While I've done combat music before, I never quite made one for an RPG-esque kind of thing so I wanted to have fun for this one.

As I was given more or less complete creative freedom with shaping the OST, I wanted a battle theme that didn't sound like battle theme but IS a battle theme if you get what I mean. There's no sense of "imminent danger" there's no feeling of losing. I wanted it to feel like something was just "in the way" and you gotta deal with it.

First things first is to steal from Final Fantasy :P

It's probably a very common thing in music to have a vamp from your I minor chord into a bVII chord. My first exposure to this musical idea is from Final Fantasy 9s battle theme where you can hear the bass just doing that. Upon buying a copy of Theatrerhythm, I noticed that most of the battle themes follow this same principle.

At a surface level it sounds about right, the minor key sets a serious tone while the bVII drives the excitement up so it's a no brainer to gain that same effect. Since I wrote the main theme of this game (Talking Book) in Bb minor I did the same and started to build off there. Bbm > AbM easy.

The melody is also lifted from the main theme with the second melody that gets layered in about half way through. All of a sudden I had... something cohesive...

I think I arbitrarily chose a 6/8 time signature. This random decision actually added a bit more spice. As I was putting together the bass and guitar I felt like I needed to break that rule of no modern stuff so I also just added in a drumset. Literally my second song in and I already broke the promise I made to the devs ahahaha. To be fair I could have used more traditional percussion to fit that folk-y style but nahhhh I want that GROOVE.

I now had more or less an A section but now a question was how to make a B section. The arpeggio of the piano (which I guess is the melody) was just me trying to figure out how to add a bit more texture. Following the chromatic bass movement I still felt like something was missing. Now, it was alittle late at night by this time and I was a bit sleepy. I don't recommend doing work when you're in this state but somehow it led to me just lopping off a beat during this part and making it 5/8. I dunno it just sounded right.

I'm really proud of the B section just because it sounds so good and unlike anything I've made before. The combination of it's elements really make me just go "Damn I'm good". Anything that leads to positive reinforcement towards my own perception of my art is a win in my book.

Aside from trying to big brain my chords to loop back to Bbm I can't think of anything else about this piece. I feel that because I don't have a decent solo double bass and cello patch the low end sounds a bit too thick. The synth is a bit buried too but that was a last addition to keep that "magic synth" element from the main theme.

I think I'm just happy with it. Strange to say since I made it but if you've also read some of my other descriptions you can probably figure out why I feel it's so strange.

I recieved a lot of good reception from my friends which I'm grateful for but it's also another reminder that maybe I've gotten complacent. I'm not trying anything new and so when something like this pops up with a few new ideas it feels like I need to actually start going out of my comfort zone more. Baby steps... this project was already weird to begin so I remind myself writing this description.

Anyway thanks for reading as always :P