Inside The Score - The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past - Fortune Teller

The Zone Where Normal Things Don’t Happen Very Often

“You are entering the Twilight (realm) zone duriruriduriruri”

Or at least a place where a weird fella resides, one of those beings whose minds and specialized objects are able to peek into the fogs of the future; a brain that defies the known entropy laws as to direct their attention to the destiny that awaits anyone who is not wary of interacting with them…On the other hand, it is a neat way to help stuck players in a fantasy context.

What the hell, we are almost all in anyway. Let’s get fully into some of the bizarre short sound vignettes found within the soundtrack of A Link to the Past. First one the predecessor to the curiosity shop and suspicious locales within the Zelda universe, the fortune teller shop where what appears to be either a magi or some Ku Klux Klan member in the midst of some meditation or trance can read you the cards or your hand or peer into the crystal ball, giving you some foggy advice about where you should be headed next in your quest. Certainly more useful than the generic advice of the real world ones who are just very attuned to emotional cues of the body.

This is a place you can smell, smoke filling the air and all kinds of artifacts belonging to the occult. Part of this vibe is conveyed by the music, which uses a kind of bell-like synth to create an otherworldly timbre or maybe some of those Gamelan gongs. The cue is meant to bring you closer to the trance mood, with three voices completely dissociated from each other. All doing their own thing and entering you into the dreamy vibe; somehow thanks to the ostnato this mess ends up being catchy. Just like a crystal ball deforms the objects it reflects, the cue is a reality bending device, a way for the senses to experience something outside their usual input; this genuinely can induce visions. The goal here is to hypnotize and hopefully get some clairvoyance out of the participants.

Musical Analysis

The three separate components are first the catchy ostinato flavored with that Latin rhythm thanks to that syncopation, the pager call noise in sixteenth notes and the harp in triplets that feels at home alongside the synthetic tones due to its high register. Each one is doing its own thing, the ostinato in 4/4 using two bars to complete its statement, the lead synth running faster can be though as going at its own tempo in 2/2, and then the harp with phrases in 3/4. The combination of all produces this hypnosis effect. Profile wise, we get the expected Whole Tone scale from the ostinato which is always called for in any trance context, and the other two pretty much their own independent use of notes; the harp is almost whole tone except for the G natural note; there is no harmony intended other than to confuse the listener.

The ostinato also uses two samples to create that old school video game reverb effect by means of delaying a note.

The piece was made even more confusing in its A Link Between World iteration which adds some experimental beat you would hear at the club after 3 AM either because the DJ is out of ideas or because of the substances operating in your body. You truly are now in the zone where normal things don’t Happen very often.

Here we add more confusion thanks to some panning tricks. We also use some official A Link to the Past guide art depicting a more traditional Romani witch in contrast to the fully robbed character sprite.