CvSotN Final Toccata, attempt at harmonic analysis

I try to highlight how some of the stranger (and quite evil-sounding!) chord progressions work in Michiru Yamane's Castlevania: Symphony of the Night track "The Final Toccata". It's got some pretty outlandish and crazy chord progressions, and I try to explain them using local tonality (and only by playing things on the piano, as opposed to explaining things verbally since I didn't feel like it).

Some of the little times I break, I do it to illustrate something, such as my playing an F minor scale to show that the local tonality at that point in the music is explainable by being in F minor.

Yamane seems to go between EXTREMELY distant keys by using various voice-leading tricks, but that still fails to completely explain how this most evil track in the entire SotN soundtrack sounds so overwhelmingly blooming with evil baroque-ish grandeur (like a grand evil parody in 5/4 of a Bach-style work).

Please send me messages or video responses if you can think up better ways of explaining the harmonic relations.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• castlevania
• symphony
• of
• the
• night
• sotn
• final
• toccata
• harmony
• harmonic
• analysis
• music
• theory
• strange
• chord
• progressions

[Symph909]

Hey now that I read the info on the right, I was wondering, do you know other songs with this type of evil, twisted feeling the melodies? Not as in if you know how to play them, just names to start looking, can be old classic stuff or even from weird unknown soundtracks, I don't mind as long as it's got that flavor and it's good.

Thought you might know some.

[GlennMagusHarvey]

@Symph909 Hm, I'm not sure if I do.

Try "Nightmare" from Castlevania III (or Castlevania: Circle of the Moon), or the Marx battle theme from Kirby Super Star for a somewhat less dark version. Or any of Giygas's battle themes in Earthbound (or the Ran Ran Ru version, but that really relies on its visuals to make it scary).

The Flame Dragons battle theme from Golden Sun might also be worth checking out, as well as a few other themes from those two games.

Playful: Colorman area from MMBN?

[Techra]

it would be nice if you explained (in voice) what it is so that lay people could understand-ish. i can't tell the original song in any way from these random key presses!

[GlennMagusHarvey]

Hmm, you're right, I should probably have done something like that.

I'm actually not really sure why I uploaded this video anymore...

[hodarpolla]

are you crazy?!!

this is not final toccata never...

[GlennMagusHarvey]

It was a crappy video for me to upload, yes. I probably shouldn't have uploaded it.

But no, I wasn't trying to actually play the piece; only merely to highlight it's very interesting harmonic patterns.

[IUSB99]

you might get a chuckle out of my video response. I analyzed a 3-minute accompaniment to a silent film clip. analysis is fun!

[rotsenon]

Agree with the things you say in the description, well, she studied at a conservatory for several years, and had lessons on cembalo, you can expect her to be really good at fooling our ears with music mastering :)... Cheers, nice video.

[ngomez0077]

Cool little jam session you got going on there, Glenn.

[CielBlanche]

Because it's awesome

[Verdegrand]

Videos like these are indeed highly appreciated!

[ernestomiguel]

" this most evil track in the entire SotN soundtrack sounds so overwhelmingly blooming "... > mAn good job!... ;) keep it up!