Main Theme –Night–

Track 1-2: Main Theme –Night–

Switching Between Day and Night

In OT2, you can actually switch between day and night right on the title screen. I wonder how many people noticed this functionality. (If you just found out now, give it a try—it’ll wow you!)

I adore the day/night switching effect, which is one of the game’s showpiece features, and when I heard that director [Keisuke] Miyauchi had made sure it was available on the title screen, I thought, What a nifty idea, haha!

Naturally, being able to switch between day and night means that the music is designed to transition seamlessly as well. The main theme goes back and forth between day and night just like that, every time the player makes the switch.

The Most Beautiful Transitions

I decided that the main theme needed the most beautiful, seamless transitions between day and night of all the pieces in the game, since it is the main theme, played over the title, right where the day/night switching function makes its first appearance.

Of course, careful planning was required to make all this work. The first step was matching the number of bars in the day and night versions exactly.

To begin with, here’s a simple explanation of how the game switches between day and night versions of each piece of music.

The Musical Side of Day/Night Switching

When the game transitions smoothly between two separate pieces like this, the easiest way to think about it is as both pieces playing at the same time.

In other words, when the day version of a piece is playing, the night version is also playing in the background at zero volume.

Now, suppose the fourth bar of the day version is playing. If the player switches from day to night at that point, the music player crossfades to the night version. (The day version’s volume decreases to 0 as the night version’s volume increases to 100.) Because the music keeps playing throughout, effectively, the crossfade happens during bar 4, so that as of bar 5 you have switched to the night version.

For all this to work smoothly, at a minimum, the day and night versions of each piece must have the same number of bars and the same chords.

Tempo is also important.

As you can probably imagine, for some pieces, dropping the tempo relative to the day version is the only way to express the night atmosphere. Various other devices are also required, such as decreasing the number of notes.

So, what happens if the tempo changes?

Even if the number of bars stays the same, the slower the tempo, the longer a piece gets. When the day and night versions of each piece are constantly playing in parallel, as I wrote earlier, what do you think happens then?

I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this!

Still, it’s actually not worth worrying about too much, because the game’s music system has the ability to look at bar numbers. So, no matter how different the lengths are, you can simply make it jump to the right bar number to resolve the issue.

However, when you do that, the transition becomes just a little bit less seamless. As a result, it’s better to match the tempos as much as possible, and that depends on the arrangement.

For the main theme, the day version has a very fast tempo. Using the same tempo for the night version would have been challenging. So, I used some techniques to make it feel like the tempo was slower without actually changing it at all. (I know, I know—what am I talking about, right? Haha!)

For example, the day version is in 4/4, but the night version is in 6/8, at the same tempo. How does that work out?

4/4 is a time signature that means each measure is four quarter notes long. A quarter note is twice as long as an eighth note, you can also think of 4/4 as 8/8.

When you switch from the day version of the main theme in 8/8 to the night version in 6/8, the length of time that would normally have 8 notes has 6 instead. The individual notes within each measure are longer. This way, even with the same tempo, it sounds as if the tempo has dropped.

It’s hard to explain clearly in words, but there’s a video where I go over the time signature issue in more detail, so please take a look if you’re interested. (Around 0:07:23.)

In any case, by using techniques like this to maintain the same tempo and number of bars in both day and night versions, I aimed to give the main theme the most beautiful and seamless day/night transitions on the entire soundtrack.

The seamless switching between day and night on the title screen really does feel great. Please give it a try!

Bonus Content

Here’s a glimpse of the recording session in Nashville that I forgot to include yesterday.

Today’s post ended up being quite long as well. To be continued tomorrow!

Translation: Matt Treyvaud