Toto‘haha/The Harborlands

Track 1-11: Toto‘haha (Day/Night)

Today we leave the character theme zone behind and press on into the field music zone!

The field and town music supports the day/night switching function that I covered in my notes for the main theme. This means that every field and town piece has two versions: day and night.

There’s a lot I want to talk about here, but to make sure I don’t run out of steam halfway through, I’ve decided to write the notes for the day and night version of each piece together. Please stick with me!

In the music for Toto‘haha, I worked to achieve a sense of consistency with Ochette’s character theme by including the same kind of percussion alongside rhythm loops with a vaguely stone-like feel. The bass timbres in the refrain are especially distinctive and fun.

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The visuals for Toto‘haha are among my favorites. Those ancient ruins with shimmering streams running through them make powerful, beautiful imagery. I remember how much I wanted to musically convey the ineffable romance of crumbling architecture within a natural setting.

Vocals in the Night Arrangements

The night arrangements of this and other pieces include a distinctive element that many readers will already have noticed. When you switch to the night versions of any field music, the arrangement always features the human voice.

These vocals, like those of the main theme, are performed by Yuria Miyazono. I was trying to come up with an iconic sound that could represent the switch from day to night throughout the entire game, I hit upon the idea of including vocals in all the night arrangements, and everything unfolded from there.

For the town music, some night versions have vocals and others don’t, but all the field music features vocals as a prominent element in the night arrangements, so I hope you’ll keep an ear out for that.

Incidentally, these “songs” were all recorded by Miyazono, overdubbing herself in layers. She also provided lyrics in a vocalise-like made-up language.

Particularly when recording choral elements like this, the nuance of the lyrics is crucial. Singing “La la la” feels completely different from singing English or Japanese lyrics. Setting actual, meaningful lyrics to the pieces complicates things in its own way, as I’m sure you can imagine, but I did want the nuance of song. In cases like that, made-up languages and vocalises are often used.

Track 1-13: The Harborlands (Day/Night)

As the name suggests, the Harborlands lie along the coast, with ports and inlets and so on. Bringing that marine feel into the music was a no-brainer, but as this is also where Castti’s journey begins, in a way that feels more melancholic than cheerful, I wanted to include that element in the music as well.

The timbre of the horn that carries the opening melody is powerful and majestic, but the melody itself has a sadness to it that creates a melancholy feel overall. The oboe solo that follows is also somehow plaintive, don’t you think?

The tambourine that enters at around 1:04 was actually recorded live. Percussion like this is often played on synthesizer, but for this soundtrack we had Megumi Nozaki (@meguminozaki) bring seven or eight types of tambourines to the studio and recorded whichever we felt matched the composition. Tambourines appear in many pieces on the soundtrack, so if you happen to notice it, you might find it interesting to keep an ear out for the differences in timbre.

Translation: Matt Treyvaud