Carefree Days/Seaside Town

Track 2-10 : Carefree Days

Today, our stroll through the soundtrack analysis reaches the event music. I hope you’ll all continue to follow along.

“Carefree Days” corresponds to OT1’s “Tranquil Days.” “They both have mild-mannered titles, that’s for sure,” I hear you say, but the point is they were composed as versatile, everyday pieces. The music is meant to be suitable for basically any everyday scene.

It’s actually quite difficult to control the level of excitement in music like this. Composing an accompaniment for some special event is surprisingly easy; composing a piece to express a situation where nothing is happening at all can be more difficult. After all, the music has to convey the idea of nothing going on, haha! Anyway, when I’m faced with the challenge of writing a piece that will be easy to use in a range of situations but also listenable on its own, I’m always thinking to myself how tough these everyday pieces are.

One notable feature of this piece is the woodwind ensemble. The main theme is played on an instrument called a bassoon. The bassoon is a double-reed instrument, which means the player creates sound by directing their airstream between two reeds. (Double-reed instruments are usually said to be harder to play than single-reed instruments like the clarinet and saxophone.) Another common double-reed instrument is the oboe, which might actually be more popular as a melody instrument. The bassoon is often used when a low woodwind is needed, but if you let it take the melody, sometimes it adds a distinctive droll vibe to the proceedings. Other woodwinds like the clarinet and the flute also appear in this song, so you might enjoy keeping an ear out for the different timbres. 👌

Track 2-11: Seaside Town (Day/Night)

This piece is meant to conjure a harbor town with a vaguely Mediterranean feel. There are many different ways you could approach the idea of a town with a harbor. In OT2, there are places like Tropu‘hopu, with the bright, sunny feel of a tropical island, but this piece goes in a different direction, suggesting someplace where the air is a little more bracing, and you might like to sit on the dock for a while listening to the gulls call. In terms of distinctive sounds, the mandolin and the accordion are the obvious ones. They play the same lines in unison for a bracing yet cozy vibe. Our accordionist is Saburo Tanooka (@saburotter), returning from OT1.

In addition to the mandolin, the overall 6/8 waltz feel might also help evoke a town on the Mediterranean. I also think that the timbre of the guitar is a perfect match for the coastal sound—I used it in OT1 as well. Try listening out for these different sounds!

The mandolin takes the melody in the night version, too, but while the day version uses tremolo (if you need a refresher on this, check my analysis of the Wildlands theme!), note that the night version is played as single notes with no tremolo. 👌

Translation: Matt Treyvaud