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

Relentless uncomfortable dissonance

This is not only an adventure game, this is an action-adventure game, and as such, our hero Link has to deal with not so peaceful moments throughout his travels. The result is a sense of danger and impending doom whenever a critter gets too close. It seems the game does not want you to feel heroic slashing creatures but rather constantly on your toes. To accomplish this it deploys a brooding cue as its battle theme full of dissonant intervals that communicate dread and inconsistent rhythm in the melody. The only constant will be the classic military snare that means war.

The most blatant use of dynamic music in the game, the transition into Battle music from any other cue depending on how close you get to an enemy will be noticed by any player immediately, learning to be alert or to run for their life. It is both a gameplay cue but also a scoring cue that captures the scene of encountering a monster. This was the first time the series used this device for minor enemies.

The game has various battle cues in order of increasing threat. This one means minor threat, just slightly uncomfortable for the might of the Hero of Time; exciting battle is not in the DNA of this track just a sense of alertness. The only exception when this piece is not used for standard enemies is when the player is in the overworld, which has its own custom battle music as we will see.

Musical Analysis

Structure: Section 1 / Section 2

Time Signature: 4/4

Tempo: 100

Melodic and Harmonic Profiles: B Octatonic

The now standard battle music for combat with the common monsters that attack the hero in a video game. This means a change in the direction of the music. For battles we will see how Kondo tends to lean more on the percussion, both as driving the track and augmenting the track. This cue is more subdued, representing the little danger that the easy enemies bring. The track is supported by the militaristic snare and the accents of the pizzicato strings. Both the high and low strings add more upper notes progressively throughout the length of the track to increase the tension with diminished chords (naturally, since the more time you spend with an enemy, the more you should be worried). The tuba gets the melody in a middle register and plays an improvisation run throughout the diminished scale (a scale that has a pattern alternating a half step with a whole step), perfect for uneasiness due to its dissonant intervals, specially the focus on the tritone or diminished fifth and the minor second, pretty much the two most dissonant intervals. The entire track is on the lower spectrum of the soundscape. As a fun fact, the volume of the track depends on the distance of the enemy to Link so it is even more dynamic than initially thought and it is like an aural radar.

In fact, the melody, which enters rather late since it is implied that depending on the trouble that an enemy is giving you, you will get more of the action in the music as opposed to the mostly suspense based intro, actually begins focusing exclusively on tritone and minor second intervals, right out of the gate emphasizing dissonance. It then improvises through the diminished scale. While the strings keep adding diminished notes to the Bdim chord, the bassoon plays a relentless ostinato focusing on minor seconds. Ostinatos and battle music go together in the soundtrack lexicon. The pizzicatos play in an oft-kilter rhythm where the accents fall mostly on the downbeat with an unexpected upbeat later to create a sense of dislocation, as if, you cannot quite predict when the accent will come, just like the strike on a battle; sometimes it comes from above, sometimes from below like the accents. They also come progressively with more frequency. Though the spacing of the accents retains that internal irregularity, it repeats unchanged throughout the loop. As said, the musical and rhythmic devices serve the function of alarming and alerting the player.

Kondo is not reinventing the wheel here other than perhaps not resorting to more exciting and heroic music. He uses the traditional film language of employing dissonance to imply danger. There is minimal movement in the accompaniment in order to retain suspense and you will probably not get particularly tired of that since most of the times the cue ends quickly (except for those pesky wolves sometimes).

We have come a long way in terms of battle music since the original The Legend of Zelda on the NES where nobody, not even Ganon had battle themes. Another aspect brand new to Ocarina of Time and that will enrich its world profoundly is having unique tracks for each and every dungeon. The first ones are the organic dungeons. Time to explore what the insides of the guardian deities of Hyrule sound like.