Music and Mother, Part 1: Mother/EarthBound 0
***WARNING this article contains some pretty major spoilers for the original Mother!***
We've all downloaded Bound Together and listened to it a hundred times. If you've been around long enough you probably have Tracebound and Urfbound cued up right after on your media player of choice. For the more musically inclined, you've probably tried to learn the soundstone melody on your favorite instrument. Beyond our cultlike obsession, what is so magnetic about the music in this game? Or in the series as a whole for that matter?
It's a complicated question, and as such, has much more than one answer. When Mother came out, it came into a world where video game music composers only had to choose between 'blip' or 'bloop,' and turned that practice on it's head. the music in the original Mother tries, and succeeds, to set moods and pull heartstrings. Ranging from the creepy haunted cemetary, to the slow rendition of Pollyanna after Teddy's accident, to a Johnny B. Goode soundalike battle theme, Mother brought a soundtrack that gaming really hadn't seen before.
It's obvious the developers were just as passionate about it, evidenced by the accompanying soundtrack CD. For those that haven't heard it, the CD included studio performances of several tracks from the game, many with lyrics. The amount of care and quality that went in to this album speaks volumes of how much it means to the game.
Not only is the music in the game important, music, and one song in particular, plays and important role within the plot of the game itself. Like its sequal, the main quest focuses on the collection of different parts of a larger melody, however, unlike EarthBound, the melody in the first game plays a bigger part in the story. The lyrics of the song, "sweet harmony," "melody of love," and Queen Mary's revelation about raising, and loving as her child, Giegue, juxtaposed with Giegue's utter rage at hearing the song is so twisted and speaks volumes about how evil and/or insane Giegue really is. It adds much more to the plot and characterization of both Giegue and Mary than 100 lines of dialouge ever could.
Mother also offers the first indications to the thematic importance of Pollyanna in the series as a whole. It's a peppy, upbeat song, both when used as the theme in Podunk and especially the lyrical version on the soundtrack CD. Later, this happy song has it's tempo cut drastically and is played during a particularly depressing scene where Teddy is injured badly and bedridden.* The versatility of this particular song is shown even further in the later additions to the series.
This has become longer than I originally intended, and there are still tons of things I need to get to, so I'll split it up into a series. Tune in next update for Part II: Mother 2.
*He might even die here. In the EB0 translation he's back up and healthy in the ending montage, but I believe this final scene was absent in the original Mother. Either way, it's a depressing scene, and it pretty much makes you think he's dead at the time.
***WARNING this article contains some pretty major spoilers for the original Mother!***
We've all downloaded Bound Together and listened to it a hundred times. If you've been around long enough you probably have Tracebound and Urfbound cued up right after on your media player of choice. For the more musically inclined, you've probably tried to learn the soundstone melody on your favorite instrument. Beyond our cultlike obsession, what is so magnetic about the music in this game? Or in the series as a whole for that matter?
It's a complicated question, and as such, has much more than one answer. When Mother came out, it came into a world where video game music composers only had to choose between 'blip' or 'bloop,' and turned that practice on it's head. the music in the original Mother tries, and succeeds, to set moods and pull heartstrings. Ranging from the creepy haunted cemetary, to the slow rendition of Pollyanna after Teddy's accident, to a Johnny B. Goode soundalike battle theme, Mother brought a soundtrack that gaming really hadn't seen before.
It's obvious the developers were just as passionate about it, evidenced by the accompanying soundtrack CD. For those that haven't heard it, the CD included studio performances of several tracks from the game, many with lyrics. The amount of care and quality that went in to this album speaks volumes of how much it means to the game.
Not only is the music in the game important, music, and one song in particular, plays and important role within the plot of the game itself. Like its sequal, the main quest focuses on the collection of different parts of a larger melody, however, unlike EarthBound, the melody in the first game plays a bigger part in the story. The lyrics of the song, "sweet harmony," "melody of love," and Queen Mary's revelation about raising, and loving as her child, Giegue, juxtaposed with Giegue's utter rage at hearing the song is so twisted and speaks volumes about how evil and/or insane Giegue really is. It adds much more to the plot and characterization of both Giegue and Mary than 100 lines of dialouge ever could.
Mother also offers the first indications to the thematic importance of Pollyanna in the series as a whole. It's a peppy, upbeat song, both when used as the theme in Podunk and especially the lyrical version on the soundtrack CD. Later, this happy song has it's tempo cut drastically and is played during a particularly depressing scene where Teddy is injured badly and bedridden.* The versatility of this particular song is shown even further in the later additions to the series.
This has become longer than I originally intended, and there are still tons of things I need to get to, so I'll split it up into a series. Tune in next update for Part II: Mother 2.
*He might even die here. In the EB0 translation he's back up and healthy in the ending montage, but I believe this final scene was absent in the original Mother. Either way, it's a depressing scene, and it pretty much makes you think he's dead at the time.
