DARK SOULS 3 - Oceiros, the Consumed King on Piano
Composer: Yuka Kitamura
Arrangement: Moonlapse Piano
Sheets: https://musescore.com/user/37002291/s...
Moonlapse Discord server: / discord
I'm here with another Dark Souls 3 arrangement. This game's soundtrack is my favorite out of all FromSoft games, and I think this song is very underrated - it always stood out to me. Of course, I am biased to like every single Yuka Kitamura song and she's one of my favorite musicians of all time.
Theory Breakdown
Phase 1 of this song is primarily a gorgeous wash of Aeolian, similar to the Fire Giant phase 1. This technique one of Yuka Kitamura's specialties. We have a pedal tone of A established by the timpani. Over the top of this we mostly hear various tones from A minor, with tension being mainly created by going to and from the fifth/minor 6th and 9th/third - instead of focused harmonic movement like V - i cadences. We get a few neighbor tones like the raised seventh and major third sprinkled in.
The most interesting part of phase 1 for me is the B7b9 chord that comes in at 0:48. This is very much outside of the key of A minor, being a II7 substitution. This introduces an important note relative the root A, which is D#, the flat 5 (or sharp 11). The II7 is very common in souls music - we just saw it in phase 1 of Rykard's theme.
I think it's good practice and very enjoyable to mess around with trying to find OTHER non-diatonic chords to move to with the constraint that the only 'out of scale' note introduced is that flat 5.
I have noticed that nearly any chord substitution that uses the flat 5 from the home key will sound 'soulsey' to me - this is a very inspiring thought that could lead to a lot of great ideas, let me know your favorites in the comments if you have one.
At 0:54 we get a marvelous chord progression starting on the iv of A minor that I improvised over for hours after discovering:
Dm9 D#dim Dm9 E7b9
I realized I've seen this movement before! In Twin Princes, Yuka Kitamura famously (to me, lol) moves from a F#dim down half a step to a Fm7, the Fm7 being the iv chord in C minor. She uses a similar move here.
This move used to perplex me because I was introduced to diminished resolutions with the more common leading tone resolution, which is UP a half step to a minor, major, or dominant chord. So, something like Bdim to Cm. This is functioning as a strong V-i resolution, as Bdim is very similar to a G7b9 chord, the V in Cm.
There are also common-tone diminished resolutions, but I cannot fit it in this writeup - it's worth looking into!
The least-discussed diminished resolution in my experience is resolving DOWN a half step. It has far less 'concrete harmonic movement' and is a much softer sound. It doesn't feel like a resolution of an idea, but the continuation of a sentence.
TLDR when you have a diminished chord, try moving it down a half step to a minor seventh chord to add some Yuka Kitamura energy.
Phase 2 is predominantly over a pedal tone of D in the key of D minor, without much chord movement. We briefly get a C# diminished (V) but overall it's just sitting on D. Yuka Kitamura is really good at making us feel a sense of movement anyway, despite the root note not changing. In addition to the Aeolean sound, the b9 (Eb) is added in certain sections in place of the natural 9 (E). Adding that b9 to the Aeolean backdrop makes it sound significantly darker, and using the natural 9 shortly after creates a sense of harmonic ambiguity as to the true mode; it ends up sounding like a mix of Phrygian and Aeolean.
At 3:16, in what is my favorite part of phase 2, there is a gorgeous chord progression that is very typical of Kitamura and reminds me Twin Princes score.
A7 Gm6/Bb Ab7#11 Bb Am Gm6 Ab7#11 A7b9
V iv V/V Vi v iv V/V V
In Twin Princes the V/V is played as a diminished chord on the flat 5 of the home key . So in this key, that would be an Ab dim which leads nicely into the V. This is also utilized in Slave Knight Gael in both phases. Even in Oceiros phase 1, as mentioned above, we got D#dim (or Ebdim) in the key of A minor... so yeah she really likes to use that chord.
However, here we see a much different 'chord on the tritone of our home key' that really surprised me. Instead of a dim chord we get a whole tone sound. We have a major second, major third, sharp 11, and sharp 5. This implies an Ab7 9#11b13 sound.
The takeaway here is that we can get creative with which chord we want to use that has its root a tritone away from our home minor key. Try to incorporate that flat5/sharp11 in some way either as root or extension if you are interested in making this type of music!
Thank you for reading if you made it this far! And for listening. I really appreciate it. If you want to discuss more of this in depth, or ask questions or just talk Fromsoft music, please join my discord server linked at the top!