Ballad of the Wind Fish - 12/05/14 - 15:47. (FMP)

Recently I began working on music, that was inspired from the actual Original Sound Track's of Zelda Games. Such as A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, Link's Awakening, and Majora's Mask. Over the course of study, I have learned much more about how the Gaming Music Industry has inspired my work over the last few years.

Firstly I began writing pieces based on ideas, from various sources in games, e.g. Fallout and Silent Hill which I spoke about in my last two blog posts.

This lead to me writing and thinking about Music in a different way, growing up listening to my gaming Idol Koji Kondo.

Last Night (1l/05/14) - I began working on a Piece inspired by a song called Ballad of the Wind Fish (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPWEJMGxTBs)

This piece was written in the key of D Major. Which followed a simple set of arpeggio's and inverted strings (Which where changed to Synthesized Pads's in the Ableton Demo.) which heavy focus on Choirs and Piano's to retain a similar feel to the original I based it off.

   Figure 1: Link's Awakening.

https://soundcloud.com/jamesandrewharrisgrant/zelda-demo-1-ballad-of-the-wind-fish - A piece Based on Ballad of the Wind Fish from Link's Awakening. Made in Ableton Live 8.

(www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPWEJMGxTBs (remade by Fox Amoore.) This was the version I decided to base my original interpretation from.

This piece was developed in consideration with my musical performance. This was inspired by Koji Kondo's piece of music called Ballad of the Wind Fish from a Legend of Zelda game. This work is a piece that I wrote as a basic string demo in D Major.

This arrangement is created to have that video game feel, and will be adapted using soundfonts from Ocarina of Time and A Link to the Past. This was also created using chord inversions, and seventh chords. This is to provide a more original and authentic sound, that is desired by the modding community overall.

The song, is 2 minutes and 20 seconds long, featuring heavy focus on choirs and pianos.

 I deem this song suitable for performance, as it can be easily adapted to be made longer, to fit the timings of the Ableton Live performance.

This song is a piece that I like, in terms of sound quality and mood, it delivers and carries the tone and mood how I intended when I created it originally, however I feel there is greater improvements required, as I need to provide more instruments and continuity within the song.

 I want to add more instruments to provide more depth to the song as there is a lot of vague/empty sound area's as the song transitions, I am also wanting add a greater sense of continuity so I can make it sound more straight forward for indie game development. Though I am planning on fully developing this for use within the Zelda modding community.

This song was wrote in a recording session in which I had planned to film myself coming up with the idea, and playing it on a piano. The session was planned for 10:30 AM and I had to bring a note book, a Video Camera. 

The session went ahead as planned, and I wrote this piece in under 50 minutes, then began work on digitizing it, through Cubase 5.

-James.