Into the Score - June 17, 2007

Kingdom Hearts I + II

1) Intro
2) Contact Info
3) Time in Gaming when KH was Released
a. Controversy of Square Enix and Disney collaboration
b. What had been released that year?
c. What did Square Enix release that year?
4) Story of the Game
a. There are three games: Kingdom Hearts (for PS2), Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (for GBA) and Kingdom Hearts II.
b. Character Focused
i. Sora
ii. Kairi (four themes)
iii. Riku
5) Composer
a. Yoko Shimamura
b. (What else has she scored?)
6) How did she organize the score?
a. Thematic - i.e. the music is organized by a series of themes that relate to people, places or things.  
b. Because the game is very heavily Disney-influenced and Disney movies have a lot of memorable music, Yoko Shimamura has arranged the themes from the Disney movies to their corresponding music.
i. Winnie the Pooh
ii. Under the Sea
iii. Pirates of the Caribbean
c. Patches
i. Hear how the sound is very... fun?
d. Safety/Danger State
i. Another important device that Yoko Shimamura has used in this game is a fairly old concept of video game music, and that is Safety and Danger State music.  What that means, is that when there are no enemies around, the music is more calm and representational of the background environment, which we call Safety State.  BUT, when enemies come lurking about, the music changes to a faster and more heart-wrenching pace, focusing the environment more on the fighting than the ambient atmosphere - we call this Danger State.  Let's take a look at an example here... how about from the "Alice in Wonderland" world; first, the world' music, this is the Safety State  music called "Welcome to Wonderland." Then... "To Our Surprise."
e. Also important of note, while the game is very Disney-influenced and contain a lot of Disney music, the story, characters and music are all anchored around original characters, original locations and original thematic material.
i. Traverse Town
ii. Destiny Islands
iii. Hollow Bastion
f. But how thematic? How far has she pushed the themes?
g. Polythematicism...
7) Polythematicism
a. Many prominent themes contributing to the overall feel of the game, instead of just one big theme.
i. Comparisons
1. Final Fantasy VI
2. Legend of Zelda
b. It's hard to know which themes of the game are important ones if we look at just one game - I mean, we know which pieces sound really cool and we know which ones we like, but there are other ways.  One particularly important way that the composer has signified importance in certain pieces is simply, by repeating them in the game's sequel, KH 2.
8) Kingdom Hearts II
a. When was it released and how is it different?
b. How is it different musically?
i. A lot of different themes, particularly because there are different worlds from the first, thus requiring new music.
ii. Continues the musical tradition from KHI and KHCOM.
iii. Some musical themes are the same, but different.
1. Olympus Coliseum
2. A Day in Agrabah.
c. With that said, let's get into the nitty gritty of the KH scores.
9) Polythematicism, Part II
a. Important themes in the Game
i. Dearly Beloved
ii. Dive into the Heart - Destati / Fragments of Sorrow
iii. (Destiny Islands?) (sort of)
iv. Gummi Ship Themes
1. KH1
a. Precious Stars in the Sky
b. Shipmeister's Humoresque
c. Blast Away! - Gummi Ship 1
d. Blast Away! - Gummi Ship 3 (in minor!)
2. KH2
a. A Twinkle in the Sky
v. Kairi (four separate themes)
b. Recognizability.
i. Meeting the girl at Play!
10) Analysis
a. Hollow Bastion
i. 5/4 metre
ii. Comes in later in KH2 version.  
iii. The character is in the metre.
b. Shipmeister's Humoresque
i. Augmentation
11)  Arrangement
a. ?

INTRO

(A WALK IN ANDANTE)

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

Hello, hello, hello! Welcome to Episode 8 of Into the Score, which is the only podcast solely devoted to the academic study of video game music.  I am your host, Kenley Kristofferson and this is the third week of June in 2007.

We're currently listening to "A Walk in Andante" from the Original Soundtrack of Square Enix's "Kingdom Hearts", composed by Yoko Shimamura.  After a brief foray into the US, we've returned to Japan for this awesome fun and epic score to one of my very most favorite games.  But before we dive into the heart of this, you know what time it is, that's right, time for the contact info. 

CONTACT INFO

Our website is www.songofthefates.com and if you want to send me an email, you can do it at Kenley@songofthefates.com, so k-e-n-l-e-y@songofthefates.com and that's all one word.  Okay, now it's time to find out what was happening in gaming when Kingdom Hearts was released.  Let's open this up: This is "Destiny Islands", where we start our adventure in the first Kingdom Hearts and it's written by Yoko Shimamura!

(DESTINY ISLANDS)

TIME IN GAMING

Kingdom Hearts was released in March 2002 in Japan and the following September in North America.  While there were a few RPGs or adventure games of note for that particular year, the chart toppers were Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto III and later that yearh, GTA: Vice City, so Rockstar cleaned house in gaming that year.  A few other notable releases were the Japan's run of the Square Enix's online Final Fantasy XI and Nintendo's new Zelda game, Wind Waker, as well as Super Mario Sunshine and the long-awaited, Metroid Prime.  On the PC side of things, Firaxis develops Civilization III and Microsoft gives us Age of Mythology.

From this, we're going to hone in on Square Enix for a second and see what they've been up to.  At this stage of the game, the English translation and localization of their uber-title, Chrono Cross (which was Episode 5 of this podcast!) had just been completed and their energy was now being focused toward their MMORPG (or Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game), Final Fantasy XI.  Keeping in mind that North America did not get FFXI until 2004, Japan was still the hub for Square Enix's development project.

TETSUYA NOMURA

With much planning being done and goals being met, sometimes things happen that aren't "according to schedule" or planned by any developer - and the history of Kingdom Hearts' conception is one of those stories.  As I'm having a bit of trouble putting my finger on a date, I know that this unplanned event happened sometime between 2000 and 2001, if not a little bit earlier.  The following tidbit is taken from an interview with director, Tetsuya Nomura and the Japanese magazine, Dengeki PS:

Question: Your debut as director was with Kingdom Hearts. What was the process of bringing that out like?

Nomura: With the designs of Kingdom Hearts, I had designed a plot around the time that Final Fantasy VII was in production, and by the time of Final Fantasy VIII, I had full out designs. But at that point the Disney characters hadn't completely appeared. Shinji Hashimoto came up with the idea of a story with Disney. Since, at that time, Mr. Disney was in the same building, Hashimoto would sometimes talk with him on the elevator - And I guess they worked something out. 

And that's taken from www.kingdomhearts3.net/2007/04 if you want to take a look, they have a lot of KH tidbits in there.  So, the director, Tetsuya Nomura, had been thinking about ideas for quite sometime now, at least since FF7 was released in 1997... but who would've thought that one of his associates would meet an executive from Disney in an elevator and it would come to fruition as one of Square's biggest franchises... interesting.

For those of you who aren't really big into Final Fantasy VII or materia-heads, Tetsuya Nomura was a prominent designer for Square starting in the early 90s.  Before his time there, he worked at a vocational school and created art for advertisements - it wasn't until Final Fantasy V that he got hired on as monster designer, then as minor character designer and graphic director for Final Fantasy VI.  His big break would be for Final Fantasy VII as the main character designer and we know that FF7 was the RPG for the PlayStation... and the game that saved the PlayStation, in my humble opinion.  After FF7, he worked on a few other games like Parasite Eve and Brave Fencer Musashi, which was cool, but he reclaimed the throne of RPGs by returning as the character designer for Final Fantasy VIII and X and XIII.  Wikipedia, thanks for that.  His directorial debut would be with the newly-constructed franchise for the PS2 that is paired with Disney, called Kingdom Hearts.  


RECEPTION

For those of you listeners who are not familiar with the KH franchise (but are probably familiar with the Final Fantasy one), you be thinking a common thought among all series gamers: "Square Enix and Disney... that is the worst idea I've ever heard."

That thought was not uncommon at the time when development was announced.  How could the giant of middle-adolescent to adult RPGs be teaming up with a company that made cartoon movies for kids... I mean... Sephiroth meets the The Little Mermaid? Snow White and the Seven Moogles? 

Let's clarify this right now, how exactly is this going to work? Well, first off, the main characters on whom the stories revolve are neither Square nor Disney - they're original.  The story does not follow Cloud, Squall or Cecil... it follows Sora, a boy from Destiny Islands who is chosen to be the wielder of a weapon called the Keyblade, which is forged to fight darkness.  He has two friends on the landmass where we start the game, Destiny Island, named Riku and Kairi.  Throughout the series, Kairi develops into the leading lady and Riku is caught up in several moral struggles to save his friends by helping the villains - a group of evil beings who thrive from the darkness within people's hearts.  However, also on Destiny Islands, Sora also has some friends name d Wakka, Tidus and Selphie... recognize them, that's right - Final Fantasy cameos! After the Heartless attack Destiny Islands, Sora finds himself adrift and eventually winds up in a world called Traverse Town and meets up with Donald and Goofy, from Disney fame.  We hear the Traverse Town theme a lot and it's an important one in the game - so let's have a listen! This is "Traverse Town" from Kingdom Hearts by Yoko Shimamura!

(TRAVERSE TOWN)

That was "Traverse Town", which is a pretty important place in the game because you meet a lot of NPCs that help shape the story of the game; most importantly Leon (or Squall, from FF8), Tifa, Aeris and Merlin... yes, Square and Disney are working together.  From there, the player goes to different Disney-based worlds, like Agrabah from Aladdin, Olympus Coliseum from Hercules or Wonderland, from Alice and Wonderland.  The worlds continue to blend together, for example: While in the coliseum, Hades (the villain) hires Final Fantasy VII's Cloud to kill Hercules.  In KH2, he hires Auron from Final Fantasy X for some seriously bad bidding.  Anyways...

After the game was released in 2002, it had an incredible following of fans, both Disney and Square.  I pretty much beat the game in a week - it was Spring Break when I finally got my hands on it and I was sucked into it for days at a time.  

One of the things that drew me in the most was the incredible voice acting in the game, especially after I was pretty disappointed with the VA in Final Fantasy X.  The beauty of working with an organization like Disney is that there is a lot of money there and a lot of connections.  Some notable mentions include Haley Joel Osmont, David Borneaz, Mandy Moore, Dan Castellaneta (as Genie) and James Woods (as Hades)... ps: James Woods has the best villain voice with perhaps, the notable exception of James Earl Jones.  Speaking of notable exceptions... while the voice acting was amazing, I really don't think that Lance Bass from Nsync should do the voice of the most illustrious RPG villain of all-time, Sephiroth... not a great cast.  Everyone else, however, was unbelievably amazing... 

The other huge thing thing that most drew me in, was the music... Now, who wrote the music? The ever talented, Yoko Shimamura.  Let's hear some of her work, this is "Deep Jungle" from Square Enix's Kingdom Hearts.

(DEEP JUNGLE)

BIOGRAPHY

That was "Deep Jungle" by Yoko Shimamura.   Yoko was born on October 19th of 1967 in Hyogo Prefacture, Japan.  She started piano when she was five years old and quickly started composing her own music by playing random things on the piano... in university, we call this "20th century music," oooooo... le burn... take that John Cage.  

She completed high school and then attended Osaka Music University as a piano major to become a full-time piano teacher, but while being a gamer, she also decided to send out some of her materials to a few video game companies around the area... good idea.  From there, she got an audition call from Capcom and scored Little Nemo the Dream Master for NES and... believe it or not, ladies and gentlemen, scored Street Fighter II, whose score is known by all, consciously or not!

She also scored Capcom's Breath of Fire in 1993, along with three other composers.

But 1993 would be a pivotal year for Yoko Shimamura as it would mark her departure from Capcom and her arrival at Square! She was paired with other experienced composers like Noriko Matsueda (who aided in the score to Chrono Trigger) to start on her first RPG called Live a Live and got the chance to compose and arrange for Super Mario RPG, the last Square game for the SNES.

She wrote the scores to RPGs Parasite Eve and Legend of Mana, before leaving the company to work as a freelance composer and writing the score to Kingdom Hearts in 2002.

THE MUSIC

That's quite the career - with all of these awesome games being scored, why are we picking the KH score to study? Well, to be honest, I think that this is her best score, not just musically, but organizationally.  

When I say that this score is organized well, I mean that the composer has thought about how each character, each level or world and each cutscene all link together.  Any score, be it a ballet score, an opera score, a film score or a video game score all have to have elements that link all of the pieces together to make the production seem like a cohesive unit.  Some of these elements could be period (all Classical, all 80s music), style (rock, jazz), thematic (everyone has themes) or compositional (lots of melody, movement based on chords, random or file-card composition), among others.

In this particular case, the score is organized in three ways: The first, and most important, is thematically.  Writing thematically means that the music is organized by a series of themes that relate to people, places or things.   Now, here is the crux of the deal: Because the game is very heavily Disney-influenced and Disney movies have a lot of memorable music, Yoko Shimamura has arranged the themes from the Disney movies to their corresponding music.
i. Winnie the Pooh (SAMPLE)
ii. Under the Sea (SAMPLE)
iii. Pirates of the Caribbean (SAMPLE)

To get a better sense of thematicism, let's listen to "Welcome to Wonderland" from the Alice and Wonderland world.

(WELCOME TO WONDERLAND)

The second organizing device is with compositional style.  She relies very heavily on ostinati, which are the repeating patterns underneath the melody.  Another part of her style that is particularly important in writing video game music is the sound of each instrument, called an instrument patch.  "Welcome to Wonderland" had a very fun style, and that's achieved through the bouncy orchestration and also just having really fun and exciting instrument patches.  Let's listen on more time.

(WELCOME TO WONDERLAND)

Another important device that Yoko Shimamura has used in this game is a fairly old concept of video game music, and that is Safety and Danger State music.  What that means, is that when there are no enemies around, the music is more calm and representational of the background environment, which we call Safety State.  BUT, when enemies come lurking about, the music changes to a faster and more heart-wrenching pace, focusing the environment more on the fighting than the ambient atmosphere - we call this Danger State.  Let's take a look at our example here... from the "Alice in Wonderland" we heard the world music "Welcome to Wonderland" and we call this the Safety State music." Then, when the baddies come...  the danger state music is called "To Our Surprise."

(TO OUR SURPRISE)

Also important of note, while the game is very Disney-influenced and contain a lot of Disney music, the story, characters and music are all anchored around original characters, original locations and original thematic material.  For example, we heard "Destiny Islands" and "Traverse Town", let's listen to the safety state of the evil Maleficent's lair.  This is called "Hollow Bastion."

(HOLLOW BASTION)

We're going to do a bit of analysis on this piece a little later because of it's awesomeness.

Anyways, we now acknowledge that this game is thematically written, but really -  how thematic is this game? How far has she pushed the themes? And this, ladies and gentlemen, brings us to our uber-concept of the episode...Polythematicism.

POLYTHEMATICISM

Polythematicism is a practice where the composer can have the option of using many prominent themes contributing to the overall feel of the game, instead of just one big theme.  Let's break the word down: "Poly" meaning "many", "Themes" meaning "themes" and "ism" meaning "the practice or process of", so "the practice or process of using many themes."

Comparisons to monothematic scores include the Legend of Zelda, where we hear the overworld theme for most of the game, unquestionably making it the theme of the game:

(LoZ OVERWORLD)

But then we get a much larger piece of music like Final Fantasy VI which has 60 pieces of music in it.  Well, when we start the game, we see the MagiTek armour going towards Narshe...

(OVERTURE)

Then Terra gets knocked out...

(AWAKENING)

Quickly, we have to escape, to the world map!

(TERRA)

BANG! We've heard the theme three times in the first half-an-hour of the game.  Kingdom Hearts doesn't have that.  There is no "theme of the game", it's a collage of many themes that help contribute to the musical soundscape of the game.  

So, with no one single piece being important, how do we know which themes are? Well, it's hard to know which themes of the game are important ones if we look at just one game - I mean, we know which pieces sound really cool and we know which ones we like, but there are other ways.  One particularly important way that the composer has signified importance in certain pieces is simply, by repeating them in the game's sequel, KH 2.

KH2

I'm not going to do the whole run-down of KH2, but it was released in 2005 and picks up where the series interim game, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (abbreviated to KHCOM) leaves off.  KHCOM was for GameBoy Advance and introduced the players to a new group of enemies called The Nobodies, who would come to full fruition as villains in KH2.  A lot of the story from KH1 was regurgitated for the GBA interim game through Sora trying to find his memories and escape this crazy castle.  

Anyways, KH2 is a whole world different from it's prequels, but to keep the series cohesive, Yoko Shimamura used a lot of the same themes from the older games in the new sequel here.  There is a little bit of remixing and reorchestrating, but let's take a look at some scores that are musically the same.  A good example of this is "Olympus Coliseum" from KH1.

(OLYMPUS COLISEUM - KH1)

And now from number 2...

(OLYMPUS COLISEUM - KH2)

A little bit of new stuff here.  However, the game also featured new worlds, thus requiring new music.  Newly featured in the Olympus Coliseum world in KH2 is the "Underworld".  So this is the safety state from the Underworld, with some serious mallet playing...

(THE UNDERWORLD)

Okay, so with that said, let's get down to the nitty gritty of the KH scores.

POLYTHEMATICISM  - PART II

We acknowledge that there are three KH games and we deduce what the important themes of those games are by where the occur in the games and even just the fact that they recur in both games adds importance to them.

The first one we're going to look at is the opening menu theme of the game, and that's a piece called "Dearly Beloved."  I had two or three students when I was student teaching this year and they would play it all the time, it's like every where I went, I heard this... this is "Dearly Beloved" from Kingdom Hearts by Yoko Shimamura.

(DEARLY BELOVED)

Now, for the second one, orchestrater and arranger, Kaoru Wada got his hands on this and performed it live with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, and this is what it sounds like in Kingdom Hearts II.

(DEARLY BELOVED - KH2)

Another hugely important and popular KH tune is the music played when our protagonist, either Sora in KH1 or Roxas in KH2 is standing on the stained glass pad of Disney images and there's just black everywhere.  It's kind of at the point where no one is really sure what's going on and there's always one dude who just says really cryptic things that make no sense at the time, like "only you can open the door" or something like that.  Anyways, the safety state is called "Dive Into the Heart - Destati" and the danger state is called "Fragments of Sorrow" and we're going to play both, this is "Dive Into the Heart - Destati."

(DIVE INTO THE HEART - DESTATI - KH2)

And now when enemies come...!

(FRAGMENTS OF SORROW - KH2)

Okay, so that was "Dive Into the Heart - Destati" and "Fragments of Sorrow" now this takes us to our third important theme of the series, which is the Gummi Ship theme.  The Gummi Ship is how you travel from world to world and is the "world map" theme, if you will.  When you're going to decide where to go next, this is what you hear and you hear it a lot in the series.  The first piece we're going to hear is the world selection theme in KH1 and it's called "Precious Stars in the Sky."

(PRECIOUS STARS IN THE SKY)

Next is "Shipmeister's Humoresque", which arranges it a bit differently, but it's super fun - we're going to look at this one a little bit more later in the show.

(SHIPMEISTER'S HUMORESQUE)

Now getting ready to do some gummi ship damage, this is "Blast Away - Gummi Ship I".  The theme doesn't come in right away, listen for it!

(BLAST AWAY - GUMMI SHIP I)

Now a similar theme, but this time on the way to the evil and vile Hollow Bastion to fight our last battles.  Because this isn't a happy journey, the tonality changes to minor and it gets darker and scarier... this is "Blast Away  - Gummi Ship III"

(BLAST AWAY - GUMMI SHIP III)

Okay, so that melody has already been played four times so far and we're still in the first game... interesting.   We hear it again in KH2 as the world selection screen again, this time it's rearranged and called "A Twinkle in the Sky."

(A TWINKLE IN THE SKY)

So, fairly the same, obviously recognizable! The last theme that we're going to look at for the polythematic importance of pieces is Kairi's theme.  Ooooo... "polythematic importance"... I'm going to keep that term in my back pocket.

Anyways, Kairi is the leading lady from the series and she is one of the few characters that have important character themes.  I say important character theme"S" because she actually has four different themes, but the most popular one that most people like is "Kairi II", so we're going to play that one.

(KAIRI II)

Okay, so now that we've had a listen to most of the big themes, we're going to analyze one theme that recurs through all three games and that is "Hollow Bastion."  As we said before, "Hollow Bastion" is the evil Maleficent's lair in the first Kingdom Hearts and in KHCOM, but begins a transformation in KH2 and it serves as the new base for Leo, Yuffie, Tifa and Merlin.  It's sort of like the old Hollow Bastion, but this time it's a town, instead of a fortified castle.  

Here is Hollow Bastion from KH1.

(HOLLOW BASTION - KH1)

Now, the second one is similar, but not entirely the same.  Listen to how it begins, then let's compare it to when the actual theme comes in...

(HOLLOW BASTION - KH2)

In the second one, the theme comes in when the organ and strings come in (dut-dut-dut...).  The character is light and driving forward, but the other really awesome part of that is in what is musically called, the pieces "metre."  Metre is how we count something in music; in 4/4, we count "1+2+3+4+", In 6/8, we can count "1-2-3 4-5-6".  The first example we used was in duple time, meaning that we break each number down into 1+2+3+4+", so group of two.  The second one was in triple time, meaning "1-2-3 4-5-6", so we're grouping things in groups of three.

Now, where this gets crazy is when the metre starts putting duple and triple metre together, and that's called an odd metre.  Hollow Bastion is in an odd metre, because we don't feel the beat in "1+2+3+4+" or "1-2-3 4-5-6", we feel it as a combination of the two, specifically: 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2 1-2".  Two groups of three followed by two groups of two.  (example again).  So what exactly do we call that metre? Well, when we count all of the little beats, we see that there are ten of them, so we could call this 10/8, meaning ten eighth notes.  Does anyone remember lowest common denominator from math class? We could also do that in music - divide both of those numbers by two and call it 5/4 time.  Anyways! That metre is the real character of the piece.  Listen to Hollow Bastion from KH 1 one more time.

(HOLLOW BASTION - KH1)

(model again)

(HOLLOW BASTION  - KH2)

Nicely done.  Hear that 5/4 pulse come in underneath... yeah... that's why I love this piece, I have a love affair with odd metre.  

One other awesome thing that I want to draw the audience's attention do is just about the versatility of one theme, and that's "Shipmeister's Humoresque," one of the gummi ship themes from KH1.

Let's hear it first to remind us how it goes:

(SHIPMEISTER'S HUMORESQUE)

Okay, so there's the bouncy part underneath and that's the theme.

(EXAMPLE)

And then on top of that, the strings play a smooth theme that sails overtop.

(EXAMPLE)

The thing that I love about this the most is that the notes are the same, but it has a different feel.  It combines bouncy and smooth together, very classy sound.   Yoko has also elongated the string melody to glide overtop - every note is exactly twice as long in the string part than it is in the lighter part underneath it, in music, we call this augmentation.  If we were to take each note and make it half as long as the lighter part below, that's called diminuition... it's not on the test, but it's just a cool thing.  Listen one more time.

(SHIPMEISTER'S HUMORESQUE)

ARRANGEMENT

Alright, the remix and final portion of our show is going to take a look at Sephfire's remix of Hollow Bastion and Destati from Kingdom Hearts.  You can hear the whole thing at OverClocked ReMix, which can be accessed at www.ocremix.org.  So right on, thanks for listening to the show and I hope that you dug and it learned some good video game music stuff.  Our episode today was on Yoko Shimamura's Kingdom Hearts and we discussed safety/danger state music as well as the concept of polythematicism.  In two weeks, we'll be hitting a score that a lot of people may not be familiar with, but they definitely should: Yoko Kanno's score to Uncharted Waters: New Horizons as well as talking about the influence of anime music on video game composition! Going to be amazing, one of my favorite video game pieces is from that soundtrack, so be sure to catch that one.

If you want to check out past shows or updates, you can always check the website at www.songofthefates.com and you can reach me at Kenley@songofthefates.com.  Right on, thanks so much for listening and here is Sephfire's "Above the Rising Falls," Have an awesome two weeks and see you then!

(CLIP)

(END)