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Inside The Score – The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker – Dragon Roost Island

Andean volcano

The Island where the wind wakes…up in many forms.

We arrive at the Nintendo Gamecube era—although don’t expect too many games since it is a nightmare to convert from the proprietary BMS sequences to MIDI— and what better way to kickstart it than to peek inside the ambitious interactive, playable cartoon known as The Wind Waker; as part of the Legend of Zelda series it is a bold and surprising continuation to Ocarina of Time, departing from the more realistic look from the N64 era on a system capable of very realistic graphics as showcased in a demo from the console when it originally released. The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker may resemble a cutesy animated series with bright colors, simple shading, and extremely fluid animation. Yet this childlike shift in presentation doesn’t mean the series has been reduced to kids’ entertainment, cartoon physics, and pratfalls. Instead, its whimsical look is used as a platform to support a genuinely epic, touching, and dramatic storyline that has an unusually strong sense of history. It is all about sailing the seven seas (technically just one), pirates and exploring island dweller cultures. And even though the endearing graphics were controversial at first and when seeing them in static press images, it was only a matter of watching the game in movement before people were sold on it. This bold decision has helped the game stand the test of time and look as pretty many years later as it did on release.

We also arrive at an era where, instead of a single auteur composer, video games now required teams of music composers and sound designers in order to fulfill the high volume of interactive tracks needed in short development times. The score for The Wind Waker was composed by Kenta Nagata as main sound director, Hajime Wakai, Toru Minegishi, and a Koji Kondo beginning to leave the realms of the series in favor of more of a supervising role. Due to the setting the soundtrack is inspired by gaelic seafaring tunes alongside the primary environments and classic Zelda tunes rearranged to fit historical characters and locations.

During the Gamecube era it was easier to include pre-recorded music on the games as opposed to sequence it; nevertheless, it was decided that Zelda would still use sequences akin to MIDi since it allowed for more interactivity at the time and occupied less memory, plus the advancement of MIDI technology allowed the soundtrack to more closely approximate the sounds of real instruments than was possible in previous installments.

Just like Ocarina of Time featured an instrument as its main source of magic, here we have the titular Wind Waker as a conductor baton directing an unseen choir in D major. It is a game that has the themes of controlling creatures and the environments. As an instrument, it has not the same level of control as the Ocarina though. The development team initially considered using a theremin since it also control sound with the movement of hands but discarded it in favor of the conductor baton even though the later required an off-screen magical choir; magic instrument triumphed over futuristic one in this fantasy world.

Of course ever since the track ‘Gerudo Valley’ found in Ocarina of Time every Zelda game has to have at least one exotic, not quite fantasy appropriate tune on their soundtrack. Hence we end up with ‘Dragon Roost Island’ as the spiritual successor of both ‘Gerudo Valley’ and Deku Palace, and the precursor to tracks such as ‘The Hidden Village’ in Twilight Princess and the overworld track in Spirit Tracks. However, just like ‘Gerudo Valley’ was not just a random flamenco thrown in just to be its catchy self but was connected to the Islam-Arabic inspired Gerudo race and its closeness to the Western inspired kingdom of Hyrule mirroring the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula which led to the establishment of a state, Al-Andalus (origin of the Andalusian progression of course), the music from this ultra high volcanic island is not your typical beach music of any kind; instead, it is also directly connected with the design and inspiration of a brand new race for the series, the bird-like Rito who dwell in high mountainous places.

The train of thought went pretty much like this: developers knew how iconic the sigh of Death Mountain was for Hyrule by now; but the problem is that, as per their own story, the entire kingdom was sunk below the ocean. So what kinds of volcanoes could survive? what kind of people could live in those places? Enter the real world location home to the highest volcanoes on planet earth, the Andes mountain range in South America. It is the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America; The Andes extend from South to North through seven South American countries: Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela. Naturally, the bird like tribe Rito, possibly inspired by the trademarked Andean condor, also live there (specially on Breath of the Wild).

Following this environment, the designers then went on to splash the Rito tribe with South American indigenous people traits, such as the poncho like clothing, chullo hats, beak like noses, all expertly incorporated in bird like features. The Rito culture and garments are all engulfed with both Aymara and Quechua people characteristics.

A picture for reference of what a real life Rito would look like with a view that could come straight from Dragon Roost Island

Musical Analysis

And so, naturally, the music follows suit and also needs to appropriate the proper Andean folk music which is a mix of the easy to construct pipe instruments that carry the sound of the wind for these windy locations (plus a literal wind god that will allow Link to control the winds) with the influence of the Spanish colonists who brought with themselves some neat plucked string instruments like the mandolin, which in Latin America became the charango. Original wistful and longing chants heard since the times the Inca empire mixed with Spanish rhythms to create a brand new genre that serves as a regional motif for any work set in the region; alongside some llamas It establishes that you are on this terrain.

An example of the Andean music which inspired ‘Dragon Roost Island’:

The style had to be studied in order to get the proper performance out of the samples

Composer Kenta Nagata who previously helmed the Mario Kart 64 ost was tasked with bringing to life the Rito tribe with some Andean music. Still, just like ‘Gerudo Valley’ mixed in some mariachi trumpets, the theme from ‘Dragon Roost Island’ adopts further flamenco influences by using handclaps and castanets which are not commonly found in Andean music, creating another original mix which could only be found in video game music. The rhythms can be counted in fast 3/4 time or slower 12/8 since it is the time it takes for the palms and castanets to finish their pattern or the melodic lines to rest. There is also the traditional modal music from Zelda which is never content with staying in a single key throughout (here we have a G minor tune which travels to other chords outside it).

The piece consists of a pre-intro, an intro that is incorporated within the track again, plus two main melodic sections A and B. It starts with the dominant major D chord before going to the main vamp of Gm to F; so from the beginning we are using some outside the key chords. Composer Kenta uses very few instruments creating a track with a lot of space and air. Most of the work went into creating a performance instrument-accurate for the charango. You can see how dynamic the different notes from the chords are, creating different rhythms even within the notes of the chord. Not to mention the amount of work that went into the velocity (a MIDI concept that denotes how strong you hit a note) of each individual note, which cannot be pictured in the visualization; it makes some notes pop more than others within the chord, all contributing to a realistic, faithful adaptation of the charango strumming patterns plagued with the open chords from plucked stringed instruments as opposed to the close together notes in the chords of a piano. Programming this mandolin must have been a nightmare; the samples selected even contain the strong pitchless attack from strumming forcefully string instruments, which is used for the pre-intro in rhythmic fashion by cutting the length of the notes down to just the first milliseconds, creating a realistic mute strum pattern that sets the mod for the intro.

The pan flutes (or siku as they are known in the region) complete both the accompaniment and melodies, with the accompaniment in fifths sometimes mixing in with the melodic notes since they end up in similar registers. Some other chords outside the key include the Andalusian like Ab which brings to mind the Zelda main tune that has a bVII – bVI – I movement somewhere during its own A section. The melody uses two pan flutes to create a delay effect used since Super Nintendo times; meanwhile, the accompaniment flute uses a second low velocity secondary note to create a more real pan flute accurate sound, putting forward the blowing attack.

The full harmony from Dragon Roost Island would be something like:

Pre-Intro

D – chikchikchikchik

Intro

Gm – F – Gm – F

A section

Gm – F – Gm – F

Gm – F – Bb – Ab – Gm

F – Eb –

The pan flute melody retaining the same notes while the underlying harmony descends. (if we include the pan flute accompaniment some chords would result in the likes of Ebmaj7 and Ab maj 7/ #11 thanks to pan flute that stays as pedal).

Intro

A Section

Gm – F – Gm – F

Gm – F – Bb – Ab – Gm

F – Eb – Bb – C(7/9) – Abmaj7

Intro

B Section

Eb – Dm7 – Eb – F

Eb – Dm7 – C(7/9) -Abmaj7 – Abmaj7 (alt)

As you can see both of the melodic sections end with the same extended harmony progression, giving cohesiveness to the whole package. No pan flute accompaniment during B section.

The wistful, longing B Section beginning with a perfect fourth interval might have been inspired by the iconic Andean song known as ‘El Condor Pasa’ which also features this interval prominently and most likely served as a reference for Dragon Roost Island music.

The Rito pasa. The first few notes are even the same

So you might be asking, what about the bouncy, infectious bass line? I remember there was a bass line on this track!” well you are just remembering as some kind of Mandela effect since the bass was never in the game to begin with; you are just used to the soundtrack versions uploaded and the versions found in the Super Smash Bros games. Perhaps for the soundtrack release someone wanted to add more Latin sabor to the track. Could this acoustic bass be the first instance of a recorded instrument in Zelda music? Perhaps. For some reason it was still not included on the HD version for the WII U; maybe they feel it could be too distracting in game. In any case this is the original straight from the game.

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