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Castle esque music? Posted: 2013-09-05 18:16 (Last Edited: 2013-09-05 20:35)

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za909

Member for: 5371 days
Location: Hungary
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#51091

Hey people! I'm hoping someone can help me out on this one, because I was asked to make something for a castle stage in a game, and I'm pretty much stuck. It's supposed to sound evil, and nothing I came up with sounds like that.
Which keys, chords, and time signatures are typically used in Castle music in games like Yoshi's Island for example and Paper Mario?
Seemingly most of what I've listened to for inspiration had notes that are not part of any chord in their supposed key, so do they go "out of the boundaries" for one or two notes, or do they just use a modulation technique for a few notes?

Posted: 2013-09-05 21:04 (Last Edited: 2013-09-05 21:09)

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DalekSam

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Member for: 5689 days
Location: United Kingdom, Belfast
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#51093

Oooh!

When I make evil sounding music, I stick to keys like Eb and D, as for scales, I alternate between the minor and phrygian mode scales mid song depending on what I want.

...that comes from writing heavy metal for a few years, though. Might not be super applicable for castle music, but metal commonly goes out of scale as long as it suits what else is there. If you want to be more strict on keeping a scale throughout the piece, D or Eb phrygian is where I'd start.

From an example from my own catalogue, I think the section starting from 2:14 in this piece is fairly dark and evil sounding, but it might not be the sort of thing you're really after, so feel free to disregard this post.

Posted: 2013-09-06 04:45 (Last Edited: 2013-09-06 04:45)

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TechEmporium

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#51104

DalekSam wrote:

When I make evil sounding music, I stick to keys like Eb and D, as for scales, I alternate between the minor and phrygian mode scales mid song depending on what I want.

...that comes from writing heavy metal for a few years, though. Might not be super applicable for castle music, but metal commonly goes out of scale as long as it suits what else is there.

Actually, heavy metal isn't alone in this. Most songs that try to depict something dark or evil purposely use discordious notes (& Phygian mode scales are one of the ways, another of which is just placing a random sharp/flat/natural notes that's not part of the scale). Another feature of such songs is that multiple channels may be deliberately made to conflict with each other, yet have volume settings adjusted so as to not come off too strong.

But lastly, many of these songs have an authoritarian tone that contains some elements of discord, like this:

http://youtu.be/SmJLa-RFplw?t=1m38s

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