Inside The Score - Banjo-Tooie - Cauldron Keep

Ominous stakes

The sense of dread around the imposing tower’s lair of the villain sitting atop the highest peak of the Isle ‘o’ Hags is captured by this depressing track that receives the frantic chord change treatment of Grant Kirkhope but within a minor key context; if the C major tunes try so hard to not use any minor chords, this one, for the most part, tries to stay away from major chords unless it is the tritone chord change. This is as menacing as the cartoon orchestra gets; beware whenever the series abandons its oom-pah rhythms, you know things are truly serious now with the straight quarter note accompaniment.

This fortress seems way more sophisticated than the old Gruntilda castle. Ever since the first game, she was always a combination between a witch and a mad scientist. With her assistant Klungo helping on all of her evil schemes with technology—by this point he is already fed up with her— as opposed to magic. This one is the true mad scientist lair. With all kinds of machinery and a huge ray of doom pointed at the world. It was originally planned to be a fully fledged level with things to collect but due to time constraints and tone it was decided for it to be just the final narrative beat following the format of the original game in which an out of nowhere game show appears and then one last lap till the final battle.

Musical Analysis

The unique harmony progression starts with a chordal melody played with the aggressive horns that captures the height and weight of this place. By its pattern it could be considered a part played in an 8/4 time signature since this is when the chord pairs change and the pattern repeats; the rhythm of the chords could be counted in groups of 2 and then 3 beats so (2 + 3 + 3).

The choir pairs would be:

Cm – Bm – Cm – Bm

F♯m – Ab – F♯m – Ab

A – Eb – A – Eb

D – Fm – D – G –

As dysfunctional as triad chord harmony can be. With the last chord G major the closest scale to this would be the C harmonic minor, which always has been the profile for Grunty. But as always, Grant searches for the odd note, meaning the tritone or the flat sixth. So we get the usual suspects like F♯m, Ab and then from A to its tritone Eb, somehow ending back in.

After this the proper melody played by the instrument for old hags begins. The bassoon plays against an accompaniment focusing exclusively on minor chords; just as Kirkhope is fond of the C – Ab in major profiles here he does the same with its minor chord equivalents. During this part there is absolutely no swing on the melody. As always the melody follows the profiles of the underlying harmony.

Cm – Abm – Fm – Dm

No lightheartedness found in here. For the next section in which the piece modulates to Bbm it gets even more depressing since we get a vamp between Bbm and its tritone Em. Hope is no more. The progression changes to:

Bbm – Em – Bbm – Gm – Ebm – A – Ebm – F

A classic Kirkhope progression that we can also find in his more serious first person shooter games.

The woodwinds here could represent each of the three witches if we wanna get thematic.

When the flute appears the melody changes to having a swing. After the strings have their way with the melody we get the climatic section in which all the woodwinds play at the same time with the same harmony progression of the intro but with the clarinets playing different chord inversion than the horns. It loops after this.

No need for heavy percussion. Just the eerie sound of the wind and a bunch of minor chords is enough to convey that the stakes never have been as high in this series before. Playtime is over. This is how a true villain castle should sound.