Inside The Score - Banjo-Kazooie - The End

Happy game over

There it is. One last victory lap for the bear and the bird, culminating the bluegrass line of pursuit in the soundtrack which was featured prominently for the sonic territories that concern Banjo and Kazooie as characters, their territories and their specific events. From the opening number right to the bookend to the story, ’The End’ cue serves as the ultimate acquisition cue; conquering the game is after all the ultimate goal way beyond acquiring honeycombs and jiggies. It goes without saying that, like those cues, this features Banjo and Kazooie themselves saying good bye with their own instruments.

Musical Analysis

Structure: Section 1

Tempo: 115

Melodic and Harmonic Profiles: C Ionian/Major

The piece itself is recognizable as a slight triumphant distortion of the main theme of the series, the banjo roll pattern turned on its head in order to take us out of the adventure; where the traditional version uses the repeating Sixteenth-note arpeggio with a C pedal note and an ascending profile, this one retains the same notes but changes the pattern to a descending contour. Kazooie plays a celebratory accompaniment alongside Banjo—not that a single kazoo could produce such harmonic material— and just like in the Collect Jiggy bluegrass tune, with her penchant for disruption, she manages to sneak a little fanfare right before the call and response coda of the banjo traditional in the genre. Unlike the jiggy fanfare, this one is ascending, sounding similar to when one collects one of her feathers. It is like each of the two characters managed to get across their own coda without a care for the other, so Banjo has to quickly come up with another proper cadence where both end in harmony, fitting for their kind of relationship.The full composition uses the C – Ab7 progression and then the perfect cadences of G – C.

This is the Banjo and Kazooie own curtain call to their modern interactive show. One final bow from the bear and the bird. Thanks for watching.

And thanks for reading and watching the music visualizations. Banjo-Kazooie is certainly one of the most interesting projects to come out of the N64. Its very peculiar, unorthodox and distinctive style also born out of the bygone era when the production tools were minimal since media for cartridges had little memory to deal with large sample banks or huge orchestrations; this forced inventive composition based on the basic tenets of melody, harmony and structure, no way to hide behind a big lush chord played by an orchestra. The music matches and enhances the irreverent and zany atmosphere of the game and has become one of its most memorable traits. Nonetheless, the particular instrumentation selected was also an inseparable part of the Banjo-Kazooie tone. Same goes for the harmonic motifs and oom-pah rhythm pattern which gave the whole project cohesiveness and a zany attitude to match its wacky world. It has the catchiness expected of children music but under the hood it also has a more sophisticated, bold and sinister tone. It was also interesting in the sense that it is one of the few big game releases of the era whose evolution and development history is well documented, allowing for the unprecedented step of seeing and hearing how the music evolved from early versions right to the final ones, each iteration getting closer to how the game itself was morphing and also showing that scoring is all about conveying the tone of the project and it is a craft that is iterative and exploratory.

So thanks again, and thanks to all the patreons and donors who support the passion and discussion of video game music, inspiring me to continue digging info about music and the culture surrounding it. It has been a great learning experience and I hope creatives and game enthusiasts in general get something out of it; it is great to document the components that make tracks sound the way they do and showing that great, catchy music can be made with simple orchestration. You can message me or comment what kind of projects would you like to see next on this channel; maybe another full game you think has an amazing soundtrack, some individual tracks from particular games or brand new ideas for content. Stay tuned.