Why is Great Bay Temple's Music in Majora's Mask so Unsettling?

after saving the gorons from the never-ending winter link turns himself to great bay where the waters have become murky and the pirates they're more daring in their attacks on the zora after finding the mortally wounded macau link puts his spirit to rest and must honor his dying wish to rescue lulu's eggs after doing what is my personal least favorite side quest in the game seriously all my homies hate pinnacle rock he sets his sights on the origin of great bay's issues the temple but just what is great bay temple what purpose does it serve and how does the music there affect the player's experience it turns out a whole lot today i present to you what makes great bay temple's music so uncomfortable if you enjoy this video please give it a like and consider subscribing much like how i pointed out that snow head temple's design exists in stark contrast with the rest of the structures we see for the goron tribe in termina great bay's interior is like nothing else in the entire game it's probably the most advanced piece of technology that we see in the n64 zelda games in fact the only things in the entire franchise that can match its scale are probably the lenairu desert civilization in skyward sword and the guardians in breath of the wild however unlike snowhead the zora people openly acknowledge that it serves a purpose mentioning that the temple actually has a guardian lulu in fact one of the zora mentions that if something bad happens to the temple then the guardian will also suffer misfortune and seeing as lulu has lost her children her voice and her implied lover macau i'd say she's having a pretty bad day it's mentioned from multiple sources that the oceans of great bay have been tainted recently with both the murky waters that cloud the ocean and rising temperatures which have made it harder for the local fishermen and even the zora to find fish which is certainly due to the corrupting influence of the skull kid and majora an interesting implication is that lulu is one of many in a line of guardians for the temple so it's clearly been around for a long time i purport the theory that its primary function is to serve as a water purification plant keeping the great bay and i did like locale for the zora people so much so that one of these auroras mentioned how a custom they've all become to their peaceful and easy lives there and how macau is the only one who can go and fight anyways the temple interior is definitely in a state of disrepair we can constantly see and hear dripping water leaking through all the metal sheeting that makes up the walls whether this is only due to the recent storm that kicked up to prevent people from getting to the temple or if it's always been this way is impossible to say but if the metal used in the sheeting wasn't properly treated rust like this could start forming very quickly it's also interesting that we can see the ribboning on the metal plating riveting still remains a common way to seal metal tanks and we can see here that no welding has been done and considering this was a more modern practice in even our world this makes sense i'm sure they had andrew the riveter on the job it should be noted that the place is much cleaner in the 3ds remake with more embellishments of aquatic life on just about every structure and hey while we're talking about the 3ds remake let's once again mention the lighting it feels like grezzo are the kind of people who always crank up the settings to max when starting a new game because there are a few times when i was swimming that i legitimately had to squint due to how bright my screen got that's not possible no one's ever been able to call him exodia obliterate anyways going with the water purification theory we can see in the mini boss rooms what appears to be some super unclean sludge flowing in through the grates on the walls i actually did some research on water purification plants and how they work and basically one of the many steps to purifying water for consumption is to coagulate bigger particles and sediments so they are easy to remove and the two mini boss rooms seem perfect for situations like this considering how thick and dark the liquid flowing in seems and the rooms not being full of water which creates an arena for a link to fight in could be a sign that they aren't serving their intended purpose also in another room we have several pipes coming in and out of this big structure which could be the dungeon's actual filtration tanks essentially the next step is to get rid of any finer particles and bacteria the previous step might have missed this is almost always done through sand filtration in which the water is pressed through increasingly finer layers of sand in fact we see this water flowing upwards in the tank which is how most water purification engineers in the real world recommend doing it however before link is able to rotate the switch on top the water isn't flowing at all in fact there are several of these throughout the temple it appears that in the process of getting to the dungeons boss gjorg you actually have to restart the water purification process and it's small but one more thing that i think lends credence to the water purification theory is the ledges on many platforms which are highlighted with these orange and yellow stripes stripes like this particularly yellow ones are used in so many cultures as a sign of caution and many of them are featured at factories with heavy machinery so it's likely that they're being used here to warn someone of the ledge after link clears the temple some of the zora mentioned that the water is returning to normal and that shortly they expect the sea life too as well and one final note as a kid the doors in this temple always made me think of the backgrounds on the death star anybody else feel this way but enough about the design of great bay temple let's get into talking about the music because this might be the most clever song i've covered so far and i don't mean that as hyperbole it's seriously amazing kondo really kicked into high gear on this one also a real quick shout out to laura and travia for making the sheet music i use in this video and to colin of bad news botanists and run on music for their help as music theory consultants and i've included a link to all of these people in the description down below first off we get this striking percussion to start the song and set the rhythm this really helps solidify the mechanical nature of the temple right off the bat honestly i wouldn't place this sound as a specific drum per se but more as someone banging on oil cans like stomp was doing a set in the other room or something either way it's the first thing you hear as you ride in on the turtle apart from the dripping water leaking through all the metal and it really hammers home the industrial nature of the dungeon next we hear another percussion sound and this is the ringing of metal on metal almost factory-like nailing home the machine like nature we got from the first sound and echoing the visuals of the dungeon this clanging comes in after the third repeat of the former drum phrase to surprise the player and throw off their expectations for the song that they had already established again as i've mentioned in previous videos by setting up a melody or rhythm the listener's ear begins to fall into a comfortable place by then throwing that off we subconsciously get uncomfortable and have to reevaluate what to expect add on to this the fact that this is a literal loud clang and yeah i'd say it throws the listener for a loop but get this the first time we hear it it's after three loops of the first drum rhythm but going forward it repeats after every two loops so our ears subconsciously go okay this loud clang happens after every three measures and then kondo pulls a fast one and suddenly we get surprised by it a second time on top of this we get another rhythm thrown in with this sort of electronic sound [Music] there's no real pitch to this and it just serves to throw off our understanding of the rhythm of the song even more it comes in after the fourth measure after the first metal clang and then plays in tandem with the oil canned drums amazingly this plays for a whole 12 measures or roughly half a minute of the song before it suddenly stops once again kondo has played us like an ocarina getting us used to a sound so when he cuts it off even though the rest of the instruments keep playing the silence of this one is deafening finally in the seventh measure condo gives us something with a pitch to latch onto is it comfortable no this isn't necessarily an instrument in the traditional sense like i've covered in previous videos but what's more interesting is how it's used this section is just three descending notes played over and over now the song is in 4 4 time usually this means the listener is in for a fairly simple easy to understand rhythm but because this is three notes an odd number repeated over and over it doesn't fit perfectly into a 4-4 measure which creates the impression that the meter is different from the actual time signature in this case it can create the feeling that the song is actually speeding up after the first measure we start the second measure on the second note of this three note segment and on the third measure we start on the third note this three note section flies in the face of the rhythm set up by the percussion but it's just enough that it's not screaming in your face since they are 16th notes you probably don't even notice that it's off tempo all the while kondo fades the section in and out leaving the player feeling more confused in addition to this descending three-note segment kondo then introduces an ascending five note segment again it's ugly and what's wild is that because it's another odd number of sixteenth notes they also don't fit within the 4-4 rhythm established and kondo introduces this five-note section on top of the three-note section all the while both are fading in and out [Music] at one moment the dominant sound is the three note section and at another the dominant sound is the five note section it's absolute madness this technique is known as rhythmic phrasing where you have two different related parts of different lengths that go in and out of sync with each other and while this section is going on kondo drops out the drums and the synth rhythm so all we are left with is just the three and five note segments and i'd like to draw a comparison between these last two parts and how they mirror link's traversal of the dungeon the central hub for the temple features a giant spinning vortex in which you are forced to swim with the current to go to various rooms in order to advance halfway through however you manage to reverse this vortex allowing link to visit other rooms you couldn't before the three note segment is descending the five note segment is ascending kondo has stated before that he plays a section of a game over and over to get a sense of how it plays before writing the music and the man is a genius so i wouldn't be surprised if this is what he was going for kondo then drops out the five note segment and with just the three note segment repeating while fading in and out he actually gives us a pretty chord [Music] in fact this is an a major chord going off this combined with the fact that the three note segment has both a c sharp or a d flat on the sheet music and an a in it you might be fooled into thinking that this whole piece is actually in the key of a major but hahaha kondo tricks you again in the key of a major we would normally see this followed up by a b minor chord but here he raises all the notes by the same interval which gives us a b major chord next he jumps it up to a d major which is found in the key of a major before dropping it back to a d flat major chord which in the key of a major would normally be a c-sharp minor chord all of these actually function on the whole tone scale which is a scale made entirely from whole step notes remember how i mentioned last time that konda loves to use tritones to make stuff uncomfortable well the whole note scale is all tritones all the time [Music] and it's usually used in things like dream sequences in old television shows the whole tone scale is naturally unsettled and i think there's correlation between this and how half of the temple features link leaving solid ground being forced to go with the flow of water and finally to finish the song out just before it loops around to the start we get some even weirder synthy sounds with an echo effect on them this is just two notes repeated with a faster speed the second time similar to how kondo was throwing in more sound seemingly at random towards the end of the snow head temple theme here he is again putting in more sounds that while fitting with a theme come out of nowhere and surprise our ears with something we haven't heard before and because it only repeats twice we don't have time to get used to it before it's gone legitimately i didn't remember hearing this sound at all during my previous playthroughs so to hear it towards the end while listening back to this song was really surprising kondo pulled out all the stops when writing the uncomfortable music of great bay temple a place that many players dislike even more because they got lost in the underwater labyrinths and had to reset time just to finish it but while great bay is certainly one of the most infamously disliked dungeons in the entire franchise i hope this video has at least made you appreciate the lengths that the team who designed it went through to make it so much fun to hate [Music] thank you very much for watching this video on great bait temple if you've been enjoying our zelda dungeon analysis series please give this video a comment and even like down below because it really helps us out a lot and if you want to chat with us and other people enthusiastic about these delta franchise consider heading over to our discord where we have a whole channel for discussion theories and if you have a few bucks to toss our way we'd really appreciate it if you checked out our patreon our content will always stay free but any support is always appreciated either way until next time have a wonderful day [Music]

Channel: Save Data

Views: 394,896

Keywords: Great Bay Temple, Great Bay Temple Music, Great Bay Temple Theme, Zelda Dungeon Great Bay Temple, Great Bay Temple Dungeon, Zelda Majora's Mask, Majora's Mask Great Bay, Zelda Music Analysis, Majora's Mask Dungeon, Great Bay Temple Majoras Mask, great bay temple majoras mask

Id: _F_UU1uMc-g

Length: 13min 45sec (825 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 28 2021