Storytelling through Music in Hollow Knight

[Music] when you start hollow night the first thing the game presents to you is the elegy of hallow nest this poem is just one example of hollow Knights cryptic approach to storytelling like a lot of the information that gets presented to the player throughout the game the elegy of hallow nest doesn't make much sense on its face it's after exploring the world and gathering clues that one can put together the meaning behind some of what the game presents to you it's almost like solving a puzzle coming back to the elegy after beating the game and discovering some of the lore of its world it becomes clear that this poem is written about The Pale King the former monarch of hallow nest who has long since disappeared by the time the player arrives part of the process of figuring out the details of the game's story comes from making connections between elements found all throughout the game once we realize that the elegy is written about The Pale King it allows us to make a connection between the character of The Pale King and the short melody that has heard over top of this introduction [Music] if we can connect this melody to The Pale King then we can use that as an inherent implication whenever this theme is used throughout the game score to tie together characters or places as having a strong connection to the king in this video I want to explore some examples of this throughout the soundtrack examining what that means for the game's story as well as how composer Christopher Larkin manages to build several distinct pieces of music out of the same basic melodic figure so get your dream nails ready folks were about to dive inside the mind of Christopher Larkin the simplest and clearest example of this melody being used in game is the white lady's theme which plays when visiting the character in the Queen's gardens once married to The Pale King the white lady ruled as the queen of hallow nest before the events of the game to give you an idea of how hollow Knights approach to storytelling works this fact is never explicitly stated in game besides her living in the Queen's garden so her relationship to the pale King is implied from the white lady's dialogue and by her owning half of the Kings soul the other half of which can only be found on the pale Kings corpse the connection between the two is further bolstered by her theme which uses the exact melody from the elegy of hallow nest the simple arrangement of this theme gives us a great blueprint for Larkins typical approach to arrangement we have a statement of the melody followed by another statement with a slight variation this variation can be an instrumentation harmony melody or all three in this case we see the raised sixth of the first phrase lowered to a natural sixth and the major four chord harmonization traded out for a secondary four to one resolution to our a flat chord [Music] despite being in a minor key there's a lot of lightness in this arrangement the two moments I mentioned both adds some brightness to the music which combined with the resolution to C minor at the end of each phrase to create a bittersweet feeling after the main melodic statements Larkin often moves into a development section before returning to a climactic version of the initial melody to end off a piece the white lady's theme takes a short detour into a development section of twelve bars in length these development sections will often develop themes by taking one of the supplemental melodic ideas from the main theme and shifting it around to different places gradually altering the shape of the figure as it repeats over top of a wandering chord progression that moves off into a whole new harmonic area before arriving climactically back home however he'll often keep from altering the rhythmic identity of the initial phrase at all making it very clear how the new section ties into the previous material [Music] contrasting this intimate solo harp arrangement the theme of the white palace feels much grander and much more solemn giving the pale Kings theme the full orchestral treatment with thick string pads and a somber harp arpeggio figure at its core the white palace has a very obvious connection to the pale King being his palace and the place where you find his corpse as you can imagine the area almost feels more like a mausoleum than a palace and it seems like the music's main focus is to drive this point home the King's theme from the game's intro is stretched out to occupy eight bars of 4/4 time rather than four bars of 3/4 time with an additional tag of the opening leap up of a fifth extending the melody to a 12 bar phrase notice how we open with the flattened six the variation rather than the raised sixth version from the elegy of hollowness making for a decidedly darker take on the theme [Music] the melody never really feels finished here where the white lady's theme resolves down to the tonic at the end of each phrase the white palace theme opts to sit on the second of the key the sixth of the underlying minor four chord but even with all of their differences the two themes share the same blueprint I described earlier this first statement of the melody is juxtaposed against a variation of the melody that gives us that raised sixth scale degree before wandering off into a whole other direction the original main rhythmic ideas are maintained a two half note leap that holds over into the next bar as well as the two quarter note to a half note rhythm but the actual notes of the melody shift around to outline a progression that descends steadily through the key of C minor until climaxing on a big ol 5 chord [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] I think this approach has to do with Larkins prioritizing of atmosphere in the soundtrack mixed with his inspiration from classical composers it seems like he tries to avoid any musical moves that will catch too much attention or take you out of the mood he's trying to set especially with area themes like this but he's also explicitly stated that the development of the white palace theme was inspired by Mahler and Rachmaninoff maintaining a consistent rhythmic identity throughout this development allows the melody and harmony to move to new places without ever breaking that underlying atmosphere the white palace theme is one of the longer tunes in the sand track and moves into an extended development section exploring variations on the arpeggiated heart figure that has underpinned the melody of the tune thus far it's after this development section winds up that we return to our two-part melodic section this time scores for a powerful climax [Music] though it's on a much larger scale the piece is following the same formula that we established in the much simpler white lady's theme just like the elegy of hallo Ness that opens up the game there are plenty of plot points and details about the game's world that requires some investigation to really understand for instance Hornet one of the main characters that you run into throughout the game is actually the pale king's daughter this was deduced by players from multiple characters dialogue from all over the game world but if mas bag couldn't convince you allow me to throw another piece of evidence on the pile Hornets theme the music that plays when fighting her is actually a rearrangement of the same Kings theme that we've been talking about this whole video the way it's phrased is totally flipped on its head so it's not immediately obvious but if you look closely you'll definitely be able to hear it the original melody is made up of four bars starting on the tonic and bar one and resolving to the tonic and bar for this makes a complete sounding phrase the white palace theme stretched this out into eight bars but the spacing of the phrases was identical Hornets theme operates a little differently stretching the original melody out into an 8 bar phrase but structuring it to land on the tonic on the first beat of the first and fifth bars the initial leap of a fifth moves into the flat 7 flat 6 for melody that makes the Kings theme so recognizable but then we get this altered walk down to our tonic this kicks off a 1 4 3 2 move that's reminiscent of the Kings theme without directly quoting it and then the last two bars are unfailingly filled with some kind of transitionary material to the next phrase sometimes that's this intense scalar run sometimes it's these jabbing chords and sometimes it's a development of this new one 4 3 2 phrase through different tonal centers [Music] being a boss fight theme as well as Hornets character theme the music has different roles to fulfill compared to our earlier examples for this reason much of the development section is elaborating on accompaniment figures used throughout the melody like the sixteenth note scaler pattern or these stabbing eighth note shots the piece culminates in this polyrhythmic for over three pattern with the violin and piano playing blazing-fast scaler patterns in opposite directions [Music] that part doesn't really have anything to do with The Pale King but it's just awesome Halla night is a game that cares about its lore and is very deliberate about how it reveals information to the player it's partially due to this approach to storytelling that the game grew such a dedicated fanbase with people still coming out with new theories and interpretations of in-game events two years after the game's release one element of the game that slightly under explored is the music and the music works to tell the game's story just as much as all of the other elements in the game's world the fact that the pale Kings theme is woven throughout the soundtrack like this just goes to show how deliberate team cherry was about involving the music in their storytelling this idea is something I want to explore further in the next and final video in this Hollow Knight series so look forward to that if you enjoyed the video and want to help support the channel feel free to check out my patreon here if you hate looking at new tweets feel free to follow me on Twitter cuz you won't have to worry about that and if you want all of your friends to know just how big of a nerd you really are consider buying an 8-bit music theory t-shirt here thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: 8-bit Music Theory

Views: 351,248

Keywords: Hollow Knight, Christopher Larkin, Hollow Knight music, indie game soundtrack, how to write game music, atmospheric music, motivic development, leitmotif, boss fight music, music theory lesson, vgm, video game music theory, Pale King, White Lady, White Palace, Hornet theme, 8-bit Music Theory

Id: f2NEvQb2OeA

Length: 12min 53sec (773 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 03 2019