Noteworthy: The Music that Influenced The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Koji Kondo built Ocarina of Time’s score from five ocarina buttons, Gregorian chant, Baroque cadences, jazz planing and a borrowed Ravel ostinato.
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time from 1998 was the first game in the series to simulate musical performance. Once Link acquires an ocarina—a small wind instrument—the player can perform songs by tapping out a five-to-eight-note melody, which I’ll call the trigger motive, on the controller. Playing it correctly causes the game to complete the tune, adding in what I’ll call the answer motive.
Because the ocarina is played with just five buttons, all of the trigger motives use a severely limited palette. “I had to create all of those memorable tunes with only five tones of the classic do-re-mi scale,” composer Koji Kondo told Nintendo Power in a 2005 interview. (Those tones are D, F, A, B, and D an octave above.) “Since each of those songs, like ‘Zelda’s Lullaby’ or ‘Epona’s Song,’ had a particular theme, it was quite challenging.” Kondo drew on a wide range of influences to disguise the restriction, bringing remarkable variety and compositional creativity to the score.
