Composer: Soma Tanizaki
Arrangement: Moonlapse
Sheets: musescore.com/user/37002291/scores/22187335?share=copy_link
"Don’t you dare approach Miquella the Kind. Needle Knight Leda, Dryleaf Dane, and our allies… will never allow this."
Hi everyone! I'm back with my 4th Shadow of the Erdtree arrangement. This was one of the most impactful and memorable tracks from the DLC for me, and I knew during the fight that I would eventually end up doing a cover at some point. I think what stands out about this track is specifically how it differs from our expectations regarding Elden Ring's music, and especially from From Software's earlier soundtracks like Dark Souls and Bloodborne. In particular, it is much more uplifting, hopeful, and conventionally beautiful compared to a lot of the dark fantasy music we expect. In the music theory breakdown (which is pinned in the comments), I will dive in further detail into the specific harmonic qualities of the track that create this disparity, if you are into that kind of thing. This is also the first track I've seen by Soma Tanizaki, and their unique arrangement and melody style also contributed to how 'out of place' but also 'just right' this soundtrack ended up being. I really appreciate them taking a creative risk with the tone of this fight and its soundtrack.
I also thought it was wonderfully challenging and probably took me over 5 hours to beat, so I ended up hearing this song a whole lot. Redmane Freyja was not playing around with that Lion's Claw ash! These are usually the types of soundtracks I end up wanting to cover lol.
It felt really epic and emotional fighting against all of these NPC's from that game that I'd come to appreciate in such a desolate arena so close to the end of the game. Needle Knight Leda, Redmane Freyja, Moore, Ansbach, Thiollier, the hornsent were all such amazing characters. I am really glad I kept on top of my questlines so that I could have as many people as possible in this fight. This encounter was a culmination of the DLC's story arcs - and I think the music suits that concept extremely well. The prominent solo cello feels mournful and lamenting, while also celebratory in a way. Which is kind of how the fight feels - celebrating all of these combatants' combat prowess and personalities before their fires burn out forever.
It was very interesting and refreshing to see so much dialogue during a fight in a Fromsoft game. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE their cryptic storytelling style - but that subdued and ambiguous lore delivery makes it all the more unusual and shocking when the characters actually begin having a more fleshed-out personality and talking to you and each other more frequently.
I really liked Redmane Freyja's line from the battle, "I could not hope for a worthier foe. This is our moment. Let’s make it something to remember." I think the song was very aligned with the tone of that message. Redmane Freyja also says to Ansbach if you summon him, "The mere sight of your blade sets my heart aflutter," which is another awesome line. Many of the combatants feel like they are having fun with each other during this fight (maybe not Dryleaf Dane), which is a pretty rare sight to see in Elden Ring at least. The fight as a whole (and the music) reflects this dichotomy between the glory of battle and its tragic end result. When it's over, and you are left alone in the antechamber among the corpses of all the NPC's from the DLC, I felt a profound sense of loneliness and finality as I knew the only thing left to do was face Miquella - everyone else was gone. I teleported around the map one more time looking for any NPC in the Realm of Shadow to chat with and realized literally all of them were gone except for the hornsent who can't speak in Belurat. I think it was a really interesting move of From Software to basically kill everyone off and leave the Realm of Shadow entirely empty at this point in the game. I am well aware they love to kill their NPC's in abstract and unpredictable ways, but doing all of them at once like this is definitely an evolution from what they've done in the past!
As always, thanks for watching and you can find my detailed music theory breakdown pinned in the comments below. I hope you enjoy this cover - I think it was well suited to piano adaptation and was really fun to make.
Sheets will come sometime in the future.
We are having lots of fun discussing video game music, composing, and everything From Software in the Moonlapse Piano discord server, come hang out!
Discord: discord.com/invite/gJD9gdSjGE
Bandcamp: moonlapse.bandcamp.com/
Musescore: musescore.com/user/37002291
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