DARK SOULS 3 - Demon Prince Theme on Piano
Composer: Yuka Kitamura
Arranged by: Moonlapse
Discord: / discord
Hello everyone! Thank you for being here. This is my first Dark Souls 3 video, wanted to mix it up a bit and this song has yet to be arranged as far as I am aware, and I think it is one of Yuka Kitamura's most underrated works so I wanted to transcribe it. This is also my favorite boss from the Ringed City DLC. This was a tough one! This includes both Phase 1 with Demon From Below and Demon In Pain as well as the amazing phase 2 Demon Prince theme.
-Music Theory Comments-
This track is actually a lot more harmonically simple than some of the other tracks I've arranged, in that most of it involves creating and releasing tension over a root note pedal tone. There is pretty much a pedal tone going on in the deep bass throughout almost the whole song, C# in phase 1 and D in phase 2 (I love that half step up modulation between sections as well).
Over what I consider to basically be an Aeolian home base, Kitamura uses a few different neighbor tones frequently as hard hitting main melody notes (on downbeats) in order to give this a demonic feel. Specifically, we see the flat 5 and the flat 9 the most, sometimes at the same time. Kitamura also hits the minor 6th degree of our home minor scale, which while diatonic, does add a sense of tension and release when it goes back to the 5th (A# to A in Dm). Especially when this minor 6th is combined with a flat 5, or a flat 9, we get these very surprising, dissonant, and dark sounding moments that fit very well with this boss.
The most harmonic (chordal) movement occurs at the section at 3:06. Here we get what I have found to be a very common Soulsborne musical motif. In D minor we have
Dm - Em7b5 - Dm/F - Gm6 - Dm
This progression is also used in Sister Friede/Father Ariandel's theme during phase 2. While the Em7b5 is diatonic to Dm, it is unusual in most harmony I've seen (besides straight up minor ii V i's in jazz) to move from a minor chord up a whole step to a m7b5 chord. Then, very importantly, as the bass keeps rising, Kitamura does not play that diatonic F major chord in a track like this - all that demonic energy would be lost, it's way too happy. She uses the first inversion of our home Dm chord to keep it somber, with minor tonality. FromSoftware composers also love honing in on that natural 6 over the iv minor chord (the Gm here).
Countless times in this style of music, when it comes time to use that third degree of the home minor key in the bass due to stepwise motion, the composers explicitly avoid the diatonic major III chord (here it would be F - A - C). In this case C becomes an avoid note over the Dm/F. In fact, Kitamura actually hits the C# over it, alluding to a D harmonic minor scale. From the perspective of F as the root, this makes it an F augmented chord for a moment, but I think it's easier to process as Dm/F. However, after seeing this idea, I'll be trying to use IIIaug in a minor key since it sounds so cool.
We momentarily dip into harmonic minor a variety of times. A lot of dark music really uses that major seventh in a minor key to evoke the intended effect. What I really love about this track after arranging is that while she does use that major seventh, but not as much as the flat 5 and flat 9, when it comes to notes 'outside D Aeolian'. It really gives it a signature sound vs just harmonic minor.
For composers I recommend trying out this style of composition where you are stuck with a root pedal tone, and try to create tension and release over it using notes outside the scale. This is also a common improvisational challenge and great practice (Like soloing over a straight up D minor backing track that stays on one chord, without it sounding boring).
From an arrangement perspective, I chose to omit the rapid flying high violins in certain sections. I did not think it would remain interesting on piano if I recreated how that violin never stops ripping it during the entirety of phase 2 - and it would've sacrificed the deep left hand rhythm and consistency. I chose to emphasize the violin arpeggios over the sections where I found it most important and memorable to the listener, and to omit it and focus on low bass rhythms/harmony and main melody over other sections. This is a piece that really would love to be a duet or have 3 hands, since the low bass rhythms, main melody, and high flying arpeggios are all important parts of it and all occur simultaneously, so it definitely was the most challenging arrangement I've done so far, even more than Fortissax.
If you have made it this far, I really appreciate you reading this and watching my videos! :) Also big thanks to SeeMusic for making these videos easy to make and look awesome.
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