Musical Musings: Understanding the Ambient Music of Breath of the Wild’s Shrines

Music is a defining feature of The Legend of Zelda series, so much so that it becomes its own character. The soundscape molds Hyrule around Link and his friends, giving character to those he interacts with and helps the player connect with them on an emotional level. The awe-striking music from The Legend of Zelda played a significant role in why I chose to pursue Bachelor’s Degree in music, and it is why I have decided to take an in-depth look at different tracks throughout the scores that inspire me as a musician. I thought a good starting point would be Breath of the Wild, one of the soundtracks that I am least familiar with. Now, seeing as Breath of the Wild has a little over 4 hours worth of music (that’s 211 tracks, wow!), I figured I would start with working my way through the Sound Selection CD included in all limited editions of Breath of the Wild’s original release.

Puzzles are key for any Legend of Zelda game, and Breath of the Wild is no exception. ‘Shrine’ is the first track on the CD that is not affiliated with lead composer Manaka Kataoka. Instead, it was both composed and arranged by Yasuaki Iwata. It is also the first track to have the absence of Breath of the Wild’s key instrument, the piano. These two changes make it a vastly different musical landscape, much as the area it accompanies is a vastly different physical landscape.

Introducing the Piece

This is track number 4 of the Breath of the Wild: Sound Selection CD. It is featured in all 120+ Sheikah Shrines throughout Hyrule, so if you’re on the hunt for the elusive reward, you are likely quite familiar with this tune. It has a certain ethereal quality to it, as though Link has been transported into a different world; one of mystery and ancient secrets. The freely flowing melody weaves the mystical and wonder together in a deeply contemplative arrangement.

Special Instrumentation

The Shrines are intent on being the in between of the modern and the ancient, which is helped along greatly by the instrumentation. The majority of the melody is comprised of electronic sounds, which are backed by various traditional stringed Japanese instruments and a set of gamelan, an Indonesian instrument made up of essentially tuned metal pots and pans (see right). You may be familiar with their sound from ‘Smaug’s Theme’ from The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug. The other, most characteristic instrument of the piece, coming in at 1:18, is actually the traditional Scottish wind instrument, the bagpipes! 

General Analysis

Jōmon era pottery

Yasuaki Iwata could not have made the distinction between himself and Manaka Kataoka any bigger than he did with the Shrine theme. For one, this piece is busier quicker than any of the previous tunes on the Sound Selection. For me, one of the most striking things about this track is it’s representation of what Breath of the Wild is, and what the Shrines are trying to convey. Ultimately, this game is about the combination of the ancient, and the modern. The Shrines are essentially this incarnate; the way the puzzles and technology are so advanced, and yet the architecture is like walking into the Jōmon era (a Japanese art period of around 14000-1000BCE, the art style on which Breath of the Wild is largely based). The music appropriately reflects that combination in its mixture of modern electronic sounds with more traditional stringed instruments and the ostentatious use of bagpipes, also a traditional instrument.

Theoretical Analysis

This piece is interesting to analyse because, as far as my ears can tell, it more focuses on a tonal center (a particular note that the rest of the notes play around), rather than starting in a specific key. The most common tonal center is C, as nearly every chord has a C being played somewhere. The piece also goes on to revolve around F and G, the IV (‘fourth’) and V (‘fifth’) of C, and often utilizing the II (‘second’), being D.

These clues would lead me to believe that the piece is rooted in a loose C Major, probably with lots of accidentals (notes written with sharps or flats). The time signature is not nearly as frightening. It’s just a simple 6/8, albeit without discernible strong and weak beats, which makes the time signature a little trickier to identify.

Strong/weak/weak pattern vs. weak/weak/weak

Instead, before the bagpipes come in and it becomes a little easier, Iwata leads us into beat one with the otherworldly echoing of strings or sixteenth-/thirty-second notes in the electric bass. Overall, it’s mostly just a cool jam around the key of C Major with a bagpipe soloing over top of it all!

Matt’s Musings

This is one track that I was not at all disappointed with the first time through. I was absolutely ecstatic listening to this weird techno/ancient jam. I picked up serious vibes of A Link to the Past’s dungeon theme, which was just a nice throwback, something Breath of the Wild tried pretty hard to do. The ethereal feeling really sucked me in to the world of Breath of the Wild and still think it is a defining track of the game. Even when on the search for all 120 shrines, the best part about it was getting to listen to this tune while trying to figure out the puzzles. It’s also just such a great tune for background music, and often used it for study music for the second half of my degree! I’ll never get tired of this one!

Hopefully this analysis helped you understand what Yasuaki Iwata envisioned for his first (but certainly not last) contribution to the the Breath of the Wild soundtrack. If you have different thoughts or gripes with what I’ve said, please leave a (respectful) comment below!

Matt Pederberg is part of the Writing Team at Zelda Dungeon, holds a Bachelor of Music, and has used that knowledge to develop his love of excellent music in excellent video games!