Inside The Score - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Inside the Deku Tree

Howling sounds through the cracks of the earth

Time to become one with nature. And we are not talking about hugging trees but actually entering them. The Deku Tree himself who opened the curtain to the narrative of Ocarina of Time surprisingly serves as the very first “dungeon”, paying homage to the very first one from the original The Legend of Zelda. The guardian spirit of the Kokiri has the honor of kickstarting the dungeon side of 3D Zelda, teaching players the kinds of puzzles that the new dimension allows; there is a reason the developers force you to jump into a web from above, using the concept of gravity for a puzzle. Producer Shigeru Miyamoto was specially involved during these early stages as he feels they are key to the whole experience; if you get the beginning right, everything else is smooth sailing.

Just like the beginning of the series, the first 3D entry also had to happen this way

The child era dungeons are the organic ones, two of them being inside living creatures, the guardian deities of their respective cultures actually, and a cavern within a mountain. Proper dungeons built by men will come later. The music also takes a left turn; the previous Zeldas had some gothic tunes full of suspense and danger but here there is an eery calmness that is captured by the soundscape, an ambient track with only one sound that conveys the natural world.

For this Zelda, each and every dungeon will have its own cue that aims to mix the sounds of the environments with musical information, the line between sound effects and music gets blurred. The Deku Tree and the next dungeon Dodongo’s Cavern have the particularity that their cues are the only dungeon tracks that are reused for other locations in Hyrule (technically the Shadow Temple is also used for the well but it is implied it is the same location), this one also appearing in the grottoes of Hyrule and in the creepy house of the Skulltulas; it could be because they fit perfectly these locations or there was not more time to create more cues.

Musical Analysis

Structure: Section 0 / Section 1

Time Signature: 4/4

Tempo: 50

Melodic and Harmonic Profiles: B Mixolydian (MUSIC NOTATED A HALF STEP HIGHER BECAUSE OF THE SAMPLES USED!!!)

Listen closely, as thou shall be listening to the sound of nature itself.

This is not your typical Zelda underworld music. For the dungeons throughout the game, Kondo decided to capture as close as possible the atmosphere of the locations instead of opting for the usual danger and sense of hopelessness that was a staple in previous entries.

For the first dungeon in the game, the composer shows us its underrated talent for creating ambient soundscapes by instantaneously making us feel that we have entered a sacred place, not a church with their typical Gregorian chants, but something of an earthly, sacred nature. The Great Deku Tree was the closest being to a ‘Kami’ from shintoism that had come into the series until then, a guardian tied to the health of the forest and its people; the instruments Koji used represent this nature type of deity, using a mystic bamboo flute sample with the pitch lowered to match the enormity of the tree itself.

The sounds seem to be emanating from the place, going around in a circular pattern similar to the layout of the dungeon, a round, hollow trunk with stuff inside—even though Ocarina of Time was aiming for realism, being a game means you can get away with having ladders and torches inside a tree. The low flute could easily pass for the irregular breathing of the sick Deku Tree, and the high flute just seems to be improvising the melodies the wind produces as it naturally passes through the branches or holes in the earth; it feels eternal, difficult to pinpoint when does exactly the cue loops or what phrase is playing. The piece sounds a half step lower as notated, probably because Kondo knew he would be improvising and didn’t give much thought to the placement of the notes on the keyboard. It plays a single B7 chord that does not sound bluesy at all, just as a dominant without resolution. Kondo restricts himself to playing this dominant chord throughout multiple octaves, giving an unresolvable feeling to the piece and making it feel like the natural harmonics of the music scale are at play. The note F# serves as a pedal note throughout.

Since players spend so much time inside dungeons, Kondo avoids having catchy or repetitive melodies that may cause fatigue, just a background landscape that seems to evolve infinitely. The timbre itself is way more complex than a simple flute, being engulfed in reverberation and also fluctuating. This is the forest plainchant, where sound design plays a bigger role in the effectiveness of the cue than music.

You can listen here to the original sample:

Apt for the sound of mother earth breathing. It is an ancient instrument made more ethereal through effects

Motifs from this song—plus even the same timbre—appear again in The Wind Waker and Twilight Princess where there could be remnants of the Great Deku Tree, an entity difficult to pull off in the photorealistic world of Twilight Princess (the reason there are no Kokiri anymore is because they guardian deity died). They are naturally used in the grottoes and shrines in Wind Waker and in the case of Twilight Princes, strangely it is used in none other than the Temple of Time, perhaps because it has been engulfed by the forest.

Motifs of the Deku Tree dungeon remain in the Temple of Time, which in this tale is located now deep in the forest, just like the tree was

Inside the Deku Tree 2.0 with extra ethereal notes and a less mysterious tone

As a spirit of nature, the sickness of the Great Deku Tree has repercussions all across the forest. He is the first mentor figure to young Link and is currently tormented with a parasitic entity. This entity will serve as the first boss of Ocarina of Time. The game will seize the opportunity to continue showing off its 3D features, being a key component of the encounter with this boss. The battle music now gets action packed.