SEKIRO: SHADOWS DIE TWICE - Corrupted Monk Theme on Piano
Composer: Yuka Kitamura
Arranged by: Moonlapse Piano
Sheets: https://musescore.com/user/37002291/s...
Hello! I'm back with another cover and this time from Sekiro. This soundtrack is really amazing and I hadn't really dug into it much until some of you mentioned it in the comments, and now I am kind of obsessed. For some reason it didn't grip me as much as DS3 or Elden Ring when I played the game, but now I love it after re-listening. And it has so much YUKA KITAMURA who is my favorite.
Theory Breakdown
Phase 1 starts out in an A minor key at 0:22. However, in true Yuka Kitamura fashion, the key is 'decorated' with a lot of chromatic neighbor tones, just like in the Demon Prince. It's important to note that these are not just small little slide-ins, but the note is played on beat for a consistent duration. I think it's a big part of what adds a sort of edginess, tension, and 'cool-factor' to the piece. It makes it more 'in-your-face' and standout than diatonic A minor riffs. Purposeful and deliberate chromaticism like this has roots in funk/bebop and I think it carries a similar energy/effect even in orchestral music like this.
Next at 0:40 we get a sort of 'modulation', but technically it's still in the key of A minor. It depends how you want to view it, but when the song 'drops' it enters into an E phrygian section. E phrygian contains the same notes as A minor. From my view, with Phrygian in particular, I like to view it as just 'revolving' around the v chord in a minor key. Halo Reach soundtrack is a masterclass in phrygian modal techniques and another great example of this.
This chord progression is pretty common for evoking the phrygian sound - I view the Em as the v, F is the Vi, and Dm as the iv, in the key of A minor:
Em F Dm F
Em F Em Em
What's cool is that Yuka Kitamura goes BACK to Am at 0:57. So that is one of the main techniques I've learned here - if you're in a minor key and want to get some Corrupted Monk vibes, you can go to the V chord and do a little phrygian section. A phrygian section like this revolving around the v is very easy to resolve back to the i, creating a nice duality between the sections and feeling almost like a key change or modulation.
Yuka Kitamura also decorates the E phyrgian section with a variety of chromatic neighbor tones, and it has the same effect as before but even more awesome now since we already had the combative, warlike phrygian mode harmony going on.
In Phase 2, there is a modulation down a whole step to a G root note. These phase1/phase2's always seem to have a different home key that they start worth, so that's probably a note worth taking. One thing going on in phase 2 is a bass-motif of G, Ab, Bb, B. This forms the underpinning of most of the section. To me the most memorable and best part of the track is 2:07, which has this movement underneath:
Gsus4 Ab Bb6/9 Ab Gmin7 Ab Bbsus4 Bsus2
We are sitting once again in the phrygian mode, G phrygian this time. Most of the melody notes are in the C minor scale, which is equivalent to G phrygian. However, we also get C# thrown in, briefly evoking a C phrygian sound. My way of processing this is that it's a harmonic environment where we are in C natural minor, but we can use the flat 9 of C# when we want to. By playing with our ear and giving us colors from both C phrygian and G phrygian modes, the track becomes much more harmonically complex and layered than if it were to just sit in G phrygian the whole time - nothing wrong with that of course, but this is more interesting.
Another way this grows in complexity is that we hear this Bsus2 chord. In C minor I would've expected a chord starting on B to be some sort of G7/B dominant chord. But this chord is actually resolving back to a G chord, so instead it has that F# in there. From the perspective of C minor that's an out of scale flat 5. But from a resolution standpoint, that F# slides up so nicely one half step back into Gsus4. It's just such an inventive way of resolving back to the first chord in the sequence. This is such an 'out-there' type of resolution that I think deserves a lot of thought and inspection. It can become easy to reach for common resolutions like dominant chords doing V-i or backdoor VII-i or tritone substitution cadences when we want to target a chord. Instead, to get a bit out of the box, we can instead try to think about our resolutions note-by-note and create an unconventional leading chord that still has that type of half-step motion (both up and down) we see with V-i cadences.
I feel quite limited by the 5000 word limit here - if you want to talk theory/music further or just hang out come join the discord server!
/ discord
Thanks again for watching and being a part of the channel, I appreciate you!
#yukakitamura #sekiroshadowsdietwice #sekiro #shadowsdietwice #piano