Inside The Score - Banjo-Kazooie - Lose Life / Game Over

Feeling kind of blue

“The blues is a low-down, aching chill; if you ain’t never had ’em, honey, I hope you never will”

Following on the steps of the other mascot platformers from Rareware, Grant Kirkhope takes a page out of the David Wise playbook and musicalizes the demise of the bear and the bird with a standard blues ending in similar fashion to how it is used in the Donkey Kong Country series. The catch is that these blues endings are not fully resolved due to the melody ending on a dominant seventh of the tonic chord as opposed to the root; this implies that both the gameplay and the music are in need of continuity. They encourage that the show should go on, suggesting to the players that they can try again.

A standard blues ending

A pure blues is also the perfect contrary to the happy bluegrass that accompanies the successes of Banjo and Kazooie, both having roots in similar traditions but with usually different subject matter; this is specially the case when it comes to the ‘Collect Jiggy’ cue, with whom it shares its instrumentation and length. What characterizes the typical blues is of course the clash of the blues notes (usually the flat third, flat fifth and flat seventh) against the dominant 7th chords of the harmony, making a minor melody line sound against the backdrop of major chords—so while the melodies make heavy use of the flat versions of the notes, the harmony uses the natural counterparts. This gives it its characteristic swag factor by not sounding quite major or minor. Traditionally associated with bad times due to its lyrical content and culture to the point that its very name may have originated from the term “blue devils”, meaning melancholy and sadness, If you hear it in game, then you already know the heroes are feeling kind of blue, not a good state of affairs.

Musical Analysis

Structure: Section 1 / Section 2

Tempo: 135 (Section 1); 100 (Section 2)

Melodic and Harmonic Profiles: C Blues; C Harmonic minor

As stated, what gives the feeling that the show can still go on is that both composers decide to not end the melody on the root, which would feel complete and finalized, and instead opt to end the melody on the more ambiguous flat seventh note of the scale, giving the sensation of wanting to continue even though, technically, the harmony ends in the tonic chord (the one from Donkey Kong does the same in the key of G. The Banjo-Kazooie one even adds a trill with the ninth of the chord to augment the blues feeling).

Besides this, the ending is one of the typical turnarounds and stock endings bluesmen have played for ages, with the accompaniment banjo playing the typical chromatic walkdown that is endemic in blues tunes. It only uses the IV as a passing chord before returning to the I7. It still uses the bluegrass orchestration from previous cues—the instruments of the protagonists after all— with even the tuba playing akin to how a bass player would tackle the material; the tuba also participates in the chromatic walkdown, which we already know are appropriate for failures (moving up = good, moving down = bad). The tuba by itself plays what would be expected of a fully resolving melody, ending on the note C. The clarinet anchors the harmony on the pedal note C while the chromatic walk down is performed on the other notes; in this process it produces chords like a Cdim and Dm7 but this is not the important aspect of the intention. The intention is just the chromatic walkdown of the blues style. The drumming has of course a shuffle feel, another quality of the genre. Kazooie mourns this loss by playing mostly thirds on her instrument.

As for the Game Over cue, there is no hope left there, no more continues. It is not only a blues tune but a full-blown minor blues. So even the tonic is not the cool dominant 7th but a minor chord. There is no ambiguity anymore or a push for the player to continue. It is truly the bad ending of the game, fully resolving to the tonic with another chromatic walkdown stock ending from the blues. This is fitting since the game over from Banjo-Kazooie actually shows the consequences of failure in real time, punishing players by making them look at what they have done. The melody is, naturally, a bastardization of the main theme of the series—which was itself based on the melody for Click Clock Wood, the first composition made specifically for Banjo-Kazooie—just a matter of replacing the opening notes with their minor equivalents (Ab for A). In similar fashion to the ‘Lose life’ cue, the Chromatic walkdown is anchored by a pedal C note, an upper one this time. The instruments belong to the same bluegrass combo for cohesiveness’ sake.

The harmony mostly carried by the Banjo and the Kazoo(ie) is:

Cm – Fdim7 – G7 – Cm

Cm – G7 – Cm – D7 – G7 – Cm

With the consequences for failure already sorted out, it is imminent that the bear and the bird begin to quickly climb the lair towards more jovial events. One of those is actually opening doors to new sections of Grunty’s domains.