Inside The Score - Banjo-Kazooie - Snacker Attack

Mini Jaws

it is a water level, alright. But Rare certainly does not want you to spend too much time exploring the ocean, enter a classic trope with an even more classic music accompaniment that is certainly direct parody and reference. In fact, from a legal standpoint it may have even been risky. No points for guessing what is being referenced here.

Boy, this was certainly a stress inducing moment. Making the ocean full of threatening sharks as unstoppable killing machines waiting for any unlucky swimmer to dip his toes on the water is one of the most effective and easiest ways to increase the tension in a water related situation; it can be one or many sharks, the classic image of their fins slowly surrounding the swimmer and no escape in sigh. Most animals eat to live, but sharks live to eat. That is, mostly in fiction, since in real life they are low in the scale of marine dangers—or animal related injuries in general; despite their rarity, many people fear shark attacks after occasional serial attacks, mostly because they are actually very effective when they decide to strike and because they look the part with those scary teeth all lined up and sharp. It is also true that they can sense blood and your bioelectricity, making them an always present threat for anyone delving into the ocean.

The shark related musical themes invariably play with this sense of imminent danger and no score was more effective or left such an indelible mark as that from John Williams in the movie Jaws, which was party responsible for putting the fear of sharks right up in the collective imagination. Released in June 1975, Jaws was Hollywood’s first Summer Blockbuster, and a launchpad for the career of its director, Steven Spielberg and his fruitful partnership with composer John Williams. The main “shark” theme, a simple alternating pattern of two notes identified as E and F, became a classic piece of suspense music, synonymous with approaching danger; its effectiveness its in the fact that the speed of the ostinato can be manipulated to aurally convey the proximity or velocity of the danger in question. John Williams says that it was meant to represent the shark as an unstoppable force of mindless and instinctive attacks, grinding away at you, just as a shark would do, instinctual, relentless, unstoppable. (And in Banjo the threat is always present indeed since even if you manage to kill it it will respawn after a short time).

Its primal origins can be traced back as far as the string ostinato from Psycho and The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky. It also can be traced further back to just simply the human heartbeat which gets naturally faster in any tense situation

Musical Analysis

Structure: Section 1

Tempo: 120

Melodic and Harmonic Profiles: C Chromatic

The theme has become so commonly used with sharks that by now it is used mostly in comedy and cartoony scenarios, Banjo-Kazooie belonging to that long lineage. Grant Kirkhope uses the minor third to kickstart his cue but the central idea is to mimic the ostinato based around minor seconds with two sets of strings doubling each other. The ostinato itself is more complex than in Jaws due to being composed of a discernible question-answer block. The tempo being 120 marches alongside ticking clocks to create feelings that players need to hurry up and get out of the water quickly. However, unlike Jaws, the theme is not dynamically manipulated to fit the closeness or speed of the shark in relation to Banjo.

There are lots of myths surrounding copyright infringement and plagiarism in music. Some people claim that it depends on the amount of time, notes or bars that you use from other compositions, others say that as long as there are different notes it does not qualify, that the melodies have to be close enough, among others. In truth, the issues are not so clear cut and that is why any claim of such nature has to be pursued in court by a variety of experts. The only thing that can be said is that the amount of notes, time or the closeness of a melody or ostinato is not as important as the context in which it is used; it could be two single notes or an entire phrase, does not matter. What matters is the context that is trying to imitate. And while the cue from Banjo-Kazooie is certainly different from Jaws in musical composition, its context may be close enough to merit legal issues if someone cared enough to pursue a suit. At the end of the day it comes down to a case by case basis and navigating the complexities of what it means to fall within fair work, parody or exception.

Snacker is not the only shark we find. There is also a lonely and decayed cyborg shark who actually serves as the basis of an entire, very original level. But before that, Banjo and Kazooie need to take a detour and return home for some fun with their mentor.