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Saturday, May 14, 2011

Music that moves me

There is something about music. I'm sure many people can identify with me on this, that something about music moves the emotions. I hear certain songs that make me feel a bit sad, other songs that cause me to feel like I want to jump for joy.

Music can also be a mirror to emotion:

When I'm angry I listen to One Winged Angel
When I'm sad I listen to Unbeautiful
When I'm excited I listen to Inner Universe

All of these things are true, but I think there is something special to be said about the music that really moves me: music from games.

I'm going to keep this a bit limited in scope, but for reference lots of games I've played have had music that made me feel one way or another for the record.

There is something special to me, however, about the music in the Zelda games I've played. Every Zelda game I have played through (thus excluding Zelda 1 & 2, which were a bit outside my area of interests, as well as being so outdated I could hardly relate) has had music which has occurred in such a fantastic way that even listening to a small portion of a song from one of these games triggers a host of emotions and memories.

Ilia's theme, for example, brings back memories of Ordon spring, and Kakariko Village.

The theme from the Dark World brings back memories of the Magic Mirror, the epic battle with Gannon, and the tragic story of the boy with the flute.

The Song of Healing from Majora's Mask brings to mind all the masks I collected to save Termina, and all the jokes I came up with as a result of the song's unique powers.

Things like FreddeGredde's "Windwaker Unplugged" brings back an entire game and then some to my mind.

The unifying theme about this is that all of these songs bring to mind memories, or have a feeling to them that sound to me like the emotions I feel. When it comes to listening to Zelda songs, just listening to them brings me so close to the wonderful memories of those games that I often find myself being drawn back to playing them all over again just because I chose to listen to the songs.

Zelda may not be the only place I find music that suits me, but it's one of the strongest influences. Out of all the songs I listen to, Zelda songs almost always have the top tier of feeling attached to them. I think this is because unlike regular music where you just listen to it, in Zelda songs, you hear it while you do something. Sometimes that's great (like when I feel good about restoring the Master Sword while listening to Medli's theme or Makar's theme), and sometimes it's terrible (like how frustrated I feel knowing that I was 'this' close to being at the boss fight of the forest temple and then the stupid poe sisters make me do the whole dungeon). FYI, my least favorite Zelda song from LTTP onward was undoubtedly the OoT Forest Temple theme, which still incites such negativity in me that I often play through the entire dungeon constantly playing the Song of Storms so I can hear rain rather than listen to the music.

It was that very thought though, that doing something while listening to music makes it more impactful, which led me to feel that when I saw a video about what if "Zelda meets today's music" I was inspired enough to make my own version (although it could be touched up a bit) of the first song she makes (I love the way you lie x Gerudo Valley). I call it Gerudo Lies. My point being, I think that songs we play and games we play can change our perceptions. So, I think there is still untapped potential in music to help us better understand our emotions, and that potential is when we hear the music and what we're doing when we hear it.

Have something to say about this? Feel free to comment.

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