Banjo-Tooie With Original Instruments - Isle O' Hags / Overworld

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Musical Analysis: The return to Banjoland is not a pleasant one for the bear and the bird. The tone and atmosphere has shifted, twisted slightly; everything feels more somber, dirtier and larger than life. The game follows the returning protagonists two years later as they attempt to stop the plans of the witch Gruntilda alongside two of her sisters, who intend to vaporize the inhabitants of what turns out to be an island setting. This is not anymore a fairy tale Snow white parody but a world threatening affair. The sequel goes for the bigger, more is more approach; more expansive worlds , more moves, darker and more difficult and, as required, more music. It also has a decidedly more surreal and cynical sense of humor. The witch Gruntilda is now a living pile of bones, Jinjo families go extinct and main characters are seen being killed or converted into living dead. The music for Banjo-Tooie, composed alongside the games Perfect Dark and Donkey Kong 64, is also decided more ominous; Spiral Mountain is no longer a banjo featured bluegrass tune but an elegy for a world that has been lost. The main hub world is the Isle o’Hags, the grander world from which the entirety of Gruntilda’s castle is but just a small part. The track is the direct successor to the Gruntida’s Lair cue, returning with the skipping through the forest oom-pah rhythm with the witchcraft association of the bassoons dating as far back as the piece The Sorceress’ Apprentice and the orchestral bass drum. Yet it sounds decidedly less playful, with composer Grant Kirkhope relying on his disquieting and more mysterious side of his characteristic playfully sinister style. With the mallets gone are also gone their cartoony or childish associations, Isle o’Hags sounding more like an orchestral piece, retaining the playful rhythm but tingeing it with a depressing harmony, melodies and tone; more tenebrous. Jumpy pizzicatos are replaced by their standard strings counterparts and the comical baritone saxophone is no more here. After all, we are against not one but three witches running a killing machine. the song captures the more somber and dirtier tone of Banjo Too, with a word that is still cartoony yet more decadent and polluted. Pretty much what a normally happy world threatened by destruction would sound like. Of course we still rely mostly on the C key with all kinds of modal craziness. The tritone progression is back with a vengeance, appearing not even in its major form but the harsher diminished chord; stuff is bleak indeed. Grant himself feels the music of Banjo-Tooie is more sophisticated, complex and mature. Indeed for the overworld the melody itself is not a question-answer phrase then transposed to a major key as in the original melody of Gruntilda’s Lair but a long form melodic phrase that serves as the basis for various sections, playing and transforming this motif like some classical composers would. The main vamp that opens the hub world is Cm - F#dim with the less playful strings when compared to the pizzicatos of Gruntilda’s Lair. Then we get to the next favorite chord combination for the composer, the bVI giving us the harmonic progression: Cm - F#dim Ab - Ddim G(5)7 The melody playing within the melodic minor and natural minor profile of C for the head and tail respectively plus its tritone note F# following the harmony progression. The entire phrase is then repeated with the clarinet added on top and a small flourish variation on the melody at the end. For the B section it changes to play around with a B diminished profile going from Bm to Ab and then to a Dm; yeah, Banjo-Kazooie did not have such a depressing chord progression. Only Grant Kirkhope could get such a catchy tune out of such dissonant intervals and harmony B section harmony: Bm - Ab - Bm - Dm The melody for the B Section also has the same rhythm profile as the main melody of Gruntilda's Lair from Banjo-Kazooie. But then the shenanigans of going back to a C key in preparation for the A Section reprise take the melody over the the Kirkhope cadence (bII - V - i) which is based around the tritone chord of the dominant or what we could call the secondary tritone of C which would be the zany harmonic language of Grant kirkhope and his Banjo series based around tritones. So we go to the Db to G7 vamp while the melody plays with the harmonic minor tetrachord of the C key until we finally reach the first note of the A section in smooth fashion. Since the Banjo series songs are longer than standard N64 fare like Mario 64 we end up in a revamped A section with more accompaniment. This new A section only repeats the melodic phrase once before going into the C section which plays around with the main motif of the the cue, creating a kind of fugue with the strings and the flute melody which is a more distorted tune than the original that uses the natural minor profile as opposed to the melodic minor. The oom-pah rhythms become more playful and the bassoon starts a walking ostinato yet the harmony, same as in A Section, is relentlessly sinister, creating this uncanny sound of what a normal cartoony happy world would sound twisted. The piece then transposes aggressively the melody one step and a half to what could be now deemed an Eb Lydian profile by way of the Bb major chord. The rate of chord changes also slows down, maintaining a Eb now major chord and then Bm alongside its respective B Aeolian/Minor profile for longer. The same melody has a different flavour due to being now on top of a major chord and it is cut short in order to reach its tail faster, which is a variation of the original tail from A Section. Then we get one last B section in its original key which connects us back to the beginning. The melody is now played by the strings while the flutes play what was the string accompaniment. As the responsables for the low end of the piece, tubas limit themselves to playing the standard muddy-less root plus fifth of chords. tthe justaposition between playful rhythms and sinister harmony is what makes the Banjo music have this uncanny tone. As Banjo-Tooie was a larger game than its predecessor, Kirkhope had twice the memory space in the game's cartridge for sound effects and music, allowing him to create even more variations of his dynamic scores. Like the game's predecessor, the themes heard in the game were designed to be interactive, which dynamically change to reflect the player's location. His favorite cue for the game was the one for Atlantis, another pretty underwater level. ♫ Support the Channel: www.buymeacoffee.com/musictracks ♫ Media files, requests and support for future interactive tools: bit.ly/officialmusictracksmedia Or join as a member Thanks to Juke for getting the original MIDI files for Banjo-Tooie

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Banjo-Kazooie Musical influences: The bear and the bird. The ones that managed to stand shoulder to shoulder with the plumber for a while. “I look for the odd note” That is it. The man himself in the fewest words possible tells it like it is and what is at the core of his style. This is why a game with fluffy animals and google eyed objects does not sound like your typical morning cartoon fable and rather like the twisted-circus music gone wrong we all associate with the Banjo-Kazooie series and Rareware as a whole; cheerful and oddly sinister at the same time, a style that is adapted to the humor and vibe of the wacky worlds. The quirkily dark genre. So what is meant by the wrong note? Well, a lot of things and a lot of notes, and even chords figure on all of this (hint: tritones galore-what British musicians deem Indonesian folk music-harmony, melody, does not matter. Shove them in whenever you can). This music surely does not fit into the standard, basic major/minor harmony. And this is not due to some advanced music theory from the part of the composer or specialized music techniques. It all comes down to…looking for the off note, or the odd chord (of course you shall not forget the oom pah rhythms under any circumstances). So what is behind it? better to dig into some tunes and what could be the precedents to these stylistic choices. And bring your tuba and a healthy amount of tuned percussion while you are at it. The music of Banjo-Kazzoie among other hits from British studio Rareware comes from Scottish composer Grant kirkhope, who had been working at the company for a short while when the call to musicalize his first full game for the Nintendo 64 happened. It was a huge change of pace since at the time he was working on the landmark title Goldeneye 007 when he was abruptly moved to work on a project that started life as a SNES game dubbed Project Dream, a pirate themed RPG that slowly and for various reasons ended up becoming the first in the Banjo series. The project initially had composer David Wise of Donkey kong Country fame on board-Wise personally did the job interview when Kirkhope was joining Rare- but when the studio needed him to work on the upcoming Diddy Kong Racing then it was Grant alone, for both music and sound design. The zany, twisted Hanna-Barbera that never was sound of Banjo-Kazooie has various lines of reference. The first would be of course the composer’s background and environment, with Grant being raised in North Yorkshire, England by his mother who was a music hall dancer and his father who introduced him to big band music and exposed him to early influences such as Frank Sinatra and Dixieland jazz. The knack for brass part writing comes from Grant being a classically trained trumpet player. Grant also belongs to the old school of having to make a memorable melody due to not being able to hide behind big, epic orchestration and production values. “So you’ve got to make sure the music’s not repetitive and getting on the player’s nerves, and make it likeable. It’s a hard task. I remember when I first worked at Rare, Tim Stamper and Gregg Mayles constantly trooped out the Mario themes and said ‘these tunes can play for three hours and you don’t get bored of it.’ You’ve got to do that, and it was hammered home day after day, so we had to learn that skill or get fired!” The core and basics of the sound we find on the game comes from Banjo, initially the only protagonist, being himself a bear. The main hub world of the game (Gruntilda's Lair) is a song with a melody based around the well known 1907 song Teddy Bears' Picnic from American composer John Walter Bratton and lyrics added in 1932 by Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy. It remains very popular in the United Kingdom as a children's song. kzbin.info/www/bejne/monPlaV_i9mFiK8 The song has gained a slightly sinister aura-the style being a prototype for like every Disney villain song-and the main ingredients are there, specially the oom-pah rhythm, the kind of rhythm that fits with stories of witches and other Halloween standards due to these rhythms being popular all across the Germanosphere in the form of Alpine music, where this folklore was prevalent (everyone became increasingly obsessed with witches following the reformation after all). The artistic movement know as German expressionism’s also the main influence of every horror and gothic trope in media today; and relevant since the poster child of gothic imagery, Tim Burton, Shares a key component with the Banjo-Kazooie series. However, the origins of the characteristic Banjo sound might come from far back, both for Grant and in general. There is also the low, bombastic and heavy music that Grant could have absorbed during his brass training and by his very first work at Rare: to convert and arrange the entire score of Donkey Kong Country 2 from the SNES to the Game Boy. Since for this score composer David Wise was inspired by the dark influence of Russian romantic composers like Sergei Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky due to the darker direction and environments the game took compared to Donkey Kong Country 1 kzbin.info/www/bejne/aYiagXVpZax-rMk Grant KIrkhope had to input note by note of this score into the Game Boy so something should have sticked kzbin.info/www/bejne/rYuxYmOjl5doldE Ostinatos, glockenspiel and very very low notes and strong emphasis kind of sad, melodies. are we fighting the Kremlin or the kremlings? The same team from Donkey kong Country 2 continued to work in another project. Perhaps the pirate theme which was the direction the project that eventually became Banjo-Kazooie was originally having made them turn to the same influences David Wise had with Donkey Kong Country 2 which was also pirate themed. kzbin.info/www/bejne/q3bEc6Kli9uIrs0 So in practice, the oom-pah DNA of the Banjo-kazooie series might have entered by way of being originally a pirate game-oom-pahs are ideal to imitate the wave movement of boats in media and are standard in polka music. Lots of themes from the game originated in that project after all. Turns out that when you grow up in a very cold environment under political turmoil, harsh conditions and being seen as the political enemy of the country with the strongest visual media industry, your music inevitably gains the cultural connotations of being sinister. Prokofiev specially has a distinctive style that fits right there in any Rare game. His symphonic fairy tale for children Peter and the Wolf serves as a model for both the light side and heavy side of Banjo-Kazooie music. kzbin.info/www/bejne/maXWiJeLlq2mfq8 And here we have Prokofiev writing final boss battle music before it was even a thing: kzbin.info/www/bejne/mHPWfKOil5d4bLM kzbin.info/www/bejne/i2ish2aohNt4h9U Nothing like the Russian style for that mysterious fairytale vibe Though Russian style music remains a key component in the series nonetheless it might have entered the picture most likely by way of another composer influence. The final jiggy of the puzzle would not come until later. Holywood is usually a good source of inspiration for younger visual media, specially for Grant Kirkhope who is a big fan of film scoring. Having composed the forest theme of Click Clock Wood and the first levels for the game, Grant felt there was a certain edge missing. Enter Danny Elfman, the skewed fairytale composer. Having listened to the orchestral scores for films like Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and Batman, defining landmarks of the Tim Burton gothic fantasy style, Grant realized that the wacky worlds, characters and witch thematic would benefit from Elfman’s touch and his trademarked tritone. A composer who honed his characteristic style by traveling with kind of an actual circus troupe in France and then developed his eccentric circus touch with the film Pee Wee’s Big Adventure; a perfect match was born. kzbin.info/www/bejne/Z4m5dISGhaarbrs Also an immense influence in the superhero genre kzbin.info/www/bejne/j6DEhmahh6upgsk Danny was of course heavily inspired by Russian romantic composers, the biggest influence being, you guessed, Sergei Prokofiev; he himself has some slavic blood. But before being a music fan he was a movie fan and enjoyed seeing all kinds of mystery, sci-fi and horror flicks. The most important ingredient in his music, the use of the tritone-as displayed in all his glory on The Simpsons theme song- is likely born out of the love he has for these films, especially the classic output of Alfred Hitchcock alongside his main composer collaborator Bernard Herrman, the kingpin of offbeat film music. One of Herrmann’s stylistic devices is tritone usage. You see and hear this in many scores. One of his most oft-used tritone intervals is C to F# (augmented 4th) seen in many Hitchcock cues. But just like with Donkey Kong Country 2, it all goes full circle to bring us back to the motherland and the bombastic compositions of Prokofiev since Herrman had that sense of old-style Russian orchestration that engaged in economical yet colorful textures. kzbin.info/www/bejne/mKSTqpeDgK50adU ♫ Support the Channel: www.buymeacoffee.com/musictracks ♫ Media files and support for future interactive tools (Patreon): bit.ly/officialmusictracksmedia

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Just like Walt Disney has its Silly Symphonies, Warner Bros their Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes, the Fleischer the Car-Tunes and MGM its Happy Harmonies series, Rareware presents us with the modern update on classic cartoons in the modern medium of video games in the form their own Banjo and Kazooie series, alongside its own musical connections thanks to the zany cartoon orchestra Grant kirkhope brings to the picture-Not to mention its own opening musical number, plus no-reason-for-existing musical note symbols spread throughout the levels that only cement the importance of music for the project. The alliterative names, the googly eyes on everything, the outlandish, irreverent humor, the sound effects, the Banjo-Kazooie series wears its golden age of animation influences on its sleeve. It was inevitable that the music would also take some cues from it. Unlike golden age cartoons, however, mickey mousing is usually not an option in a video game; nonetheless, its spirit, sensibilities and instruments remain part of the fabric and charm of the game. As the earliest level, Mumbo’s Mountain served as the testground for the sound of the game and a small step towards the definitive musical direction of the series, hence why the original theme from this level was replaced by the end of development. In the Western animation canon, comedy, cartoons and music became inseparable thanks to the American companies that popularized the medium in the early 30s and the vaudeville culture that served as a great source of inspiration for the gags. These companies began to make their mark in the silent era of film where, deprived of dialogue, visual comedy was easier to get across than narrative drama. Many composers also came from the era before synchronized sound was developed and brought their improvisational style-where the lines between score and sound effects were totally blurred-to the new booming medium of animation. And what anyone has in mind when they think of cartoon music is, nine of ten times, the kaleidoscopic scores beating at the heart of the classic cartoons produced under the aegis of Walt Disney and Warner Bros. Studios courtesy of visionary composer and arranger Carl Stalling; in his world, melody, style, and form crashed together in a wacky pile-up of sound and image, making use of any stye available to convey the gags: jazz, orchestra, popular and beyond to the limits of avant-garde. Call Stalling along with his peers like Scott Bradley have introduced countless generations to music they would probably never have heard otherwise. No better distillation of the Carl Stalling essence was made than in the score for the love letter to the golden age of animation, the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit project: kzbin.info/www/bejne/ppC3i4Gtqcemqc0 Famous film composer John Williams also crafted his own homage to the iconic style of Carl stalling: kzbin.info/www/bejne/r4PceKF9mtCJeJY Mallets at the centerpiece of telegraphing character movements, whimsical bassoons and trombones, light woodwinds and heavy brass, rapid sliding notes; Grant Kirkhope makes use of them all to aid the eccentric world inhabited by the bear and the bird named after musical instruments; the mascots of this brand new interactive show. ♫ Support the Channel: www.buymeacoffee.com/musictracks ♫ Media files and support for future interactive tools (Patreon): bit.ly/officialmusictracksmedia

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Origins of the Bear, The Bird and the Witch: As stated, the music from the Mad Monster Mansion level went on to influence the musical direction of the rest of the series, overhauling many of the already completed tracks that sounded more in line with typical mascot plattformer fare, most likely thanks to the association Grant Kirkhope and the Rare team made between the Halloween/horror motif and what came to be the main villain of the series, the evil witch Gruntilda straight from European fairy tales. But how does a witch end up as the ultimate foil to a bear and a bird in the first place? Perhaps some obscure cartoon influence or tradition? The Wizard of Oz? Not quite. The answer resides in the character of Kazooie, whose origin becomes the missing link between Banjo, the bear and Grunty, the witch. It is well known that during development the game known as Project Dream went through multiple concepts, featuring different protagonists until the team finally settled into a bear; it went from a generic human being to his pet dog when the director at Rare wanted a more memorable main character, then to a short lived bunny. When the cool bear finally appeared into the picture Kazooie was nowhere to be found, not even when Banjo debuted in the game Diddy Kong Racing. Banjo just had a backpack to put all the things from his adventure inside and that was it. As in other examples from video games, it wasn’t narrative considerations, neither the need for a friend for the lonely bear what brought to life the bird, it was good ol’ pesky gameplay considerations. Somebody at Rare just wanted for Banjo to perform a double jump and all the animations for it looked weird and unconvincing. So they decided to make it even more weird and unconvincing by making wings pop out from his backpack to give him a lift. Eventually, the team added other abilities like long feet also appearing to give a speed boost, the natural conclusion being that another character just lived there and a design and a personality was needed. The British masterminds went looking for inspiration and found it right in real life. They realized Banjo was not the only creature condemned to be joined forever with an annoying, violent feathered companion. Kazooie was inspired by real life events telling of a man in Britain who biologically attached a bird to himself, creating an hybrid abomination that caused havoc and disaster wherever he went, engendering fear to those who put their sight on them…….Well, not quite as dramatic, just the Halloween spirit sinking in. In reality it was just the popular work of British entertainer and comedian Rod Hull what brought to fruition all the ensuing events. Famous across the United Kingdom thanks to his television appearances throughout the 70s and 80s, Rod Hull shtick was bringing his mute, insolent and highly aggressive arm-length puppet named Emu, modelled on the Australian bird of the same name. They went together everywhere, creating a kind of gleeful havoc, the bird infamously assaulting everything and everyone wether provoked or unprovoked. During these events Hull, playing the sane man in the relationship, would make half-hearted attempts to pull the bird away from its victim but would often become embroiled in the fracas, rolling around on the floor and creating theatrical mayhem. kzbin.info/www/bejne/iJrNamt_etmflac There were apparently no boundaries to Emu's outrageous behaviour, with even queen Elizabeth suffering the mischief of the bird. The design, species and impertinent traits of Kazooie were modeled on those of Emu. The character gained such popularity that eventually the BBC gave it its own television series, Emu's Broadcasting Company. Subsequently, The duo moved to other networks in the 1980s, where a succession of children shows were produced, developing the lore of the ongoing rivalry between Emu and Grotbags. Starring as the main antagonist since the show Emu’s World debuted, Grotbags was the evil green witch whose only objective was to torment poor Emu. Every episode consisted of Grotbags hatching a plan to get hold of Emu. In getting Emu Grotbags believed she would be able to rule the world. She spent her time carrying out these plans, which would always fail, as well as hitting her assistant, Croc whenever he annoyed her. Here you can watch a little bit of the interaction between them on the show kzbin.info/www/bejne/r2Wkh4mKj9-kjtU Kids in the UK grew up watching the shenanigans of Emu and the rest of the gang, in similar vein to shows like Sesame Street; there were also cartoon shows produced with the characters. Those same kids then went on to develop the video game Banjo-Kazooie, where the influences blossomed giving us the the trio of the bear, the bird and the witch. So that settles that Kazooie is not meant to be any ostrich, she is an emu. And if you are wondering what emu eggs look like in real life, Here are some of them: www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFuckingLit/comments/d7922z/emu_eggs/ ♫ Support the Channel: www.buymeacoffee.com/musictracks ♫ Media files, requests and support for future interactive tools: bit.ly/officialmusictracksmedia Or join as a member

[@JukeDenton]

Thanks for the shoutout! But I’m surprised you’re starting out of order with the songs from Banjo-Tooie.

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they have been really useful even if there are many more tracks for the Banjo Tooie ones since every dynamic change for the levels is apparently there. Well, i have been cherry picking specific tracks from various games, trying to get out famous ones from them. otherwise we would spend a lot of time on a single game, specially since Banjo Tooie is even bigger than the first one. But more tracks from Banjo-Tooie are surely to come

[@JukeDenton]

@ I see. What about Jet Force Gemini? I could send you some MIDIs from that game too.

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@@JukeDenton that might be interesting. I was about to play that game on the switch since i never got to play it originally so i dont know about its music yet. But if there are tracks that you consider good let me know

[@JukeDenton]

@ Jet Force Gemini has arguably the best soundtrack on the N64. Me personally, I think it surpasses the Zelda, Banjo-Kazooie and Mario games on the console in terms of music, but that’s more of a personal bias. All I can say is, the controls take a little getting used to and the second half of the game can be very grueling if you don’t know what you’re doing.

[@NekoCat-lr9bg]

Could you do Jolly Roger's Lagoon?

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i will be covering some more levels from Banjo-Tooie. will check if that is available and easy to deconstruct