How Koji Kondo Writes Creepy Music

[Music] when we think of the music of koji kondo there are a few different characteristics that immediately spring to mind bright cheery grooves big heroic chord progressions and some of the most iconic unforgettable melodies ever written with such an impressive selection of main themes under his belt it's easy to brush over the fact that condo is also responsible for some of the most ominous and unsettling music in videogame history with tunes that manage to creep you out while still being just as memorable and evocative as his more popular and optimistic compositions so how does koji kondo unsettle you first we have to figure out what it means for something to feel creepy in general obviously it's related to being scared or just feeling uneasy but if I had to take a stab at more accurately defining the feeling I'd say it has to do with an implied sense of danger combined with an uncertainty or ambiguity about the situation you're in it's much creepier to eat dinner with someone who you think might pose an unspecified threat to you than it is to say enter a heroic battle of life and death with an evil villain even if the latter is technically way more dangerous it's also related to things feeling unnatural or out of place like the uncanny valley phenomenon that is the closer a fake human face is to looking like a real human face the creepier it gets until of course it crosses that threshold where it becomes truly convincing I think that Koji Kondo taps into these two aspects of creepiness in his music especially in the early Zelda games let's take a look [Music] one of the easiest ways to latch on to a piece of music is through rhythm rhythm and dancing are an innate part of being a human and so consistent beat can make us feel good and put us at ease going even further with this idea we also find comfort in the consistency of the larger musical form of a piece it all comes down to consistency and meeting the expectations of the listener music that makes use of a lot of repetition and consistent lengths of phrases is very easy to listen to because it matches the listeners expectations this is the reason why 90% of music is written in four and eight bar phrases we've come to expect it over time and we love consistency when the harmony part comes in to the forest temple theme from ocarina of time with these Spacely synth pads playing or repeating a major to F with a flattened v we don't get this kind of top level consistency the main harmonic idea is stated in five bar phrases and the phrases are never played quite the same way twice [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Kondo deliberately avoids any exact repetitions of this phrase to keep the listener from being able to reliably expect what's coming next this ambiguity is unsettling on an almost unconscious level often times in dungeon music Conda will abandon any sort of typical harmonic progression and focus entirely on creating uncomfortable voicings for example take the inside of jabu jabu's belly theme which moves this cluster chord voicing up and down in whole and half steps [Music] [Music] using cluster chord voicings is another great way to create on ease as they usually don't imply any sort of definite harmony on their own which keeps the listener on the toes these types of voicings also allow Kondo to focus on using only dissonant intervals like seconds and try tones not only are these chords pretty ambiguous in quality they also don't fit into any one clear scale or key this keeps us as listeners from being able to rest anywhere there are no points of resolution ever so we're always just feeling that vague dissonance that keeps us on edge another place we see cluster chords is all over Majora's masks Snowhead temple theme besides the sound of the howling wind and some creepy industrial noises this tune is almost entirely made up of this staccato major second interval fading away underneath these rhythmic cluster chord stabs once again featuring Kondos favorite tritone filled in with a whole step [Music] notice how the rhythmic displacement between these two groups of stabs just toys with our expectations a little bit making us feel just a little off so we have a couple musical techniques for creating harmonic and rhythmic ambiguity to keep our listeners on edge unable to anticipate exactly what's coming next now let's move on to something a little more unnatural Kondo loves to use the interval of a perfect fourth in his creepier music the perfect fourth is a weird interval for sure it doesn't sound harsh or dissonant like a minor second or a major seventh does but it doesn't sound nice on its own like a third or six by itself it feels almost a little alien very stark and neutral in a way this could have something to do with the fact that the perfect fourth doesn't appear anywhere in the harmonic series which means that it isn't found anywhere in nature I don't know if koji kondo knew this when he chose to make this interval the basis for the priest of the dark order theme and a Link to the Past but this choice works perfectly these perfect fourths over the sea bass pedal just sounds so ominous [Music] [Applause] note again how these notes don't really make any sense harmonically I mean sure you could try and finagle some chord symbols above each bar but you're not going to get anything that reflects how this music actually sounds like a B over C to a D over C to C major seven shouldn't sound creepy but the use of fourths jumping up this inconsistent and therefore unpredictable pattern over top of this low bass pedal perfectly captures this creepy feeling of some demonic unknown evil force a Link to the Past Prince of Darkness theme expands on this idea by stacking two perfect fourths on top of each other and sliding them down chromatically every bar we also Seaforths used all over Ocarina of times dungeon themes usually used to voice chords that already sound pretty dissonant on their own [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] one specific pattern that Kondo seems to love in particular is the sleep - semitone movement usually with both moving in the same direction this sort of pattern is an easy way to make sure that the melody or harmony following it can't be classified easily into any one scale or key or sound which gives the music and a tonal uneasy quality without diving straight into 12 tone musical conventions harmonically we see this pattern in the chord progression in Ganon's themes bridge as these first inversion minor chords cycle through a semitone down and minor third up pattern notice the use of fourths in this chord voicings adding to that unnatural quality we talked about earlier [Music] we see this type of figure all over a link to the past soundtrack like in the reverb laid an intro to the lost ancient ruins theme which plays in each of the light world dungeons note the use of the tritone interval in the beginning to maximize dissonance and the way that this run leading up to the atonal cluster chord follows a pattern of leaping up in fourths adding to that creepy condo quality [Music] we also see a couple examples in the dark world dungeon themed dungeon of shadows the low melody is based entirely on this intervallic pattern which sounds uneasy enough on its own but if you notice the sixteenth note tritone string accompaniment you'll hear that this figure also follows the same pattern moving down a semitone jumping up a major third and then dropping down another semitone [Music] this barrage of dissonant sets the scene perfectly for a dank shadowy dungeon with monsters lurking around every corner one final example and one that I think is the most musically unsettling out of everything we've seen so far can actually be found in the soundtrack to the original Legend of Zelda game I'm talking of course about the Death Mountain theme which is also used as the final boss fight theme against Ganon I love it because it rides right up to the line of incomprehensible 'ti the phrasing of the melody is lopsided and uneven the notes defy any sort of organization into a key or scale and trying to label each bar with court symbols is an absolute nightmare but there is enough internal logic to the piece that we can latch on to that the piece doesn't dissolve into white noise this could be aided by the NES hardware which ensured that there are very few things ever happening at once we have a melody based off of the semitone bleep pattern which seems to be emphasizing an a minor tonality at least that is until the very end where we get this fragment that descends chromatically leading into the next phrase [Music] note the seven bar phrase length this melody is then harmonized a tritone below completely eliminating any hope of establishing that a minor tonality this is then underscored with a driving bass line that starts on C and just descends chromatically every two bars afterwards the whole phrase is transpose up a tritone and repeated and this makes up the entire tune [Music] yikes that's not easy to listen to I mean the NES sound chip doesn't do it any favors I guess but musically it's really trying its best to be as far from easily listening as possible and I think it's a great example of creating this kind of musical effect now if you'll excuse me I'm going to go listen to the Super Mario Sunshine Sat track that's you can follow me on twitter at 8-bit music theory and if you want to support the channel please check out my patreon page here thanks so much to patron Walt E Walters who suggested this idea for a video and thank you all for watching it see you next time [Music] you

Channel: 8-bit Music Theory

Views: 642,314

Rating: 4.9667068 out of 5

Keywords: legend of zelda, loz, ocarina of tim, oot, music, music theory, zelda music, nintendo, nintendo music, analysis, analyze, link, ganon, ganondorf, theme, priest of the dark order, aghanim, prince of darkness, shadow temple, dungeon, dungeon music, scary, spooky, creepy, unsettling, spirit temple, water temple, forest temple, jabu jabu, inside jabu jabu's belly, deku tree, scary music, horror, composition, vgm, game music, video games, composers, link to the past, snes, n64, majora's mask

Id: HlNFaaW3sB0

Length: 12min 5sec (725 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 31 2018