Inside The Score - Banjo-Kazooie - Twinklies' Journey

Twinkle all the way

The bear and the bird find themselves right at the center of the eternal conflict between Twinklies and Twinkle Munchers, a cycle destined to be repeated each Christmas for millennia. This mini-game is yet another variation of the whack-a-mole concept.

The music that accompanies this sequence embraces the Christmas spirit with full force, using the most delicate sounds of the lush orchestra to capture the cold, winterly feel of a Russian ballet; alongside sweet harmonies befitting classic Christmas carols. This is a tune that any troupe of seasoned carolers could take in, just throw in some lyrics about Jesus, Santa, presents or just general winter themes. Carolers themselves can be anything from a family or group of friends who get together and go sing to people, to a full choir singing on the street corners or in the city parks in seasonal costume, often styled after nineteenth century England. While they are often shown in small choirs, this is not necessary; it may only be a single person going around singing to friends and neighbors (singing talent optional). The carols are descendants of church hymns sung during the Christmas time back in the middle ages.

Musical Analysis

Structure: ABAA’B’ A’ – Section 1

Tempo: 140 (accelerando to 180); 130

Melodic and Harmonic Profiles: C Ionian/Major

The carol played here uses a common elegant chord progression. Elegant due to its economy of movement. It uses voice leading in order to create a succession with as many pedal notes as possible and the low notes only moving by a semitone. In this case, most chords retain the C note as pedal and modify the others carefully by semitones, giving us

C – Ab(+) – F – Fm

C – G7 – C – G7

Going from the IV – iv and then to the tonic in major tonalities is popular due to how it lends itself to graceful voice leading; from F to Fm only one note has to be modified and then to reach C the F note falls chromatically to E while the Ab has to do the same to reach G. It has the least amount of movement possible, the leading notes naturally wanting to resolve. It sounds nostalgic thanks to the melancholy provided by the minor chord in the progression. When you have voice-leading like that, it gives the aural impression that each layer of the chord is a melodic voice because the ear tends to group close intervals into single linear entities. As a result the progressions sounds like a bunch of melodies moving simultaneously that managed to coalesce into a beautiful amalgam. The added pizzicato voices makes it sound like multiple singers having their own lines in this small choir.

The main melody consists of two main parts. The first one is a pedal based melody, where the harmony is doing all the lifting by changing in the background while the melody repeats the same notes against the chords, like dressing the same person in different costumes. The second section reflects on its mini-game pedigree by imitating the same contour and profile from its equivalent section in the Mr Vile theme from Bubblegloop Swamp; this is fitting since both timed mini-games are based on the whack-a-mole concept.

It has more minor chords than your standard Banjo-Kazooie piece. For this section the harmony is:

Em – Am – G7 – C

Em – Am – F – G7

Similarly, as the clock ticks the piece creates tension by exponentially increasing the tempo.

After finishing the two-part mission of lighting the Christmas tree, we hear a custom success fanfare designed specifically for this world. It is based around the melody from the B section of the Freezeezy Peak cue. Just a small part of the motif and then to a coda; it uses the F and C chords with the same orchestration as the one found in the main level theme. The bells seem to represent the happiness of the twinklies and may meant to be them singing. Freezeezy Peak adds their voices to the track after the tree is blossoming with light.

And from the cold of winter we go the opposite way to the unforgiving environments housing an ancient civilization. An exotic locale it may be in real life but in video games this is standard procedure.