![banjo kazooie rom freezes every few seconds banjo kazooie rom freezes every few seconds](https://i.redd.it/xp85sdnavj181.jpg)
![banjo kazooie rom freezes every few seconds banjo kazooie rom freezes every few seconds](https://img.game-news24.com/2021/11/Speedrunner-beats-Pokxc3xa9mon-Shining-Pearl-In-Under-51-seconds.jpeg)
And when a composer like Grant has a distinct style he's going to use similar "strategies" a lot of the time. There's a finite amount of combinations of notes that composers can use when they're traveling from one chord to the next, while still "sounding good" or at least sensible and harmonious. They're not even subconscious references. Small musical phrases that share the same general shape. You could analyze every western song in history and find literally a billion of these examples. If you were to transcribe them they wouldn't be identical. The chords and rhythms are all different. Even when these phrases are completely isolated, they honestly still sound pretty different. I never made any of these connections because in the context of the songs they don't sound even remotely alike (at least to me gotta say I'm impressed you picked up on all these).
![banjo kazooie rom freezes every few seconds banjo kazooie rom freezes every few seconds](https://www.romulation.org/media/img/screenshots/N64/5797/se82ae1d6763a180a9769cbed1e314fd0.jpg)
This is part of why nothing from Yooka-Laylee's soundtrack really grabbed me, all I ever hear in post-N64 Kirkhope tracks is bits of previous ones (Tribalstack Tropics is totally just Hailfire Peaks again).Īll those examples have the same general shape but they're not the same notes. The most interesting part of LOGBOX by far is the robot voice at the end, but that's again just repeating the same part as before but in vocals now.īut wait, there's about as much of Fungi Forest in there too ( "Stop n Swop on 360"). Whereas Frantic Factory is a much longer composition if we're just measuring how many unique phrases or whatever it has in it, there's certainly more a sense of progression or motion, storytelling or conveying emotion through music or whatever. It kind of just repeats a bunch of times, and gets overtaken by Grunty's theme occasionally. Brian Wilson wanted a song that was a carrot, hell yeah I want a song that's a dinosaur!Īnd then the melody in LOGBOX kind of doesn't really go anywhere, nor does it have any ideas that weren't already in Frantic Factory (so in that sense, I suppose it is accurate to say it's just Frantic Factory). I live for that shit, program music for life. I love that an insanely ponderous tuba is used to convey dinosaurs, or hi hats used for factory machinery. One thing I tend to miss in latter day Kirkhope music is that it doesn't mimic or embody or outright incorporate its environment nearly as much. While they both have cool openings, Frantic Factory continues to integrate the music box into the music much more directly and effectively than the arcade sounds in LOGBOX. I think Frantic Factory is the far more interesting of the two, though. For DK, he attempted to be more ambient, for Banjo, he went off-kilter. I suspect this difference is characteristic of the difference in Kirkhope's approach to the two series. The next part is very similar in both as well, I'm pretty sure they both repeat the section but just raise the last note, which is barely noticeable in Factory but is definitely felt in LOGBOX. The end result is that Frantic Factory is more moody, tragic sounding I suppose, and LOGBOX is more tense. I think the final note is a higher one in LOGBOX instead of a lower one like in Frantic Factory. There's sort of the first five notes of Frantic Factory's melody in LOGBOX ( "Welcome to my world"), or more accurately, of the Mad Jack version, which doesn't hold the first note and sounds different as a result. I don't remember what it was, exactly, but I recall hearing he sort of picks two interesting points and fills in the space between them or something like that. I think probably because he writes melodies in a particular way. For all I know those last two could have been totally intentional. Like, in all of David Wise's work, I've heard a couple small bits from Tropical Freeze in Tengami, six notes of Hot Top Volcano in Triple Trouble, and six notes of Ancient Lake in High Tide Ride. I have to admit it drives me crazy sometimes. I would be going through one song in my head and keep ending up in another and getting confused. Listen to these for a few seconds each one after the other.