The Crestlands/Hinoeuma

Track 2-3: The Crestlands(Day/Night)

This piece is one of my personal favorites. The Crestlands are a region of stunning landscapes filled with every kind of sentimental sight you could hope for: the evening sun on the mountains, bright autumn foliage, and above all, red dragonflies! Sunset and autumn leaves are twilight things, harbingers of the coming night and then the winter, which means you need a certain sadness in the music, right? Within that sadness, though, there’s a clear sense of the gently enveloping warmth of the sun and the crimson of the leaves, and that’s the kind of melody I tried to compose.

The Crestlands are also home to Flamechurch, where the Sacred Flame resides, and the commonalities there are key. The melody is taken on flute, a woodwind instrument whose warmth becomes an important element in the music as a whole. At around 0:24, the piccolo comes in to double the melody an octave above, which is another super-sentimental detail.

I also think that this is one piece where the orchestral sounds we recorded in Nashville, where you can feel the spaciousness of the studio, are highly effective. I hope you’ll listen out for that in the piece.

Track 2-5: Hinoeuma(Day/Night)

Hinoeuma is the starting point of Hikari’s journey, so conjuring up a similar Asian vibe was one goal I had in mind while composing this theme. In this case, however, the musical imagery is more like something that might have been heard on the Silk Road, with a mixture of Asian and European sensibilities.

The Chinese flute called a xiao, which I mentioned using in my post about Hikari’s theme, also appears in the theme for Hinoeuma to help build a cohesive sound. On the other hand, the harmony and chord progression in the Hinoeuma theme sound very European, with hardly any Asian elements to them at all. However, an arpeggiated phrase on marimba is played all the way through the piece, occasionally showing through in the background as a slightly Asian-sounding touch.

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Incidentally, the instrument playing the melody from around 1:21 is actually a clarinet. I wonder how many people realized that. None, I suspect—I’m sure I wouldn’t have, haha!

Anyway, this clarinet is being played by a superplayer named Hidehito Naka (@NAKAHIDEHITO), who can handle anything from classical to pop—not to mention the duduk, a folk instrument (this one double-reeded, it seems)! At the recording session, at first the sound wasn’t quite as I imagined, but when I asked Naka to try playing the clarinet like a duduk, he delivered the perfect performance on his first take!

Translation: Matt Treyvaud