-out and possibly even interesting.

The Zelda-related piece is from last year, but Dan continues to write similar articles here and there, including a small exploration of the Ocarina of Time Medley from Super Smash Bros. Brawl and an anaylsis of “irregular meter” in various video game songs.