Why does Dark Souls sound like Dark Souls?

[Music] whether you're playing Dark Souls or Elden ring or bloodborne or even Demon Souls the music of the souls series evokes a consistently depressing atmosphere that colors and fleshes out each game's world to maintain such a consistent Sonic identity the music follows a musical formula that consistently gets at that somber nihilistic tone the series is so perfect at conveying so today let's take a look at some of the principles behind the souls series music and prepare to die sect what makes it work the first and most obvious musical contribution to the atmosphere of these games is that there is no music for like 90% of the experience the music is saved for a handful of key locations throughout each game as well as each of the many boss encounters but for just about the entire Journey between these key places you'll find no background music to be found this colors the whole experience of playing the game there's a thick sense of hopelessness that runs through each game a Gloom that haunts every aspect from the settings to the plot to the action and somehow getting your head chopped off by a skeleton for the 50th time with no music to accompany it whatsoever drives home this feeling of nihilism more than any score could ever hope to the second musical contribution to the series atmosphere is the approach to orchestration which is extremely consistent across the series The Sounds of string orchestra and choir singing Nonsense Latin sounding syllables make up the primary colors in the orchestral pallet with low grass and pounding Tony mixed in when the music needs to push you into Full Throttle panic mode and harp used when the music needs to reassure you that it's okay you're in one of the few truly safe places in the game different pieces will emphasize one or another of these elements Above the Rest and seiro naturally sprinkles a healthy dose of traditional Japanese instruments on top but generally speaking the choir and strings Define the sound of these games this is what gives the music its seriousness removing the lighter sounds from the orchestra like winds and high brass keeps that pallet dark and filling their role in The Ensemble in with fake Latin chanting choir makes the music feel a ient it's perfect for the crumbling ruins and characters with troubled pasts that inhabit these worlds in Dark Souls 3's iudex Gunder theme the high Coral chords that open the piece give way to a somber string [Music] Melody [Music] this ancient hopeless gloominess that pervades these themes means that the harmony has to be minor minor minor you'd be hardpressed to find a major chord anywhere in these games here we swim around a G minor chord for basically the entire piece with the melody walking up from the route to the third and jumping up to the fifth to clearly outline this G minor sound the gorgeous string orchestration isn't afraid to on neighboring tones within the G minor scale using the Flat 6 and the second of the key to access the devastating sound of the aolon mode or natural minor [Music] [Music] scale the theme of Gan the first hunter from bloodborne similarly Dives deep into the minor scale laying down a low Bas drone on the tonic D note for huge chunks of the piece underneath the cello Melody outlining simple D Minor figures and the inner voice stepping around to more colorful notes from the D minor scale this base creates an oppressively dark atmosphere [Music] there's something about the sound of the minor key that can feel profoundly dark if you look at at all of the individual parts of garman's theme here it's incredibly simple the melody is walking up a D minor scale the inner voice is moving away from and then resolving back to the third of the key and the base is of course just sitting on the route but even though it's simple it allows for a level of expression from the performers that makes it truly powerful sticking so stubbornly to the tonic minor chord like this creates the sense that we can't escape the darkness which I think could accurately describe the main narrative theme of just about every Souls game now we're not just sitting on one minor chord for most of the music in these games of course but when we do see other chords we see the music take a very specific approach centering on the sound of the dominant five chord the dominant five chord in a minor key using the raised seventh of the key rather than the flat 7even natural to the minor scale is a sound that dates back hundreds of years and can evoke a dark classical style that fits perfectly with the settings of each of these games nothing in the souls games feels Cutting Edge Everything feels like it's been there for thousands of years and is way past its prime it's a very old and very basic technique but when used properly the dominant five chord can surpass the basic Gloom of the natural minor scale and get to a real sense of Despair it's an essential part of the sound of the souls series especially when used with a specific twist Firelink Shrine from Dark Souls gives us a perfect example the harp and strings spell out a progression from the one chord E minor to the four chord a minor held over the tonic e in the base it then moves to a B7 chord before resolving back to the home chord of E [Music] minor [Music] this 5:1 Cadence has a real finality to it a real hopelessness that totally fits the character of the game and you'll notice two interesting things about this B7 chord that add to the Dark Souls sound one it has the flat n9th of the chord on top a C note making it a B7 flat 9 chord and two it has the third of the chord in the base dsharp now borrowing the raised 7th scale degree in a minor key means that if you build up a chord based on this raised 7th you'll get a diminished seven chord in E Minor this would be a dsharp diminished 7 and if you compare this this chord to our B7 flat 9 that we saw just before you'll see that the two chords are identical apart from the inclusion of the fifth of the key in this case b because of this the 5 S chord in a minor key is functionally identical to the diminished chord based off of the raised sth as they contain all of the same notes look at this section from the tower Knight theme from Demon Souls this great Jagged diminished chord riff in the strings outlines an E flat diminished seven chord and then after four bars the phrase continues with the bass note shifted down to D underneath the diminished drift doesn't change at all but having a dnote anchor it turns it from a diminished chord into a D7 flat 9 chord that resolves to G minor you'll note that because of the symmetrical nature of the diminished chord E flat diminished is equivalent to FSH diminished is equivalent to a diminished and C [Music] diminished [Music] [Applause] [Music] this is a perfect example of how similar the seven diminished and dominant five chords really are and how the diminished sound of the 57 flat 9 chord can add a more aggressive Edge to your usual 5 to1 Cadence the souls games do use dominant five chords like this but more often than not they'll be inverted in some way to prevent us from totally getting the Cadence's satisfying finality the godkin apostles theme from Elden ring uses minor one four and seven diminished chords all over a tonic E flat base pedal again using the seven diminished is functionally the same as the dominant five chord so you can think of these D diminished chords as basically being B flat sevens but but putting a d diminished Triad over an E flat bass note rather than a B flat bass note makes such a great crunchy [Music] sound I also want to point out here the way these boss themes tend to rock back back and forth between huge loud intensity and more subdued quieter phrases these pieces tend to be structured in eight or 16 Bar phrases and aren't afraid to drop the dynamic way down low for a phrase before bringing it crescendoing back up to an eruption of intensity I particularly love this passage that isolates a couple vocalists harmonizing a Melody that moves from the tonic E flat minor to the much brighter sounding F minor borrowing that raised sixth of the Key C natural before sinking back down to a natural minor sound with a darker a flat minor [Music] chord back to the harmony great grey wolf sifs theme from Dark Souls uses tons of dominant five chords in first inversion putting the third of the chord in the base much like what we saw in Firelink shrines music [Music] earlier notice again the way the music breaks down to a lower Dynamic and sparer texture before building back up to the intensity of the full Ensemble these first inversion 5 chords do resolve up to their tonic one chords but they're also used in the soul series to slide down to the flat seven of the key in a kind of fake out move this later section of Si's theme sees the tonic of the moment E minor move to a b over dsharp chord which slides down to a d chord before returning up to a B7 flat 9 over dsharp that resolves back to E [Music] minor the B7 flat 9 over dsharp just like what we saw in Firelink Shrine accesses the unstable and aggressive diminished chord Sound by adding the flat 9th C to mimic a dsharp diminished s chord actually this example is more crunchy than a straightup diminished seven chord would be thanks to the rub between the root B and the flat 9th see that happens above the D bass note sticking pretty strictly to these kinds of chord progressions variations on 5:1 and 7:1 cadences creates such a strong Sonic identity for the series but such a limited harmonic pallet could start to get old across a series of soundtracks to create more musical drama in the places that need it without compromising the established harmonic identity of the series lots of pieces will change keys on a dime throwing out the same kind of 57 to1 moves in a variety of minor keys in quick succession especially in the tracks written by motoi sakuraba who did the entirety of Dark Souls 1 and most of Dark Souls 2 these key shifts can be pretty insane thankfully diminished seven chords work wonderfully for changing Keys their instability translating to a flexibility that proves very useful for this Dark Souls 2's theme for sin the slumbering dragon starts off with big grandiose Orchestra chords giving us a g major that turns sour and becomes a G minor this opening statement gives way to a series of key changes that eventually dumps US in the key of A minor and we see this A minor chord dip down to a gsh diminished 7 which sets up a resolution back to a minor but instead of this resolution we slip down on another half step to G minor and then move to C minor in what feels like a solidification of G minor as the new home key this C walks down to an A7 flat 9 almost immediately though which resolves to a D minor chord which then immediately shifts to a c diminished 7 to bring us back to that initial grandiose [Music] statement the theme for everyone's favorite gruesome tusome orstein and SM takes us through the keys of G minor E minor F minor and F minor all through just 16 bars we start in G minor with yet another Melody that walks straightforwardly up the minor scale while the harmony dips down to a first inversion five chord this D over FP this smoothly transitions to a dsh diminished s chord that brings us to the key of E minor jumping to our new first inversion 5 chord B over D sharp before pivoting back to G minor where we started this last D over f facilitates a smooth base step down to F to bring us to the key of F minor where we get a longer walk down from the one chord to the five chord c setting up a jump back to F minor but we overshoot that resolution just a hair and end up in FSH minor trading the tonic cord with its s diminished e Shar diminished 7 this once again facilitates a smooth step down to an E chord and the base keeps walking down to get us to a c Shar diminished 7 after this the piece breaks down to a quieter organ solo section back to the first key of G minor see if you can follow along with all of these key changes [Music] here [Music] this music doesn't let up any more than the bosses who it accompanies [Music] do whether it's hectic boss themes poignant story heavy battles with tragic figures or a rare place of rest in a dangerous world the music that runs through the Souls game sticks to a very specific sound to create the perfect atmosphere for their worlds these games are full of broken characters and tragic hopeless settings and it's no easy feat to capture the gravity of these game's themes with such tact surprisingly even with using such a limited pallet of musical colors and techniques the series manages to create a ton of unique unque hauntingly beautiful tracks with each release much like the design of each game the skeleton is always pretty much the same even as the details change but it's such a great skeleton that we just can't get enough no matter what the details are on top big thanks to Patron Dao for requesting a Souls series overview if you want to see my full transcriptions for the tunes shown in the video head on over to my patreon and become a $5 supporter thanks so much for watching and I'll see you all in the next one oh

Channel: 8-bit Music Theory

Views: 203,811

Keywords: dark souls music, soulsborne ost, dark souls 2, ds2, ds3, ds, des music, Dark souls 3, Demon's souls, Motor Sakuraba, Bloodborne music, elden ring music, sekiro music, tower knight, Ornstein Smough, sif theme, sinh dragon theme, Gehrman music, boss music, how to write music, composition, music theory, 8-bit music theory

Id: wLpXMIIZSB0

Length: 18min 42sec (1122 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 29 2023