It's What Makes Wind Waker's Credits Theme Sound Gorgeous

— If you want to write beautiful music, music that feels emotionally powerful or touching, one tool that you'll have to have in your toolbox is oblique motion. I'm borrowing the term oblique motion from the established theory around counterpoint. When writing two melodies that are supposed to be played simultaneously, as was common in the 18th century music that theorists love to theorize about, there are three basic options for how the melodies can interact. They can move in the same direction. This is the method employed by pop punk backup singers. — They can move in opposite directions. This one is less common now, but quite dramatic. — [singing] — And then we have oblique motion, where one melody moves while the other voice sits on one same note. — This is cool enough when used with two harmonizing voices, but the broader idea of contrasting motion against a static force is an interesting concept that we can tease out into different, more specific, and more generally applicable musical techniques. The three I want to hone in on specifically in this video are drones, pedal points, and — oblique motion in counterpoint. Each of these techniques has its own specific use case, and you'll want to choose one or the other depending on what kind of particular effect you'll want to create. But all of them are beautiful, and they almost feel like cheating with how easy it is to create something that feels touching. To illustrate each of these techniques, I'm going to take on a request by my patron Valerie and look at the Wind Waker credits music, a gorgeous medley of multiple themes from the game which uses each of these three oblique motion techniques to great effect. So, without further ado, let's check out these obliques.

First, drones. A drone is what we call a held note that continues on throughout a piece even while the music around it keeps changing. Drones can soften the movement happening around them, offering the opportunity to sneak in some pretty gnarly dissonances between the drone note and whatever's in the foreground without the audience really noticing. The opening of Wind Waker's credits music uses the game's title screen theme. These iconic strummed chords sending any player reaching the credits of the game rocketing back to their first time booting it up. These chords follow a repeating four-bar riff, a simple little figure that sits on the same A flat sus 4 chord. With the bouncy drum beat and lively tin whistle melody that enters the piece, it's given a distinctly Celtic atmosphere. — These strummed chords act as a drone. The A flat and E flat notes in particular ringing out non-stop through every bar of the piece, even while the tin whistle melody moves between outlining different chords in a standard functional progression. It's an interesting role reversal, actually. The harmony of the title screen theme is entirely implied by the melody, while the harmony instrument just drones on the same chord the whole time. Drones tend to sink into the background of the music because when we hear a repeating note or pattern play out over and over, we tend to start to ignore it. But, they are still there and they do add color to the foreground notes even if we stop noticing the actual drone part. When the strings come in, we get these lush full chords giving the music a proper progression. This progression sounds nice as is. In fact, it's a callback to the same progression used in Outset Island's theme, Link's hometown. — But, if you notice that the credits version of this progression felt a little fuller and a little richer, that's thanks in part to the drone. The genius of droning a sus chord like this A flat sus 4 is that these three notes can fit over every chord in the key. The A flat and E flat notes in particular go smoothly with anything. We just get some colorful sixths and ninths and elevenths added to some of these chords. The D flat note adds a little bit of crunch to chords with a C note in it like F minor and A flat, but because it's the tonic note of the key, that's right, we're in the key of D flat by the way, and it's been held for so long, it has enough inherent stability to balance out any potentially off-putting dissonances. —

— Okay, now our second technique is called a pedal point, which is what we call it when one note is held down while the rest of the music keeps changing around it. Okay, I know that's literally the same definition I gave a drone, but the difference is in how and why the technique is used. A drone is a held note that fades into the background and subtly colors the main musical events, adding an intangible emotional richness to the piece. You set up your drone first and then add in the foreground elements on top of it. With a pedal point though, you're adding in this held note to the foreground on top of existing musical ideas and reveling in the dissonance it creates in order to facilitate a big crescendo. Case in point, under the B section of the title screen theme, which also happens to be the Wind God's Aria from the game. Yeah, the A and B melodies from the title screen theme are the two themes you learn that restore power to the Master Sword, the Earth God's Lyric and the Wind God's Aria, which is a beautiful bit of foreshadowing from the title screen. But anyways, when this B section comes in, the strings pin down an A flat note underneath. Then, throughout the phrase, this A flat is held as another string voice begins walking up the scale starting from A flat and moving all the way up to the A flat an octave above. This couldn't be a more textbook example of oblique motion and we get a lot of time to sit in each interval between these two voices as it goes. This major second off the hop is pretty crunchy as is the minor seventh towards the end, but more important than the crunch, this unwavering held fifth of the key builds anticipation. — Pedal points most often appear in the bass. The term actually comes from organ players who play the bass notes with their feet using pedals and who could just plant their foot on one and let it create a bunch of musical tension for you. We don't need to add more and more dissonant chord extensions onto this five chord or use some big cinematic chromatic mediant turnaround to build a huge crescendo. These movements wouldn't fit with Wind Waker's aesthetic. The tension here is generated simply through the anticipation of wondering when this five is going to move to the one. The longer you hold that pedal, the bigger the release when you finally do resolve it. A bigger version of the same thing happens later on. The bass holds down a lower A flat and the middle strings hold a D flat note, and these two notes are held through a full eight-bar phrase of melody while the higher strings move around to different chords within the key. — There are a lot of tense moments in here. Clashes between C notes and D flats, and halfway through we get even more oblique motion in the higher strings as the top note walks up the scale from this held high F, but all of the notes used are from the key of D flat, and they're all pinned down by that low A flat keeping everything together, making these almost random movements part of a functional musical idea. It's that changing between contrasting colors on top of a static pedal point that gives it its energy and allows it to build up towards a satisfying release.

release. Now, the last technique I want to talk about is going back to basics. Simply by using oblique motion in counterpoint. Now, oblique motion in counterpoint is when one voice stays on one note, and no, I'm just kidding. I know you get it. The function in this technique, to separate it from the others, is to create space between two musical elements. When you have two voices that move in the same direction in harmony, they blend together into one unit. But when one voice stays the same while the other moves, they both occupy their own distinct space. We get the sense of a conversation between two melodies rather than a combination of them. There's a fantastic moment in the Wind Waker credits music where the music breaks down to a quiet dynamic and brings in Zelda's Lullaby played by a sparse instrumentation of oboe and bassoon in front of the same continuous strummed drone chords that undergird the entire piece. — The bassoon line is written so that it holds one note underneath the movement of Zelda's theme and then the bassoon moves in the spaces of that melody. We have enough motion where it feels like its own counterline, but it plays off of the main melody in a way that keeps the two voices separate. It feels like a conversation. When Zelda's Lullaby gets to its B section, the violin comes back with the Wind God's Aria theme and layers it over top and then the bassoon moves to a more active line in its lower register. We have three different melodies intertwining here, two of them being quite busy, but they all stay out of each other's way by mostly moving where the other melodies are staying still. You can see how the bassoon holds on to long notes where the violin part is busy, but as soon as there's a space in that violin melody, the bassoon fills it in with some eighth notes. — Giving each line its own distinct rhythmic space, each line taking its turn holding notes against another melody's motion, creates a three-way conversation. Each line feels completely independent, but they all complement each other, working together with a rowdy unity that builds up the energy of the music and catapults us into the piece's climax. — There are a lot of other examples of bringing in other themes from the game, and these kinds of callbacks have an obviously emotional effect for anyone who's made it through the whole journey. But, these callback melodies also all feature a lot of big held notes, which allow for plenty of oblique motion as the main themes from the title screen music move against them. Aryll's theme comes into the string part behind the Wind God's aria, and the repeated held F notes against the busy violin line provides plenty of oblique motion between the two melodies. — We also move into a 9/8 version of the sailing theme, which is just so cool. I love the way the iconic opening cello line is adapted to fit into the new time signature. — The long held notes of the horn melody, a great representation of the wide open ocean ahead of you when sailing provides a perfect bed for the tin whistle melody to dance on. Having so much going on at once creates a ton of energy, but the oblique balance between these themes keeps the mashup from feeling overwhelming. And of

course, bringing back these old themes reminds us of our time spent playing the game and the various adventures we had on the open ocean and the whole reason we started this journey in the first place. It's hard for the ending of such a great journey to live up to one's expectations, but not only does Wind Waker have a perfect ending, it's got perfect credits music. It's equal parts sentimental, looking back at the journey you finished, and hopeful, looking forward to the future. And this level of emotional richness wouldn't be possible without the use of oblique motion. Thank you so much for watching. Thanks again to my patron Valerie for the suggestion. If you'd like to support the channel, please check out my Patreon page and I'll see you all in the next one. —