#naktigonis.mp3

[naktigonis]

Hi naktigonis! I was wondering if you enjoy using leitmotif in your music? Do you like to put references in your work? Thanks!

yes, actually! i love using musical motifs to establish the presence of themes, places or characters in the soundtrack. much like writing prose, writing music is another method of creating a coherent narrative. the only difference is, you read the musical narrative with your ears! B)

i'm about to launch into a lengthy ramble about the use of motifs in the Deepwoken OST, and also in my other musical work. i'll also ramble about musical-cultural references. buckle the hell up.

there's a TL;DR at the bottom if you're not interested in reading this wall of text >:)

if you listen closely to the currently released Deepwoken OST tracks, you can already hear some hints of musical motifs being offered. the first and most obvious one, of course, is the main theme of Deepwoken. this melody has become so emblematic of the game, that i've basically ended up incorporating it into almost every track within the OST. and although i didn't have a single set meaning for this leitmotif when i started haphazardly slapping it everywhere in the soundtrack, i think the melody symbolises a deep connection to history, a defiant hope (listen to the piano part in Contour 3 - doesn't it sound so hopeful?), and the inevitability of fate. though, i do also like to think that the real meaning of this motif is ultimately up to the player. this motif is Deepwoken. what does Deepwoken mean to you? that's what the melody really means.

but that's just one song. yet, the main theme does feature in many tracks: if you listen closely to Solivagant at the 1:32 timestamp, you can actually hear the main theme of the game slowly play out! it builds up, takes a long contemplative pause (about 20 seconds or so, if i remember correctly!), and then unravels.

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on the same song, there is another leitmotif directly after the fragment discussed above. at the very end of Solivagant, around the 2:06 timestamp, you can hear this melody play.

that's the Etrean theme! this motif represents the island and kingdom of Etrea, the city of Etris, and the Etreans themselves. essentially, whenever you hear this melody within a song in the soundtrack, you can expect an Etrean presence in that area of the game.

and if you listen closely in other (currently publicly unreleased) tracks, you can hear their motif too - like in this theme for an area next to Etris, or this theme for a certain place directly related to the Kingdom of Etrea.

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but the Etrean motif isn't all that common outside of areas of Etrean influence. a motif that is a lot more common throughout the game, and is in fact an elaborate reference to something from real life culture, is the motif of death.

this motif features almost everywhere in the Deepwoken OST. it's a melody that originates from a mediaeval Christian religious hymn about the apocalypse, and the Day of Judgement. it has been used since around the mid-19th century by various composers to signify death. if you're a devout Catholic of sorts, a fan of the Youtube channel Sideways, or are generally trained in the history of musical compositions, you may already know what i'm talking about here.

that's right. i'm talking about the Dies Irae. no, not the symphonic rendition by Mozart, nor the symphonic rendition of another part of the same chant by Mozart. i am instead talking about this:

vigilant eyes reading the full lyrics of the hymn may have noticed that the text seems a bit familiar. and if you've listened to Contour 1, you've already seen part of it! there is a part of one of the chant's verses in Contour 1's description: "Lacrimosa dies illa, / Qua resurget ex favílla / Iudicandus homo reus". or, in English, that'd be: "Tearful [will be] that day, / on which from the glowing embers will arise / the guilty man who is to be judged".

unlike what many have theorised, 'lacrimosa' isn't some sort of lore character. it's just a part of a hymn's lyrics, a somewhat esoteric reference to the Day of Judgement and the apocalypse. the Dies Irae hymn has fascinated me for years with its symbolism and meaning, and given those factors, i felt it was only appropriate to incorporate it into the musical narrative of a world such as Deepwoken. B)

i initially wanted to provide more than one example of the Dies Irae motif being used in the soundtrack. unfortunately, i've woven the melody of it so deeply into most of the OST, that it's difficult to extract a clean patch of it from any song! most of the time the motif is either slow and prolonged, or is incorporated into another melody very closely. so, i felt like pulling the motif from such tracks would reveal a bit too much.

so instead, i bring only one example: the motif being played in the general sailing track of the game.

you might expect that hearing the Dies Irae in the game would signify some sort of immediate danger being present. that is sometimes true. however, only sometimes. in truth, the motif is almost always there in the background, perhaps even more often than the main theme of the game. keep an ear out for the Dies Irae in the soundtrack when you play, and unmistakeably, you will almost always find it. it represents death, danger, a looming sense of doom, hanging overhead like a dark cloud. forever, and always.

to wax a bit philosophical, death is a kind of ending, isn't it? i think in some cases in the soundtrack, the Dies Irae also signifies an ending. nothing is infinite - all things must come to pass.

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...wowee that got sombre fast!

on a much lighter note, although this is not a motif that appears anywhere as frequently as the main motif, or the motif of death, it is still one of my favourites. this right here is the motif of the mysterious 'hive' you may have seen mentioned a few times.

and, just for fun, here's a little instrument demo test i did recently with this motif. here i am testing the Sulphur Wind mixer preset i made myself some time ago. here's before the preset, and here's after the preset. pardon my poor playing!

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as for my own personal work outside of Deepwoken, i don't use continuous leitmotifs to establish a narrative per se (it wouldn't really make sense in the case of separate albums or tracks), but i do tend to recycle melodies from time to time. more often than not, i do this due to some sort of connection between the track that a melody originated from, and the track a melody is being recycled for.

for example, my old D&D character Sophion F. Umbassa had a character theme, which was basically just an old recycled melody called 'Faustus' Theme'. 'Faustus' here references Goethe's Faust, a 19th century German play where a scholar sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for the knowledge of the world. in parallel, my D&D character Sophion Faustus Umbassa entered the servitude of the archdevil Asmodeus in pursuit of greater power:

or, alternatively, my currently most popular track Ex Nihilo also uses a reused melody! in this case, there is a symbolic, motif-like connection here, in addition to an external reference. the original melody was called 'Lullaby of Chaos', and it was repurposed for a song called 'Ex Nihilo', the ex nihilo here referencing creatio ex nihilo, or the creation of the world from nothingness. in ancient Greek cosmogony, the void from which the universe was born was called chaos. so all in all, it all checks out. B)

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wow, i really just rambled for ages, huh. whoops!

well, i suppose to give a TL;DR answer to your question: HELL YES i enjoy using leitmotifs in my music, and HELL YES i put references in my work. hope that answers it! B)