Inside the Score - The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - Snowhead Temple

Repurposing the instruments of a region found at the intersection between sound design and music

We find ourselves upon the giant ice palace known as Snowhead Temple, a structure that seen from the outside looks just like the ice enemies that used to roam the Ice Cavern, blizzard attack included and all—although it is later discovered that this blizzard actually comes from a huge invisible goron. However, this is the real deal, a true ice fortress that also resembles that previous mini dungeon in the music department. Internally, it is based around a central room puzzle in similar fashion to Ocarina of Time’s Water Temple, where Link has to go to multiple levels in order to modify the layout of the temple and access new territory. So perhaps those two blue, water element dungeons inspired this one.

Snowhead Temple is based more around this conceptual framework than any real world cultural identity; it is just an ice tower that the developers tried to make as cool as possible (no pun intended), a new element and environment that was not explored as much in the previous game, snow. Kondo follows suit with the music, an ambient track that truly places this dungeon in an isolated place, with atmospheric sounds and little melodic touches meant to be slightly unsettling and uncomfortable. It fits the theme of a palace called Snowhead Temple by having nods related to an extremely cold place, pieces of ice shattering and other mysterious avant-garde sounds full of reverberation that give an eerie vibe and a sense of being on an enormous site. Dungeons are dangerous places after all so don’t look forward to having pleasant music. This is a theme that will continue to the next temple, a dungeon also based mainly on concepts, as opposed to culture. The theme heard across the land of Snowhead Mountain also influences the theme of its own temple, something that Kondo is usually trying to accomplish, consistency and connections between locations—Although this is actually the only temple that uses the exact same instruments from the music of the region.

All in all, it tends to be an ambient track that, like Dodongos’s Cavern, derives its effectiveness purely through song design. Nonetheless, there are just little touches of melody and harmony that maintains the piece anchored to the domains of music and even nods to the spiritual predecessor. This musical information comes, once again, largely courtesy of the Rhodes electric pianos also featured on the snow mountains plus a couple phrases from other instruments.

Music Analysis

Structure: Section 0 / Section 1 / Section 2 / Section 3 / Section 4 / Section 5 / Section 6 / Section 7 / Section 8 / Section 9

Time Signature: 4/4

Tempo: 80

Melodic and Harmonic Profiles: Atonal; D Whole Tone; B Harmonic Minor

Of course the fantasia chimes have to be present in Kondo’s ice levels; and not only that, they actually play the exact same melody pattern they did on the Ice Cavern from Ocarina of Time, a true easter egg left by the composer. They only play the chords near the end of this cue.

The rapid arpeggios play:

D aug 9 – E7/9(b5) – C aug 9 – D aug 9 – E7/9(b5) – C aug 9

But no sane person should pay attention to the harmony, this is just the composer playing around with a whole tone scale for the same reasons he did on the Ice Cavern, mainly to create confusion and disrupt the sense of security.

You can hear the Ice Cavern easter egg here and compare it with the original:

The ringing is unmistakable. A true successor in both location and sound

There is an overall sense of space and time throughout the piece, slowly developing and giving small snippets of sounds that are gone as soon as they play, just like an evolving organism. It doesn’t have to be said that once again the wind sound is back to create the sensation you are still on a high altitude mountain. It is exactly the same sample used on the Ice Cavern, the Mountain Village and the Fire Temple. It is used here at its most exaggerated and dynamic fashion, the notes climbing up and then going down in a wave like pattern; after all, the track is very long, so Kondo has to make sure the wind sound doesn’t cause too much fatigue by varying it as much as possible. Yet, this is not the only ambience sound. For this dungeon Koji combined the wind sound with the cavern atmosphere used previously on the ‘Cavern’ cue from Majora’s Mask, the fusion of two ambient recordings creating a totally new one that belongs to a place that doesn’t exist in real life.

Here are the two ambiences plus their combined form:

Nothing to hear here, you are just supposed to be inside the building. It shows you the cavern, the wind and the two combined

In what could be considered the lead instrument of the piece, the Fender Rhodes plays cluster, staccato chords in an unexpectedly catchy rhythm full of syncopation. This electric piano is back in order to make the connection between the Mountain Village and the temple.—the dungeon makes little attempt at connecting with the Goron culture. Again, the particular chords don’t matter as much as some of the relations found between the notes; those being the emphasis on the tritone of dread (between D – Ab and C – Gb) and moving through the whole tone scale in order to create a confused, sinister vibe. So Kondo was truly inspired by Kondo’s Ice Cavern cue in developing his new ice palace. The tritones are so important and recognizable that the rest of the notes can virtually be thought of as ornamentation and softening of the clusters. On the cue, the pattens play first very close to each other in time and then with more distance between each repetition, giving the theme a layer of randomness that drives it away from music.

The impactful sounds of the metal clangs that were used on the cue for the final hours are also present here; again, due to their associations with frightening and alertness. Similarly, they are provided with a panning effect that makes the sound travel through the stereo spectrum.

A sneak peak of the Terminator-style sample

Another Rhodes plays what is interpreted as a bass line. But in truth it is just another organic element of the track, used only to give tension and a sense of time ticking; it consist of a low D followed by a major second cluster that starts to fade away until the next batch starts. While this accompaniment pattern is playing, a third, different Rhodes piano enters abruptly with some jazzy chords that clash with the entire piece out of nowhere. The notes go against the whole tone philosophy, introducing the extremely dissonant note of Db that creates an even more clustered cluster (C Db, D). The fact that it is played on the high register makes it even more startling, with introduction of minor seconds to the piece taking most of the blame.

The clock is ticking, the place is dangerous

The huge, starting metal rumble sound from the ‘Cavern’ theme is also used here with pitch bend and lots of reverb to create greater sense of depth, as if something really big and heavy just fell down within the height of the tower and is bouncing off the walls.

Hopefully it is not the sound of a goron falling down

The last two elements are the muted guitar and the female choirs also reprising their roles from the Mountain Village cue; they limit themselves to playing short one time melodies to vary the piece. The choirs doing a very short part with an harmonic profile that can potentially have an evil connotation as it is composed of two minor seconds; both the choirs and dissonant Rhodes share some contours with the Mountain Village cue melody. The guitar is just this weird ostinato in a whole tone scale.

When you bring the funk to the Shadow Temple

There is a balance between sound design and music that Koji Kondo expertly maintains throughout the piece, giving small tastes of melody and then taking them away to let the piece breathe and the atmosphere to engulf the players. It is basically an evolved version of the short cue from the Ice Cavern, using similar ideas but expanding upon them with more sounds from the region and more length.

The purpose of visiting Snowhead Temple was not only to save the gorons and fulfill Darmani’s destiny of becoming the hero to his people. Link and Tatl also have a personal agenda in liberating the guardian spirits from Termina. They still have not comprehended yet the nature of their mission or how the apocalypse of Termina can be prevented. But there is a sense that moving forward will provide them with answers. This is, after all, just the second stage of awakening.

Some samples used on this track:

Metal Rumble: Partition D – PIT HITS – PIT HIT 1 from the library Spectrasonics Distorted Reality
Rhodes Piano: CD 2 – PIA:E-PIANOS ok – PIA:Rhodes ok – PIA:Rhodes stere from the library Best Service Gigapack
Wind Moan: WIND – LOW EERIE WIND MOAN, WEATHER 03 from the library Warner Bros. Sound Effects Library
Fantasia Chimes: CD 2 – SYN:DIGITAL 1 – SYN:Digital 3 – SYN:Fantasia from the library Best Service Gigapack