Breaking News: Silly Anime Video Game Has Way Better Music Than It Ever Could Have Deserved
Written by a bunch of no name composers who are almost completely new to game scoring (besides Asano who has worked on other Atelier games), Ryza features beautiful orchestral pieces that make the repetitive exploration gameplay much more tolerable. I found myself stopping at various points in the game to marvel at the magnificence of their work.
Before I throw a bunch of lingo at you, take a listen to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHewOXVPafU
This track is called "Emerald Climbing" and plays while you are walking around the base of a volcano at night. It is written by Kosuke Mizukami, and if you listen to other tracks from this OST, you will begin to realize that wherever there is heavenly string writing, it is always him.
(I didn't check the harmony, but I am sure it is close. No promises though.)
Mizukami begins with a dorian vamp that sets up a groove in C minor. The strings already begin to weave in and out with athletic scales and runs before we reach "the drop" on the G-augmented chord which signifies the proper start of the piece.
The first half of the A section features a solo violin with piano and percussion accompaniment. On the repeat, the string section repeats the melody from before while the solo violin plays a descant above it. The repeat of this section ends differently, as the inconclusive half-cadence is switched out for a sinister and final sounding bII7-i cadence. The seriousness caused by this tritone substitution is promptly discarded as the pianist goes up the keyboard to hits "Do" in various octaves (which sounds very silly).
The next two sections go hand in hand. The B section has a strong groove with a walking bass while the first eight measures of the C section have a less direct approach to building the harmonies. However, the walking bass comes back at the end of the C section to lead us back into the dorian groove from the intro.
What is most impressive about this piece is not the rhythm or the harmony itself, but the sheer compositional mastery of orchestration. Mizukami makes every phrase feel so intentional and important, and there is not a single moment that is not fully engaging as a result.
This attention to detail is so important in video game music, as you will listen to these pieces over and over again. Every note in every instrument must be in its correct place for a piece like this to exist, and few composers can do it with such effortless grace.
Certainly, I am not the only one who thinks so because Nintendo recently hired Mizukami as the lead composer for their new Japanese only franchise, Buddy Mission Bond.
Mizukami's other tracks are equally impressive. "Hometown Island/Serene Island" is a beautiful town theme with a bunch of complicated harmonic twists and payoffs, "Grotta Azzurra/Grotta Dello Zaffiro" is a masterclass in color and harmonic sonority, and "Geo Frontier" is simply indescribable. I might come back another day to talk about these pieces because they are more technical and deserve their own post.
Oh yeah...the tracks by the other composers are great too.
Atelier, by its very nature, is a game about the little joys in life, but its equally about cutesy characters doing silly stuff. In that sense, there is no way to talk about Atelier without discussing the music that makes you go "aw".
Take a listen to "End of Hibernation", the battle theme (if you dare). It's written by the series composer, so you can believe its going to be insultingly childish:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0zBU_U1IHQ
While the beginning in 7/8 is not uncomfortably cute, it starts getting bad around 1:08, and becomes pretty unbearable when it moves into 4/4 at 1:25. It's rather bold of him to write a battle theme in 2+2+3/8, but I commend him for making it work. I suppose he had to up his game with all the other talent in this OST.
Another composer who didn't shy away from cuteness in his music was Asano Mitake. He wrote both of this games' crafting room themes—"Ordinary Days" and "Secret Hideout". Both deserve a listen as they are far more tasteful in their cuteness Also, Secret Hideout is in 3+3+2+2/8 (or 5/4 if you're wrong).
Ordinary Days:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPFflQAqQQU
Secret Hideout:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pj0Ccb4SUkY
Here's the chord chart for Secret Hideout if you're interested:
The modulation before the B section is really pretty. It uses chord quality to give certain chords two simultaneous functions in order to move outside the key. I call this technique simultaneity—because the chords exhibit two simultaneous functions.
The crafting room theme from Ryza 2 is a variation on secret hideout that feels much less carefree and juvenile and much more somber and mature. The meter is repeatedly pulled into 4/4 and away from 5/4 illustrating how Ryza is simultaneously holding on to and trying to let go of her childhood. It's truly spectacular writing.
See if you can hear what I mean:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zikNdhy6kDw
The last guy who deserves a mention is Shin-ichiro Nakamura. He is clearly a German serialist which is the absolute last type of music I would expect for a cutesy anime game. Can you imagine seeing a wartime composer like Schoenberg, Berg or Webern in the credits of a haha funny anime girl game? Well, they pretty much did that.
Listen to this nonsense:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITqetgGURVU
Beautiful. Iconic. Adorable.
Nakamura is mad.
Anyway, I hope this was marginally entertaining. Ryza has really good music, and I never had an audience to share it with, so here you go. I heard that Ryza is getting an anime soon, but I'm hardly interested. If the music is good, I might take a listen.
Here's me playing all this music:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=wJwDSNeuUeE
Good Evening,
Evan Davis
All chord charts and diagrams created and owned by me. If you would like to use any of my figures, contact me at evandavispiano@gmail.com for permission.
(I've played 5 games in this series, and I still don't know who their target audience is...)
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