Inside The Score - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Boss Battle

Destabilizing meter for a destabilizing situation

We already covered the standard battle music. But if that was all about suspense and dread, this one hits you with all its might and tells you it is time to panic and then prove your courage. Chaos ensues all around you and a cacophony of brass and big drums engulfs you. One thing is for sure, combat music is all about ostinatos and percussion; they are the anchors in which the rest of the discordance can thrive.

The suspense and calmness before the battle is palpable, you only hear the sounds from a creature moving. Where could it be? The game prompts you to explore its new dimension by making you look around, to the sides and then to the celling where the familiar single eye of a creature that also comes from the first The Legend of Zelda is looking straight at you; it is the only boss that requires this and unlike the abstract bosses of previous Zeldas, here they are more integrated into the story, being a parasite that is slowly draining the life of the patron deity of the Kokiri; you also had the pleasure of encountering her offspring throughout the dungeon.

You only have a slingshot, what on earth could be the weak point of this crab/spider hybrid with a giant, vivid colored eye? Impossible to know. In any case bosses had never looked quite this spectacular, cinematic or imposing before.

Musical Analysis

Structure: Section 0 / Section 1 / Section 2 / Section 3

Time Signature: 6/4

Tempo: Section 0 (Accelerando 120 – 180) / Section 1,2,3 (180)

Melodic and Harmonic Profiles: B Diminished (Section 0 ); Atonal (Section 1,2,3); Chromatic (Harmony)

Succumb to the cacophony; just pure cacophony. As it is characteristic of Koji Kondo battle music, you will find the usual suspects: low end ostinatos, dissonance, and weird time signatures and rhythms.

Bigger enemies mean bigger drums so it is only natural that the timpani are not only deployed alongside the militaristic snare drum but play a solo of their own which does not aim to capture the beauty of music but the chaos of battle. Attacks are coming from everywhere. The brass section are a trumpet and a trombone roleplaying as a second trumpet that pretty much echoes the other, apt for the kind of effect that would take place at the usual spaces where you encounter bosses, huge rooms that must certainly cause sounds to double due to cavernous echo effect.

This high pitched brass contributes to the madness, with the trumpets playing in a way that makes them feel like they are rumbling and echoing everywhere inside your head as opposed to playing melodic phrases, and that danger can come from anywhere. The Section 3 features the timpani in a solo that feels like the steps of the bosses approaching you; this exemplifies the importance of percussion and rhythm in driving combat music, treating the cue with unconventional groupings and ambiguous rhythmic pulse.

On this particular piece, even if the main driving pulse uses a 6/4 time signature, the improvisational melodies on top play as if they were on normal 4/4, giving the piece its oft kilter sensation. Then, coming from nowhere the piano ostinato shifts abruptly mid-song to playing eight notes, making the interplay and following the pulse more complicated. Kondo learned his craft of making battle music a while back since even in A Link to the Past the final clash against Ganon had manic pulse and rhythmic dislocation; odd and unconventional time signatures are the order of the day.

The piano ostinato, which at its lower registers is an instrument from which you can get some menacing timbres, is the chromatic basis of the piece, moving in a wavelike pattern that only barely harmonizes with the brass, practically by chance. As said, the rhythmic interplay between the piano ostinato and the screaming sirens that are the trumpets are at odds. Each one doing its own thing that contributes to the chaos. Like in the standard Battle cues, Kondo avoids using full melodies and instead opts for short fragments composed of dissonant intervals mostly focused on the diminished scale. In fact a descending diminished tetrachord opens the piece. Still, the main motif of the piece are three chromatic notes. The tuba and horns only contribute to the short Section 0 which never loops again since it is the curtain to the scene, a fanfare that announces things just got dangerous, and they then proceed to play a harmonized in minor thirds melody that does not align with the ostinato; it is the longest melodic statement that could reflect the moments where a boss is approaching you. After this, only the fragmentary trumpets play which seem improvised. There is not only dissonance between the rhythms of accompaniment and melody but also between their harmony; only in rare occasion the notes of the two harmonize.

The second ostinato is even more dislocated with respect to the 6/4 pattern, changing to grouping the notes in packets of three that give the illusion of a 12/8 meter or standard 4/4 with triplets. The trumpets, unfaced by this, keep doing their own thing. The ostinato is even more dissonant harmonically since it focuses on the tritone between the first and third note of the group of three. All ostinatos in the piano are played in octaves to generate more weight.

Over this ostinato, out of nowhere and without asking for permission, the percussionist launches into an aggressive solo with the timpani; Koji pretty much just hit keys at random but made sure that the rhythms got progressively more frantic.

The boss cues ramp up significatively the tension and drama, capturing the initial panic of the player at seeing such huge and macabre beasts, its approximation and then the chaos that ensues while you are thinking of a strategy. Slashing the dragon will reward players with a Boss victory cue, the equivalent mirror image for the Game Over cue but played as an eulogy for the bosses defeated; it is not triumphant, just majestic enough to convey that you have surmounted a very difficult test. Who will die, Link or the monster? We will explore both alternatives next.

As a fun fact, the roars of Gohma are also reused for other bosses and are also the roars of the mighty Ganon.