I Have No Idea What I'm Talking About

Nobuo Uematsu and the sound of evil

Here’s the last paper I ever wrote as an undergrad.  It was for my Music Theory IV class. Enjoy.

Nobuo Uematsu began composing for video games in 1987 with the game Final Fantasy.  Since then, he has continued to compose for the extraordinarily popular series and in the process has become one of the most revered composers in the medium.  Uematsu began his career working with Squaresoft, a small game company in Japan quickly heading into bankruptcy.  In 1987 the company assigned Hironobu Sakaguchi to direct what could very well be the companies last game.  Sakaguchi selected Uematsu as the composer for the game, which he titled Final Fantasy as a reference to the impeding collapse of Squaresoft.  The game ended up being a huge success, saving the company and establishing its flagship series.  One of the most notable qualities of the game was the tuneful and memorable soundtrack provided by Uematsu.  While Video Game Music has always contained a wide and eclectic field of influences, Uematsu’s compositions added a pop sensibility that Uematsu attributed to his deep respect for the work of Elton John.  Uematsu also drew heavily from progressive rock for his more complex compositions.  Finally, one of the elements that made Uematsu stand out from his contemporaries was his persistence and continued use of leitmotifs for characters and locations within the games.  In this essay, I plan on analyzing the compositional tricks that Uematsu uses to portray the villains in the Final Fantasy series.

            Before we begin to analyze the pieces in earnest, it is important to explain some of the conventions and stylistic limitations of video game music.  During the era in which these particular pieces were composed, Video Game Music was primarily composed on sequencers using Midi instruments.  As such, the sounds and timbres used in this medium are occasionally meant to resemble those of “real” or pre-existing instruments.  On occasion the timbres bear next to no resemble to other instruments and are purely a product of the synthesizers used to program the midi.  I will make note of any cases of intended similarity and the composer’s intention in choosing between recognizable or unrecognizable sounds.  Form also has unique limitations in this specific genre of game.  Pieces of the soundtrack are designed to repeat indefinitely while the player remains in a specific area and will continue to loop until that player leaves or completes a certain task.  Because of this the pieces are composed in such a way as to never truly end.  Because of this, key changes are extremely rare, and nearly all the loops will end on a cadence that allows them to return to the beginning of the piece with little to no pause.  Within the loop the exact form can be quite varied however, and I will still dissect the form of each piece as if it was a whole composition.

            The first piece I’ll be analyzing is “Those Chosen By The Planet” from Final Fantasy VII (1997).  This piece functions as the theme of the game’s primary antagonist, Sephiroth, and reappears any time the player directly interacts with this character.  The piece opens with a short and ominous four-measure intro in which a church bell and piano toll a low D, establishing the tonic for the rest of the piece.  From here the piece moves into it’s loop, which follows an ABAB’ form.  Within the A section, the majority of the instrumentation is provided by synthesized strings while a synthesized male voice provides primary melody.  The strings pumping 8^th notes crawl up the D minor scale diatonically, establishing the tonic triad with passing notes.  The melody expands the harmony by moving from the 5^th of the chord to the tritone before settling on the sixth.  This three-note motif becomes the basis for all of the harmonic motion in the A section.  Given that the D and F remain consistent in the lower register, the chords created are D minor, D diminished and Bb major.  The use of the diminished chord in this case should not be interpreted as anything other than a chromatic flourish for the sake of tension.  This tension and sense of unease is boosted by the presence of a strange nearly atonal buzzing similar to the sound design of a horror film, as well as a persistent rhythmic pattern imitating a heartbeat.  These horror tropes are used in order to establish the unease that the player is meant to feel around the villain.  The three-note motif is also reused in later pieces when the player confronts the antagonist at the end of the game.

            The B sections of this piece are significantly more harmonically complex.  While the D remains in the bass, the chords played in the upper voices, in a buzzing horn synthesizer pad, are better interpreted by looking at this D as a pedal tone unrelated to the upper structures.  In both the B and the B’ section, the first two chords are a cluster of Bb, D, and Eb followed by a Gbma7#11.  In the B section the third chord is a D augmented 7^th chord which resolves inward to return to the top of the A section.  In the B’ section, the chord shape of the Gbma7#11 is moved up a minor third for the third chord, making an Ama7#11 chord, which is held for an unusually long six measures, establishing it as the dominant chord before resolving back to D minor to begin the loop again.

            The use of the tritone to establish a sense of unease can also be found in “Succession Of Witches” from Final Fantasy VIII (1998).  The piece opens with a three note rhythmic motif repeated three times, containing the notes E, D#, and B.  The chord progression underneath this melody is based around A minor, with its 5^th ascending chromatically to the major 6th before descending back to the 5^th.  This creates a progression of A minor, F major, F# diminished, F major, before repeating.  After the jarring and dissonant introduction, the second phrase of melody is significantly less sophisticated, using only the tonic and letting the accompaniment do all of the heavy lifting.  After a brief variation on the introduction melody the second phrase repeats to end the first section.  Following this is some short transitional material, once again making use of the tritone in an A diminished chord.  The B section of the piece alternates between the tonic minor chord and a B7(b5) chord.  Over this section the melody makes use of the natural 6^th that appeared earlier, giving the section a vaguely Dorian sound, while still retaining the tritone.  The last four bars of this section use an ascending chord progression of v bVI bVII V to bring the piece back to the intro, so that it can loop.  Given the length and complexity of this loop, none of the individual parts repeat before looping back to the beginning unlike ‘Those Chosen By The Planet”

            The arrangement on this composition is also significantly more fleshed out than the previous piece.  While ‘Those Chosen” was content to rely on simple horror tropes, the orchestration on “Succession Of Witches” draws from a much older tradition.  The A section is driven by a harpsichord while the melody is provided by a small choir and flute.  Strings flesh out the arrangement further in the transitional material and B section, while horns take the lead melody before the harpsichord returns in the final cadence, easing the transition back to the introduction.  This ensemble, and the way that the parts are arranged, is much closer to the baroque or classical tradition than the filming scoring techniques we’ve seen from Uematsu previously.  This switch in approach is most likely meant to enhance the mood of the game.  Unlike Final Fantasy VII, the setting of Final Fantasy VIII draws a great deal from European architecture and culture, so it no surprise that this same influence would spread to the musical choices from Uematsu.  It’s also important to note the differences in the villains that the two themes represent.  The villain in FFVII is portrayed as horrifically violent and merciless, while the villain of FFVIII is more detached and impersonal.  Given this, the more “refined” style present on “Succession Of Witches” is far more appropriate.

            “Wicked Melody” from Final Fantasy IX (2000) is even more harmonically adventurous.  After a brief but evocative intro in F minor, the piece abruptly adds the chords G major and Ab minor into the progression.  It’s worth noting that what makes both of these chords seem out of place is the inclusion of a B natural, the tritone in the key of F minor.  From here on out the piece cycles through a long series of minor chords, throwing traditional tonal harmony to the wind in favor of raw and unending dissonance.  Because this progression of minor chords contains no real pattern or consistent intervallic relationship, it is next to useless to analyze this piece via the harmonic motion.  Instead the piece is driven by a melodic pattern.  The primary melodic motif is made up of a central note, and its two chromatic neighbors.  After this initial motif, each phrase has a different ending, which determines the overall form.    After the F minor intro, the melody is introduced over an E minor chord.  Similar to “Those Chosen By The Planet”, the melody begins on the 5^th scale degree of this chord, descends to the tritone, and then rises chromatically to the minor 6^th.  This first phrase ends by arpeggiating down the E minor chord, hitting the tritone again, and rising up to Eb.  The next phrase begins a half step lower on D over a G minor, repeats the 5^th, tritone, 6^th motif and then rises to B.  Once again the next repetition of the motif starts a half step lower on Bb above an Eb minor and rises by the same intervals (a perfect 4^th and then a minor 3^rd) to an A.  Here the pattern changes, as the melody drops down to an E, the minor 3^rd of its accompanying C# minor chord and moves through the motif diatonically and rises by thirds.  This change in the melodic contour brings the melody to an unresolved and tense ending.  An 8 bar, four-chord coda brings the loop back to the beginning of the melody, but features no harmonic resolution, making it by far the most unsettling of the themes discussed thus far.

            The instrumentation however, is not as far removed from the previous pieces as the harmonic content.  Like the previous two themes, Uematsu makes heavy use of choir and low piano to establish the chords while a piercing violin plays the melody.  What makes this piece distinctive is the rhythmic ostinato that remains constant for the entire loop.  This thundering militaristic rhythm will be most recognizable to players as a variation on the stomping and clapping pattern on Queen’s “We Will Rock You”, and could be meant to bring images of marching soldiers and other images of fascism to mind.

            While these three pieces are only a small percentage of Uematsu’s vast body of work, they do present an interesting cross section of his approach to a specific requirement of the medium he works in.  Given that players need a motivation to play the game and reach the conclusion of the story, Uematsu’s work helps provide mood and a sense of emotional investment in the events taking place within the game.  Uematsu, when tasked with creating the themes for the games villains, makes repeated use of several distinct techniques.  First, he tends to build the melody of the theme on a small group of notes, typically three notes.  He also tends to emphasize the tritone, both in the melody and the underlying harmony.  Other techniques used in his harmonic vocabulary include dissonant extensions and chords foreign to the pop medium, such as major/minor seventh chords or long strings of non-diatonic minor chords.  His choices for instrumentation mostly rely on traditional orchestral instruments such as strings, pianos, and choir, augmented by the occasional use of timbres unique to the synthesized medium.  While some would argue that the regular use of these elements makes Uematsu a predictable and repetitive composer, I personal believe that it establishes a stylistic cohesion across multiple games in the series, which builds the emotional connection that players have with these techniques, which in turn makes the themes more effective to more experienced players.