This episode, we study Yoko Shimamura’s score to the Kingdom Hearts series! We also look at safety/danger state music and polythematicism!
the only podcast solely dedicated to the academic study of videogame music!
This episode, we study Yoko Shimamura’s score to the Kingdom Hearts series! We also look at safety/danger state music and polythematicism!
Nice analysis of what makes the score work. A thing I could not determine: does Shimomura use the device of starting off a world with a known song and then using the instruments or some of them for the other songs? I do not know many of the songs from Disney movies, so I could not tell, it only struck me someplace that the world clearly started with the theme from the movie (Winnie and some other place)
Off-topic: Whatever means Kingdom Hearts? Is it me or is this a kind of strange title (well, in the light of Square latest stroke-of-genius game name “Infinite Undiscovery” not as much). I ask as there is also a song some people might have heared of that is supposedly called “Dancing Mad”, which also doesn’t sound very English to me… what is up with that? With the latter I guessed that it was a way to translate the Kenji or dunnowhats directly that made up the original title, but with KH, well: don’t they use the Latinized English titles like they do in, say, the Neon Genersis Evangelion logo?
Finally, in wiki and show we learn that “she [Shimomura] often pretended to be composing her own music by playing the piano randomly”. Well, didn’t we all? Well at times not pretending, and I like collaging monophone melodic lines for minutes on end in my head and on my voice (to the best of my quasi-non-abilities) even today sometimes.