#ash.mp3

The Game Boy sequel is much weirder, with frequently changing time signatures, no apparent keys, and intentionally discordant intervals. The Metroid battle theme cuts off the phrase halfway through at seemingly random, so it makes it seem like game glitched and skipped 2 beats, but the fights demand so much attention you can’t figure out the pattern to it. The Chozo Ruins theme alone drove me nuts, because despite not being catchy at all it became stuck in my head, especially with that echo across 3 octaves.

Super Metroid’s soundtrack is perhaps the highlight of the entire series. Samus Aran’s theme, which would appear across many titles, is so darkly triumphant, a perfect motif. The ambience of many of the “safe” rooms sounds like nothing you would ever hear on earth. Ridley’s theme is in 5|4, with the mission impossible style “2 long beats, 2 fast beats” that makes it seem like the track is speeding up halfway through each measure then laying off the gas again, which makes for a frantic fight. The “item obtained” jingle is as memorable as Zelda’s, but darker.

Metroid Dread, the most recent Metroid game, has some great themes as well, like Ferenia’s theme, where the bass and left hand piano eventually become deliciously out of sync, and it carries the tradition of ominous ambience and tense battle music, but I truly think the prime trilogy nailed the sound design in particular. Everything - from your footsteps, to the creature noises, to the charging of your power beam, to the scanning noise or static, sounds exactly the way it should. And the music itself is so damn good. Honestly, I think Magmoor Caverns is perfection. It’s a revamp of Norfair from Super Metroid, using the Phrygian scale (yum!), dramatic chanting, and it just keeps building up, and up…

Open with a low quality recording of a voicemail left by your ex girlfriend

Sing deliberately out of key about something extremely personal but vague enough that without context it sounds like nonsense

Add a 7th to every chord you play

End with the entire band chanting out of key and slightly out of sync with each other, one member should be screaming the words instead of singing

Make the cover to the single be a photo of one of the members as a child with horrible lighting

Then out of nowhere he says “have you heard of this alt rock band called Hawthorne Heights? I listened to them a lot in the early ‘00’s they were great. I could never find music that sounded like them though.”

Hawthorne fucking heights. one of THE emo bands of all time. This whole time he thought that emo was just Fall Out Boy….

And that’s without factoring in hardware limitations! Only having so many sound channels on 8-bit platforms meant that chords (which require a minimum of 3 channels, which many only had 4) had to be played by very quickly alternating one channel between 2 notes to make it sound like 3 notes are playing at once, or just forgoing traditional chords altogether. That’s why a lot of retro game music uses counterpoint - multiple contrasting melodies - to add color to the compositions and imply chords. They didn’t really have many other options.