One of the best video game songs I’ve heard in a while, and it’s one of the standard battle themes. I don’t need to say how unusual its usage is, given how carefree and playful it sounds, and what even the video game layman’s idea of what battle music should sound like. After doing some digging in Youtube comments sections and visiting a few wikis, I found out this is not a boss battle theme but the standard battle theme that plays after a certain point in the game. The original battle theme, “End of Hibernation,” is no less upbeat.
“Grain Rain, Wheat Wind” is played after an NPC, Empel Vollmer, joins your party as a playable character, rather late in the game’s timeline. He’s involved early on in the story as an ally, but he joins your party after you construct a prosthetic arm for him. It probably makes more sense if you know the story, which I do not. I don’t think this new battle music is a reward so much for unlocking Vollmer but for unlocking all of the characters—he is the last one. Even though the theme is played a lot, it can get buried under character dialogue and sound effects during battle. I get why that dialogue is important for world-building, but heavens it can go overboard sometimes.
There’s a little bit of a trickiness to the song structure that I think I figured out. This is unorthodox structure notation but it gets my point across. The first parenthetical is the initial sequence because Di and Ai are introductory versions of the chorus and verse that aren’t played again. The second parenthetical is the standard, repeated sequence:
(Di Ai A2 B C D) -> (A1 A2 B C D repeat)
A1 is the guitar-lead verse, where where A2 is another verse but lead by the flute. and in double-time. D is the chorus with the bagpipes. B and C are the real fascinating parts in terms of song dynamics. B is in the pre-chorus slot and it acts like it: it’s a bit quieter and has a nice snare roll crescendo into C, but C isn’t the chorus. C keeps your ear elevated to where B lifted you, but the transition into the D chorus is more of a little drop and a resolution right at its beginning. Usually, the chorus is the part where (1) your ear is higher up and (2) it doesn’t get resolved until end, but here the (1) task is set in the weird intermediary C part between the pre-chorus and the chorus, and the resolution is at the beginning of the chorus.
Listen below or load the mp3 of “Grain Rain, Wheat Wind” in a new tab/window.
1 Comment
There’s no accounting for taste, and mine is probably way out of the mainstream. Frankly, hearing this as part of game clip ruins it for me. It’s not bad as upbeat generic music, but it doesn’t seem to fit the game sequences at all.