EVERY FFXIV MAIN THEME HAS THIS IN COMMON... (Final Fantasy XIV Music Analysis)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ก.ค. 2024
- Showcasing a throughline of the FFXIV main themes - the perfect fifth interval. With Dawntrail's main theme, the trend is still continued!
0:00 Introduction
0:37 Answers - ARR/1.0
0:50 Heavensward - Heavensward
0:57 Revolutions - Stormblood
1:12 Tomorrow and Tomorrow - Shadowbringers
1:19 Who Brings Shadow - Shadowbringers
1:27 Flow - Endwalker
1:35 Dawntrail - Dawntrail
1:44 Outro
Background video: • Hoper's Hold Theme "Dr... - เกม
i think you really could've taken this further by pointing how not only do the beginnings of each of these themes start with a perfect fifth, but they all feature the cascading downward melody while also maintaining that interval. this video made me realize that the melodic shape of all these themes are extremely similar in a way that i had never consciously recognized before
@@oktinaa I think your observation is true, but also it might just be a result of good counterpoint
Yeah the perfect fifth represents the significance and epic nature of the story and the downward cadence adds a darker element to it
@@Rides1283man ye especially Ueamatsu has some very solid counterpoints in his compositions
@@mincho0616 FF9 the place I’ll return to someday
If you really think about it, the melody should correlates with Final Fantasy’s main theme (or even the character login screen) as its an arpeggio. Im not educated in the field but its what i just thought after reading your comment lol.
I mean the perfect fifth is just a really solid way of establishing a key. It is cool that all of the songs do this, but a significant portion of my own compositions also start with an ascending fifth. This could also be a string musician thing, although guitars are mostly based on fourths instead of fifths like bowed strings so I'm not too sure.
it's such an easy and surefire to establish a key! Both as an opener and finisher. It's why V-I (so-do) and I-V (do-so) is so so common. Honkai Star Rail's "Take the Journey" and Suzume's title song also start with a perfect 5th.
I don't know if it's a string player thing! It might be a relic of the ye olde counterpoint from the church days. I kind of fell asleep during 8am music history....
I agree, I think Soken really likes to open melodies on perfect fifths and Uematsu also happened to use this technique!
@@clarioncaffeine IDK man orchestral strings just lend themselves to being both tuned and played in 5ths.
Final Fantasy has a long history with leitmotifs and 14 is no exception. I think that from a meaning standpoint starting the main theme with a rising perfect fifth signifies the beginning of a new adventure, moving upwards. My music theory minor finally has some value yay!
Uematsu only did answers and revolution songs. Rest was Soken. But still enlightening. I never noticed that. I'm no composer, musician, or anything related to music but soken has made me want to learn.
Dragonsong too
@@jenechek yeah but not the main theme of HW.
Isn't Dragonsong the main theme of HW?
@shinobirecords2018 dragonsong came out in post patches of hw during the dragonsong war if I'm not mistaken
Dragonsong is literally in the trailer for HW the song had already been written@@AresLodin
This was eating at me ever since I noticed it in SB and HW. Thank you for confirming that I'm not crazy!
Heavenward and shadowbringer are the most obvious for me
Technically Footfalls is the theme of endwalker but it doesn't acknowledge it nearly as much as Flow which I consider to be the actual main theme anyways.
They reference the older expansions in the later ones, too. Especially in Endwalker and Dawntrail. Footfalls is literally a combination of every expansion’s theme put together followed up by a newer theme at the end. If you watch the trailer, it syncs up with what happens on screen. And characters from said expansions show up on screen when their theme starts playing.
In Dawntrail, it does something similar, lyrically:
“From the ashes we’re REBORN
To the HEAVENS we will fly
Fighting through the STORM
Leaving SHADOWS far behind
As we WALK right to the END…”
As a bonus, these lyrics follow a similar rhythm to Who Brings Shadow from Shadowbringers
Thank you for doing this video and pointing this out!
There's so many deep musical connections and I hope you'll do more of them... Most of FFXIV music can be drawn back, often through a meandering path, to Answers, so I really want to see more of it elucidated for everyone to see!
Ohhhhh THAT’S why I keep thinking I’m hearing Tomorrow and Tomorrow in Dawntrail
Nothing seems to be coincidence in the world of music composition, especially in FF in general. Nice finding!
THank you for this. I thought I was going crazy! I really thought I was the only one to notice this when I pointed it out during a topic in my FC. This made me feel vindicated!!
To me it is interesting since thematically most expansions start off at a “low point” ARR is the aftermath of the Calamity, Heavensward is post bloody banquet, stormblood is post Omega and Baelsars Wall, Shadowbringers is post Scion snatching and Endwalker is just itself, and the rest of .0 is spent reaching a high point for a conclusion with the .x patches setting up the next conflict. Dawntrail is the only Expansion to not really follow this trend. The perfect 5 could be a subtle nod to the story format of most expansions starting low and going high.
I KNEW IT
Does this kind of commonality help when trying to string the song together to make medley or similar?
I reckon it will give the medley more coherence if you were to put certain songs back to back as it could sound like the phrases are similar.
@@Rides1283man Yeah! Wonder if they will do that towards the end hahaha :)
(also not me just thinking they were all the same themes LOLL - keen to hear the OST once I finish endwalker! Trying to avoid online FF14 content to save myself from spoilers and so far successful :))
@@anushay5426 You are then probably going to like Endwalker's final boss theme :)
I always thought they all sounded very similar but could never put my finger on a particular quality that made them so. Now I know!
i noticed this but i didnt know what it was called because i'm not musically inclined at all. thanks for this
Also in the nald thal fight
Dawntrail is a pretty good 5th expansion for me so far, tho i'm not sure it's "perfect" 😉 heehee hoohoo
okay seriously they might've had this in mind though, it's a lot of perfect 5thing going on in that one
Its because a perfect fifth is the least 'dynamic' of the intervals, in the sense that it's the least likely to lead to a different harmony - 'sol' wants to resolve to 'do', so going 'do' to 'sol', you're most likely to want to resolve back to where you came from. In that sense you could say the perfect fifth is crystalline - static, immobile.
I think what makes these feel more connected than just "the same interval" is that they're all used rhythmically in a really similar way. It's almost always a pickup, landing on the upper note on beat 1, and after this comes either a lot of space, or a more meandering continuation that leads back to a restatement of this rhythm. In any case, these notes are the longest notes of their respective melody.
@@rohiogerv22 Hard agree, this is an observation I made after making the video and I'm glad someone else also picked up on it. Most of the tracks use them on quarter notes as well except Flow.
I've never noticed that...
Maybe unrelated but I can't be the only one who hears parts of Close in the Distance in Tuliyollal theme, right?
I wonder if any of this could be found in FF16's tracks
I unfortunately haven't gotten the chance to play that but when the PC port comes out I will. I have been trying to avoid the music desperately because I didn't want to be spoiled on it (I haven't even heard Find the Flame yet)
@@Rides1283man holy SHIT good on you for avoiding or so far though
you will be fucking blown away from THE FIRST BOSS, that much i can tell you
yes, especially phoenix theme
It’s a heroic leap in music, as I understand it. You’ll find it in themes by John Williams, too, STAR WARS, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, too
Although ambiguous, as far as major or minor key, the triad leap in music often generates glimmering hope, if not outright triumph 💙
I would say it’s a common thing for music in general, and the reason it’s seen in so much of FFX|V’s score, if not consistently 😅💙
Something else i noticed is that all of these themes contain notes at all
Perfect fifth is like the most common note change in all of music 💀
So, the final expansion will end where we began?
Checkmate, Soken
Last month I started a Music Appreciation course where I now know what any of this means, and THIS WEEK I decided to be interested in Final Fantasy 14.
HELLO?
Do we know each other?!
The main theme of Heavensward is Dragonsong, not Heavensward, and the main theme of Endwalker is Footfalls, not Flow.
@@ikanuhm each expansion has two main themes. You couldn't possibly dismiss Heavenward as a main theme when it is 1. titular and 2. in numerous dungeon and area themes. As for Endwalker, the same applies; Flow is in every main town theme and several cutscene themes. There is no one singular main theme for any expansion.
I mean … yeah, but i this case a good 80% of the all music répertoire is linked to ffxiv
To be fair, the 5th is arguably the most common interval in western music.
Wait, it wall Answers?
Always has been
haha i've been thinking this too, just didn't know how to put into words... nice observation!
While it's nothing special and in fact one of the crucial points in writing hamrony in general (Captain Obvious at your service), Perfect Fifth is very... life-affirming interval, crucial for the theme to have a complete feeling. Jeremy Soule called this interval "triumphant", it feels like as if you have achieved something.
The perfect fifth as mentioned by another commenter is helpful in establishing a key, but is not necessarily crucial in the melody. Perhaps you are describing the tonic-dominant relationship? Because what I'm illustrating here is unrelated to harmony
Obvs I'm niave about music and all but... It seems so damn insignificant as an outsider to the details when it comes to music, like is it really that shocking? It seems like something that would be extremely common. I can see it but like, I'm not "shook", and I feel like I'm supposed to be shook or suprised or something.
@@Rainbowsaur It's not extremely shocking nor is it one-in-a-million, but it's an undeniable trend, where the interval appears directly at or near the beginning of the phrase. Other comments have also rightfully pointed out that following the interval the melody takes a downward contour - this is attributed to good counterpoint. I will also admit that I made a red rectangle clickbait thumbnail on purpose.
Shouldn't ew be footfalls?
The perfect 5th is so ubiquitous that this doesn't really mean anything.
@@lemonbread8019 It's not as common to see every theme in the game using it as the first interval of the melody consistently in this manner
"enjoying yourself...for a change?"
well erenville...i was, till i got roped into another world ending threat
and off goes azem to save the world again...for the millionth time
Lol 😂
Wow...TWO notes always being the same distance from each other in every theme...such a revelation.
@@ThorpenAlnyr it's pretty hard to find the balance between a video being appropriate for layman and one for musicians. My last analysis was decidedly too complicated so I tried to step it down
Layman or musician,it's really nice to see folks appreciating even the smallest things in such a huge franchise like this. Keep it up!
Consider where in the song the perfect fifth is occurring in every song provided. Bonus points: listen to the shape of the melody that follows after the perfect fifth in each song.
ngl as much as i enjoyed dawntrail the music I was already tired of the music day 3