Behind Splatoon's Final Minute of Music

{What I Love!} Hello! I'm Scruffy, and today, I'm taking an  analytical listen to a song from the Splatoon   series. The final competitive event of Splatoon  2, the last Splatfest, is soon approaching,   and so I thought it apropos to reflect on  the music of Splatoon, and then go into   greater detail on one song in particular. My “inkling” to create this video came from   a deceptively simple question: what genre is  Splatoon's music? That's complicated, because   Splatoon covers multiple genres in its various  gameplay modes. Just to name some, we’ve got punk,   a bit of alt rock, ska, J-pop, teen pop, EDM,  Celtic punk, punk jazz, vaporwave, urban with   progressively more experimental electronic  offshoots until we hit Salmon Run’s mutilated   cello samples, and I’m probably missing a few at  that. Not to mention, Splatoon includes elements   like heavily effected vocals and synthesizers  that are unique to Splatoon and venture outside   the tropes of most of these genres. So I’m going to go ahead and call it:   cross-genre. Maybe that’s a copout, but the  Splatoon soundtrack is all about mixing things up,   putting together colors that clash, and merging  real-world pop culture icons and eras to create   the culture of Inklings and Octolings. Although  this world crosses genres visually and audially   a lot, it still maintains coherence and suspends  your disbelief when everything can contribute to   a central mood and gameplay experience. It’s all  loud, bold, and… I’m gonna say… booyah, most of   it seems to have a touch of 90’s fashion to it. You’ll notice that a lot of the music in Splatoon,   no matter the genre that inspired it, puts  boldness first, focusing on strange gestures,   atypical harmonies, and brazen power chords to  deliver its unique taste of in-your-face action.   Little of it wants to sound traditional and little  of it focuses on a long-term path or destination,   which seems inspired by punk ideologies. If these  songs didn’t come from Splatoon, and were just   full-on punk songs championing non-conformity,  maybe I’d think twice about analyzing them with   music theory. But within the context of tying  together a video game experience, they’re worth   studying. I wanted to focus on one song that’s  particularly integrated with timed gameplay   modes in both Splatoon 1 and 2. It’s a one-minute  long theme called Now or Never, and it plays when   you have one minute left in a timed Turf War. It  illustrates something that changes about the loud,   bold, and booyah mood between these two games.  Let’s listen to specific parts of this song,   and actually, let’s start with Splatoon 2. I wanted to point out something in   the opening measure: ["Now or Never" begins to play]   So we’ve got a guitar for character, bass for  power, and synthesizer for flavor, all playing   a scale called the lydian scale. It’s similar to  major scales, but with the fourth note raised,   which adds this extra feeling of ascending since  the fourth note now resolves right into the fifth.   Playing up the scale builds tension, and never  landing on that upper C note that concludes the   scale never lets the tension go. The melody  after this stays within a lydian scale,   but the bass and guitar… ["Now or Never" continues]   …have this funky syncopated rhythm,  that goes right along with the drums.   After the second verse, we get a chorus of sorts  where we can tell that the vocals aren’t even   Inkling language anymore, they’re a crowd singing  one syllable. You hear the lydian scale from the   beginning and the bass elaborates a little… ["Now or Never" chorus plays]   I like it, it’s like your whole  team getting behind this melody,   and the one point of the song where excitement  can breathe for a bit. especially since the drums   are playing half as fast of a rhythm. But now it’s time to build for the climax,   where the drums emphasize offbeats and the  rhythm is twice as fast as the first verse.   ["Now or Never" continues] After this phrase comes something unexpected,   that begins with one half a beat of hesitation. ["Now or Never" continues]   The melody is still A to G, but the power chords  underneath are Bb to Ab, which don’t resolve back   to the C lydian scales in the next measure.  This isn’t the time for perfect resolution,   it’s the time to build that lydian scale until… ["Now or Never" plays to the end]   That one last group of four notes that gets so  close to resolving but never does. Because   up to the very last second of gameplay, there’s  no room for feeling like the task is finished   or the song is over. It’s always tightly  performed, powerful, and in your face. Even   stricter to the rhythm is the remixed version  of this song that plays during Splatfests:   ["Now or Never" remix plays] This is more of a teen pop rendition,   letting the vocals come out clearer, and  overall going for a clean, futuristic   sound with an entirely synthesized band. It’s an  interesting twist that’s still bold, but in a more   mainstream way. Where the regular Now or Never  galvanizes your little team in a rough-edged,   individual manner, the Splatfest Now or Never  galvanizes the world in celebration, a fest, led   by Pearl and Marina. With that in mind, let’s take  a trip back to the same theme in Splatoon 1.   Right off the bat: ["Now or Never" begins to play]  You hear the whole band engaged in the lydian   scale in the key of A, but this time there's less  rhythmic complexity: it’s just quarter notes,   and it adds a note to get eight of them.  We’re still feeling a sense of rising tension,   but no particular instrument or rhythm gets  highlighted. Next, this is the important part:   ["Now or Never" continues] You hear the same melody, sure,   but rather than that syncopated rhythm, we’ve  got hard power chords on guitar every two beats,   and the drums are constantly at maximum speed.  This in particular sounds like punk rock,   where complexity isn’t as important as aggression  and the lyrics, if we could discern them. Even   the fourth measure of each phrase and the  chorus are simplified to barer elements:   ["Now or Never" continues] There’s a lot going on for sure,   but there’s no crowd singing the melody here, the  bass and guitar still remain just as distorted,   the drums remain just as fast. The energy here  is not as dynamic, it stays in one spot for more   of the song. And that’s okay! It’s driving! Once  again, loud bold and booyah. The only break we get  from that energy is at that dominant chord part before the vocals  come back in. ["Now or Never" continues] Again, the rhythms and harmonies here are simpler and focused more on the crunch of  that guitar. At the end of the song, we get more   scales from the beginning, and every instrument  joins in that quarter note rhythm until…   ["Now or Never" plays to the end] This conclusion arguably leaves us with more   tension, because not only does it not complete  this altered lydian scale, it also doesn’t end on   a downbeat, it doesn’t end on one, like the last  note in Splatoon 2. The Splatfest version of this   song again goes with an entirely electronic, more  mainstream rendition of these simpler rhythms and   harmonies that highlights the Squid Sisters. Amid all of this, am I saying that this earlier   version of Now or Never is inferior? No, of course  not. But I do find the differences between the   two games’ versions to be more than a matter of  re-recording the track for posterity. After all,   if Splatoon 2 has a new soundtrack, why not  write a new minute-left theme? I think it’s   actually a matter of the canon between Splatoon  1 and 2. On the official soundtrack release for   Splatoon 1 called Splatune—well done—the liner  notes suggest that the band that performs most   of the Turf War music, Squid Squad, was also  the composer of Now or Never. Squid Squad is a   four-member band, three Inklings and a sea urchin,  and before even releasing this official album,   their music was widely popular among squid kids  and became a standard soundtrack for Turf Wars.   A punk anthem, you might say. After the events of  Splatoon 1, Squid Squad disbanded, and Wet Floor   takes their place as the main Turf War band in  Splatoon 2. But Now or Never was still the anthem   for the end of a Turf War, and though this new  five-piece band brings their own more complex,   more ska-inspired sound to Splatoon 2, they  still respected Now or Never and decided only   to touch it up in their style, not to recompose  it. Splatoon 2’s Now or Never is a cover song,   just as both the Squid Sisters and Off the  Hook cover it in the Splatfest versions.   And Splatoon 2 has a band with a tighter,  ska-inspired feel and different members,   so naturally their version is going to play with  what the original had, but remain faithful and   serve the same purpose as the original. It blows my mind, this is such a cool way to   portray the passage of time between two games.  And you know, all this music may be loud, bold,   and booyah, but it’s also personable. Most game  soundtracks are non-diegetic and non-canonical,   meaning they exist outside the physical game  environment, and do not have any effect on the   story. Splatoon’s soundtrack is non-diegetic,  but it does exist within the lore of Splatoon,   as a band of characters playing it. That makes  the soundtrack into a character of sorts itself,   cheering you on in gameplay and changing,  even maturing over time with the advancing   tide of culture. And even after the  final Splatfest of Splatoon 2, here’s   hoping it doesn’t stop advancing. With that, I’d like to thank DavoGato   once again for the game footage on this  video, and to my brother Mantichord for   the supplementary guitar work! I’m Scruffy,  and thank you very much for watching.

Channel: Scruffy

Views: 1,207,704

Keywords: splatoon, splatoon 2, octo expansion, video game, video game music, vgm, ost, now or never, squid squad, wet floor, off the hook, squid sisters

Id: 38h8eudzy7k

Length: 11min 9sec (669 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 24 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I watched this

[u/kaninepete]

My favorite track from these games. It builds hype so perfectly!

[u/yettergamesl]

I love this!

[u/Zentras]

Cool thanks for the tip

[u/Som3SillyName]

I love Scruffy! This video is great, as is the rest of his channel, and he’s criminally underrated. Check him out if you haven’t already!

[u/MapleA]

This is my favorite splatoon video that I have ever watched. The music in splatoon is rarely talked about and it’s bold and I love it

[u/[deleted]]

“Salmon Run’s mutilated cello samples.” That is the perfect wording for that music.

[u/Sheikashii]

It’s a shame videos like these don’t get as much attention as low effort reaction memes

[u/Swabluboi79]

I watched already but it is a nice vid