Into the Score - February 28, 2007

2 of 3 - Chrono Cross


Intro

OPENING

(Time's Scar)

I'm Kenley Kristofferson and this is Into the Score.

OPENING II

Good evening everyone! It is Wednesday, February 28st of 2007 and I am happy to be here.  I'm Kenley and you are listening to Into the Score, the only podcast that is solely devoted to the academic study of the genre of video game music.  Tonight we tackle Episode 6 and part 2 of 3 of our Chrono Triple Tech - this week's episode is Square Enix's "Chrono Cross." Let's do the contact info.

CONTACT INFO:

Right on, so if you want to check out our website it is www.songofthefates.com, all one word.  To reach me, you can just type in Kenley@songofthefates.com, so k-e-n-l-ey@songofthefates.com.  The podcast is recorded at Naked Dave's Basement Productions, which is the studio that Jeremy and I own, there are pictures of it on the website.  Before we begin, just a quick correction from last episode.  I think that I said that "Illusion of Gaia" was released by Nintendo, but it definitely wasn't, it was released by Enix... sorry about that everyone! But, thanks to Joey Perry from Winnipeg for pointing that out.  Now that that's cleared up, game on, let's start this up!



TIME IN GAMING:

Well, it's 1999 and technology is doing some crazy things to the world, or rather, not doing crazy things - everyone remember Y2K? Exactly.  In this year, Europe received the euro currency, the territory of Nunavut came into being in Canada, the internet got Napster, Earth borne its 6 billionth citizen and the world finally received a sequel to Chrono Trigger.  Special thanks to the Wikipedia article on the year 1999 for that one... except that last one, but the world finally receiving a sequel to Chrono Trigger is really a half-truth, but we'll talk about that in a bit.

I actually had a bit of a tough time finding info on what actually happened in gaming around 1999.  Sega Dreamcast was released, I mean, that's cool - it's sad that it didn't do very well, but it was a hell of a system, 128-bit... that's a lot of bits.  What else, Final Fantasy VIII came out, a lot of people were really disappointed, considering the overwhelming success of FF7 (the game which I think saved the playstation, but that's a whole other story), anyways... I liked FF8, good game, great score, detailed characters... Anyways, I found this site called "1999 Video Game Awards" put on by mastergamer.com, and it seems like they found the same thing.  Of all the games released in 1999, the PS port of Lunar: Silver Star Story cleaned house, and I'll bet that most gamers have ever HEARD of Lunar, let alone knew it had a playstation port.  It's downstairs on my shelf, good game, great characters.  But yeah, Chrono Cross was hardly mentioned at all, which is bizarre, and I'll tell you why after we listen to this: This is "Dream of the Shore Near Another World" from the Chrono Cross OST, released by Square Enix and composed by Chrono Series, Yasunori Mitsuda, here's "Dream of the Shore Near Another World."

(Dream of the Shore Near Another World - 0:00 - 0:55)

Wow, that didn't take long, that's where you're walking on the map in Another World, which probably makes no sense to hear about right now - "Another World?! What are you talking about?" I'll tell you in a sec, but first we've got to deal with this "lack of Chrono Cross on mastergamer.com's 1999 video game awards"... what's the deal.

Sourced from our friends at the Chrono Cross Wikipedia site, Chrono Cross has sold 1.5 million copies throughout its lifetime - 850,000 in NA and 650,000 in Japan.  On a panel of three judges put together by EGM, CC got a 10/10/9.5, giving it a "gold award".  Gamespot.com gave it a 10/10, which only four out of 1100 games have received.  It received a 92% score from both rottentomatoes.com and gamerankings.com, so yeah, good game...

I can't really source this except for being a member of the game music community, but I can confidently say that, reputationally and among game music scholars, Chrono Cross is considered as one of the best video game scores of all-time - it's really between Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Cross for the top spot.  The score of this game is a masterpiece, similar to it's wildly intricate story, which I'm going to tell you about right now.

STORY

Oh man, where do I start... and how do I not give anything away? Ummm... alright, well, the game starts out with three characters, Serge and Kid (male and female respectively) and one random other character.  They're in a large fort, whose name I shall not disclose and they get to the top and see a heinous murder and everyone is confused... then to make things more enticing, we switch to Aruni Village and see our protagonist, Serge, going to meet the very lovely, Leena.  After a few little quests, he finds himself at Opassa Beach and he slips into an alternate dimension.  In this alternate dimension, the world is different and all has changed - changed so much that Serge is, in fact, dead in this world, drowned 10 years prior.  For reference, these two dimensions are called "Home World" (which is where we started the game) and "Another World" which is the alternate dimension.  So, while trying to figure out what's going on, he meets up with a girl named Kid (at this point, we've met them both at the obscure beginning of the game).  She wants to storm a military compound called Viper Manor to acquire an item of immense importance called the Frozen Flame.  Without getting too ridiculously overboard in the ridiculously complex story, that's all I can say for now - play the game, it's worth it, not only for the story, but particularly FOR THE MUSIC!

Here's another sample: This is Voyage - Another World.

(Voyage - Another World 0:00 - 1:05)

So good.  Let's find out what our composer, Yasunori Mitsuda has been up to.

Composer

Well, since CT in 1995, he scored Front Mission: Gun Hazard and Tobal No. 1 in 1996 as well as Xenogears and Mario Party in 1998 before scoring CC the following year.  However, there is one more game that he did before Chrono Cross - it was never released in North America, but it is an intermediary game between our two Chronos; it was released in 1996 and it's called Radical Dreamers. 

Radical Dreamers

Now, in order for us to understand the foundations of Chrono Cross, we must first look at Chrono Trigger (obviously) and then take a look at Radical Dreamers.  Now, Radical Dreamers came out in 1996, just one year after CT for the Satella-view.  I know what you're thinking - Satella-wha? It was an add-on for the Super Famicom, or the Japanese SNES.  Square made just a few games for it, but one of which was the text-based adventure called Radical Dreamers.  I can't really say that it's a "sequel" to CT, but it's what the Japanese call a "gaiden", or a side-story that helps explain the world of CT and tie up some its loose ends.  

The game is about an adventurer named Serge, a thief named Kid and a mysterious wizard named Magil and they're looking through a large mansion called Viper Manor to look for the Frozen Flame - these are all the basic elements to the most basic arc of Chrono Cross.  See, now when I first started researching this, I thought "this sounds a lot like Chrono Cross, but has nothing to do with CT.  However, as the party gets lower and lower into the manor, they encounter the villain called Lynx, who is the villain in CC, and they find themselves, are you ready for this, in the underground ruins of Zeal! Furthermore, we start to see that this Magil character, coming and going like the wind, starts to look more and more like Magus... looking for Schala... in the ruins of Zeal... interesting...

I can't tell you more without ruining either Radical Dreamers or Chrono Cross, but I can tell you that some of the musicl from Dreamers are used in its "expansion", so let's do a little compare-and-contrast: First we'll play a piece from Radical Dreamers, then we'll play the same one from Chrono Cross.  Here's "The Star-Stealing Girl" from Radical Dreamers.

(Star-Stealing Girl - 0:00 - end)

Now, here's the same one from CC.

(Star-Stealing Girl - 0:00 - 1:30)

Quite the difference and we could go on for a while with that.  However, with all of that said, that brings us to the music.

Music

This score, unlike the one of CT was scored entirely by Yasunori Mitsuda - and you can tell, because even though there are tons of similarity to CT, this score sounds much, much different.  One of the reasons for this is that, according to the Chrono Cross Wiki article, Mitsuda based his work on the soundtrack around "Old World" musical influences such as Mediterranean, Celtic, Fado (or mournful Portuguese songs) and African music.  Even as you look at the game itself - the El Nido Archipelago looks totally different than the world of CT, so of course the music should be different! 

Now, because there are two different dimensions, what Mitsuda has done is taken a melody and applied to a location, nothing new there.  But, when in an alternate dimension, Mitsuda has taken the melody and rearranged it to have a different feel, or different harmony, different instrumentation... how about I just show you.  Here are a few examples, this is Aruni Village from the home world.  It's a small fishing village where we start the game, it's also Serge's home town, here's "Home Aruni."

(Home Aruni - 0:00 - 1:10)

Now we'll jump dimensions, and this takes us to "Another Aruni"

(Another Aruni - 0:00 - 1:15)

Cool, do we hear how the melodies are the same, but they way that they're felt is different? The first one is a bit more upbeat, the second one is more mellow? Same melody, different orchestration.  This is our musical concept of the episode - 

(crazy sci-fi sound)

Arrangement... man, that crazy sci-fi sound is wild...

Anyways, I would show you some orchestral examples or pop examples, but there are SO many out there, I mean Guns n' Roses did "Sweet Child o' Mine", then Sheryl Crow did it too - same song, totally different.  Tchaikovsky did the Nutcracker ballet, Duke Ellington did it too, except for Jazz Orchestra and it swings... same song, but put together and interpreted in a different way - in music, this is called "arranging."

Keeping in mind, this game is chock full of arrangements too.  Here's another, this is the market village of Termina, We're going to have a listen "Another Termina", this is the first Termina you hear (and one of my favorite pieces in the game).  You can hear the world influences, particularly Celtic, with bagpipes, harp, mouthharp, castanets... very eclectic... like the pieces from our last episode, we talked about Eclecticism! Anyways, let's get down to the music, here's "Another Termina."

(Another Termina - 0:00 - 1:10)

And now "Home Termina"

(Home Termina - 0:00 - 1:15)



Cool, now the emphasis on location themes is a lot stronger than in the game's prequel; reciprocally, the emphasis on character themes is a lot less, in fact only a handful of characters really have recurring themes... actually, I think that it's only Kid, but she gets a couple of themes.  And this is going to bring us to our Analysis part of the show:

ANALYSIS

There are two main themes of the game - as well as several musical allusions to Chrono Trigger, but we're going to talk about that in two weeks.  

The first theme is the theme that dominates the game - I would go so far as say that it is the theme of the game.  We first hear it in Time's Scar.  

(Time's Scar - 0:15 - 1:05 [fading out])

We also hear it in "Lost Pieces"

(Lost Pieces - 0:10 - 0:15)

But more than it's used, it's more quoted and quoted in two particular ways.  The first is through motives, particularly an ascending minor fifth (sing), it's the first motive in the melody, listen to it in Time's Scar again.

(Time's Scar - 0:16 - 0:17)

One more time...

(Time's Scar 0:16 - 0:17)

Now, listen to some more pieces that use that interval to open up their melodies, reminding us of the theme of the game.  Here is the music where you're walking on the map in the "Another World" dimension, it's called "Dream of the Shore Near Another World."

(Dream of the Shore Near Another World - 0:00 - 0:50)

Right on, hear it? The first interval of the melody, that ascending perfect fifth is reminding us of Time's Scar.  Here's another good example, this is when you're sailing the high seas of the El Nido Archipelago, this is "Voyage - Home World," listen for the first two notes:

(Voyage - Home World - 0:00 - 1:05)

This happens all through the game, but as we said before, this isn't the only way that Mitsuda unifies the theme with the score, or rather, reminds the audience of the theme without playing it 47 times.  

The second way that he hints at "Time's Scar"  is with instrumentation and this instrumentation helps to link the entire game together.  Remember how we talked about "Old World influences" in the soundtrack earlier in the podcast, well, this is exactly what it is.  The first reminder is the incredible use of nylon string guitar.  This is what it sounds like.

(Time's Scar - 0:00 - 0:15)

We hear it again in "Home - Aruni Village"

(Home Aruni Village 0:00 - 0:30)

And when we walk on the map in the "Home" world, this piece is called "Plains of Time - Home World."

(Plains of Time - Home World - 0:00 - 0:30)

Let's see, what else, how about "Dream of the Shore Near Another World", we just heard this one...

(Dream of the Shore Near Another World - 0:00 - 0:30)

Perhaps in the shanty town of Guldove, we haven't heard this one yet.  This is Another Guldove.

(Another Guldove - 0:00 - 1:05)

And another one of my favorite pieces from the game, this is "Home Guldove"

(Home Guldove - 0:00 - 1:40)

There are more linking elements in the game, but there's just so much to say, I could probably do an entire series of podcasts on just this one game, but I can't, too bad so sad.

The other really prominent theme in the game is Kid's Theme, or, sort of Kid's theme, it's a bit confusing.  In which case, this is the melody: Here's "Dream Fragments."

(Dream Fragments - 0:00 - 0:50)

We also hear it at the very end of the game after we take out the final boss (which is a topic I'll get to in a second).  Here's "Radical Dreamers - Unstolen Jewel," sung by Noriko Mitose.  Pay particular attention to the chorus of this excerpt, it's where the melody changes.  We can also call the chorus the "B section," different from the verse, which we can call the "A section" - A comes before B, B is different from A, really cool stuff, let's have a listen!

(Radical Dreamers - Unstolen Jewel - 0:53 - 1:53)

That was the ending theme of the game, "Radical Dreamers - Unstolen Jewel."  Now the melody of the chorus changes from the original, but Mitsuda sneaks it in somewhere else in SUCH a clever way, it's amazing.  This is brilliant, he actually sneaks it in as the opening to the Final Battle theme.  The more we study this piece, the more that we find that this battle theme is based entirely around Kid's Theme.  First let's listen to it, it's called "Life - Faraway Promise."

(Life - Faraway Promise - 0:00 - 3:40)

That was a super long excerpt but we still aren't even close to finishing the song.  In listening, we have to wait almost 3 minutes for the A section of Kid's Theme to come in, which is the part that we would immediately recognize, it's this part:

(Life - Faraway Promise - 2:46 - 3:12)

That's the A section, or the verse, right? But then there was that other section, that "B" section, which is the chorus.  Here's what it sounds like again in "Radical Dreamers - Unstolen Jewel."

(Radical Dreamers - Unstolen Jewel 0:53 - 1:30)

Okay, so we hear the first notes of the melody (sing them), now, check this out, this is the opening of the final battle theme...

(Life - Faraway Promise - 0:00 - 0:25)

The pitches we hear are the same as the B section, that's why it makes us think of Kid! But, the craziness isn't over yet, listen to the next thing he does with those very same pitches...

(Life - Faraway Promise - 0:20 - 0:45)

He takes those sparse pitches and places them one next to another, creating what is called a cell of notes - those 6 pitches repeat like an engine and repeat through the piece - we've said this before, something that repeats throughout a piece of music is called an ostinato and is one of the most key elements in game music.  Listen for the sparse pitches getting moved into a cell, then listen to how they form an ostinato, here it is one more time.

(Life - Faraway Promise - 0:20 - 0:45)

Now, where does it go? He takes the line that's being played on the bells and gently moves it to the piano...

(Life - Faraway Promise - 0:26 - 1:10)

After this, the song starts to sound like Kid's theme.  The actual theme of the B section comes in at 1:15, here's what it sounds like:

(Life - Faraway Promise - 1:15 - 2:00)

Now we're going to get really intense in the music dissection and the wildness is really in the feel and the time signature of the piece.  The time signature is the device that tells us what kind of notes and how many of them go into a bar of music.  There are two numbers: First tells us the number of notes in a bar and the second is what kind of notes they are, so 4/4 means 4 quarter notes, or 1-2-3-4.  3/4 means quarter notes in one bar, so 1-2-3-1-2-3.  And so on - now we dive into this a little bit.

At first, the notes are sparse, so we don't really know what the time is yet.  
(Life - Faraway Promise - 0:00 - 0:18)

Then we hear the 6-note cell and we start to get a pulse.  When I hear it, I hear "1+2+3+1+2+3+"

(Life - Faraway Promise - 0:36 - 0:48)

Then, everything comes in and moves in these huge long notes, so it skews where we feel the beat.  I feel it as 1 - 2 - 1 - 2, which makes the ostinato feel like 1-and-a 2-and-a... like a skipping 6/8 instead of a square 3/4.  I'll show you what I mean, listen one more time.

(Life - Faraway Promise - 0:56 - 2:00)

Then, with all of that rhythmic dissonance, our ears want some resolution and something that we can make sense with, so it's like we need to resolve that rhythmic tension.  Fancy that, what's the next thing that the composer does? Puts in a smooth section of strings - no ostinato, so percussion, just strings - here it is:

(Life - Faraway Promise - 2:00 - 2:40)

Ahhh, relief! But wait a sec, that's not in either 3/4 or 6/8.  Are there two beats in a bar? Is it 2/4? 4/4? It sure isn't 3/4 or 6/8 anymore... whoa, I just pummeled the listeners with time signatures.  I hear it in 4/4, so 1-2-3-4-1-2-3-4... but the feel changes again.  Brilliant... Mr. Mitsuda, you are amazing.

After that, he just gives us the one thing that we haven't heard yet - the A section theme, here it is: 

(Life - Faraway Promise - 2:46 - 3:12)

Okay, now here's EVERYTHING we've heard again in one cohesive piece - this is the way that it is in the game.  Here's "Life - Faraway Promise."

(Life - Faraway Promise - 0:00 - 3:40)

Brilliant - that work is a masterpiece of video game music, well done, sir... well done.  And this, ladies and gentlemen, concludes our analysis of the episode, it was quite the ride, but we made it :)

Now, for some extra listening fun, let's play some fragments of some of my favorite pieces from the game.  We've already touched on a few: "Another Termina," "Dream of the Shore Near Another World", "Voyage - Home World" The first is "Reminiscence - Thoughts Not Extinguished."  When I went to see the Play! Symphony in Toronto, they played a CT/CC medley and this is what opened it up, here it is:

(Reminiscence - Thoughts Not Extinguished - 0:00 -1:15)

Another is a piece called "Chronomantique", and it makes me want to sip marguaritas on the beach... at Opassa Beach... while traveling through time.  We'll talk about this one a bit in the next episode...

(Chronomantique - 0:00 - 0:55)

This next one goes without saying - it is another reason why CC is considered to be one of the, if not the greatest video game score of all-time.  It's actually when you're fighting your father's trapped conampion (Miguel) inside Chronopolis.  So epic... this is called "People Imprisoned by Destiny." Eat your heart out, Schumann.

(People Imprisoned by Destiny - 0:00 - 1:20)

That was "People Imprisoned by Destiny", sorry I can't play more of it, you'll just have to play the game.  

With that, let's wrap up this bad boy.  Before we play a CC remix then we'll cap off with the contact info.  I'm Kenley and you've been listening to Into the Score, the only podcast that is solely devoted to the academic study of game music.  If you'd like to reach me, you can send me an email at Kenley@songofthefates.com, so that's k-e-n-l-e-y@songofthefates.com, all one word.  Definitely check out the website for updates and awesomeness, it's www.songofthefates.com.  

Great stuff, so our bi-monthly remix comes out of the Chrono Compendium, which is www.chronocompendium.com.  It's called "Far Away Into Time" and it's by Prometheus.  In two weeks, we'll combine Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross and compare/contrast the musical relationship between the two and that will wrap up our Chrono Triple Tech - it's going to be wild.  I'm Kenley Kristofferson and this has been Into the Score, here's "Far Away Into Time" by Prometheus.  Thanks for listening and see you in two weeks.

(Far Away Into Time - 0:00 - 0:45)

END