Inside The Score - Banjo-Kazooie - Cheato's Theme

Sheet music

We are entering into the dream world, the zone where normal things don’t happen very often. Or in this case, the world of spells, witchcraft and alchemy that are meant to be the connotations imbued within the anthropomorphized spell book from Grunty known as Cheato—he gives you cheats for the game. Like Brentilda, he also wants to help the bear and the bird on their battle against the witch. He also talks in a cryptic, characteristic speech associated with sages and ancient proverbs.

Spells books are where magic users resort when they need to get serious but the spell is just too complicated to memorize. Unlike other objects in the world of Banjo-Kazooie it makes sense for Cheato to be a conscious creature since spell books are sometimes depicted as having some sort of agency within them. The technical term in real life for these types of books is grimoire.

Musical Analysis

Structure: Section 0 / Section 1

Tempo: 120

Melodic and Harmonic Profiles: C Whole tone

Musically, this means the character Cheato is all about the whole-tone scale playing around him, engulfing him in mystery and indeterminacy. In the whole tone scale there is no leading tone and all the notes are the same distance apart, with no single tone standing out, this creates its blurry, dreamy quality. You can pretty much do anything as long as you use these same notes and it will sound mysterious. Which is precisely what Grant Kirkhope does here, using four different instruments each playing specific rhythms where the notes just interplay naturally. the theremin is the cherry on top that communicates fully and unambiguously the otherworldly vibe of the piece. There does not seem to be any attempt at syncing the music with the wavelike movements of Cheato; the tempo is in the standard clock-like pattern of 120. There are wavelike movements in the patterns played though.

There is the more dreamy like clarinet moving in faster triplets, going up and down through the scale. It changes from a starting point on C to another starting on Ab. On top, we get the magical celesta playing octaves. Sometimes the notes match with those of the clarinet, sometimes they do not; it does not really matter, as long as it is within the scale all notes and combinations are fair game for the dizzy atmosphere wanted.

Cheato seems like a nice fella but the menacing low strings add a more tenebrous layer to its character, the tritones that sometimes form between the strings and other instruments also don’t help in our path to trust this character’s intentions.

What could be called the melody of the cue is really just another pattern through the scale played by the theremin, this time descending like a ghost going in circles towards the floor, and then a small coda featuring the tritone between C and F# in longer notes. it then recharges and begins anew from the top of the pattern.

And just as scheduled, we leave the Halloween celebrations from October and immerse ourselves in the Christmas spirit alongside the bear and the bird. The holidays are just around the corner.