New Arrangement: "Magma Rock" from Golden Sun: The Lost Age (2002)
I've just released a new orchestral arrangement of Motoi Sakuraba's brilliant "Magma Rock" from the classic JRPG, "Golden Sun: The Lost Age" (2001). Feel free to check it out!
Feel free to download the score and recording here!
If you are one of my Patrons, you can now find the MIDI, XML and SIB files I created for this arrangement now available to download from your Patreon Google Drive folder!
Arranger's Note:
"A very aggressive theme, Sakuraba uses a lot of dissonance here with semitonal clashes (D-sharp against D-natural at 0:04, and A-sharp against A-natural at 0:14).
Interestingly, he also uses elements of Arabic Maqam with the presence of the "Hijaz Tetrachord" (E - F - G# - A), commonly used in film music to denote the exotic oriental other (e.g. deserts). As such, I think the association of this chord with hot desert environments is quite suitable to a flaming volcano!
With regards to the arrangement, I've added quite a fair amount of new material to the latter half of the track (0:28 onward) as it previously lacked melodic material at this point (simply oscillating between bare 5th chords, which I've expanded on here by adding an additional 5th). To address this, I've added a melody that follows a similar contour to Sakuraba's original melody that opened the track (0:02).
Since volcanoes are usually very thick and dense with gases and magma, I've used several muddy instruments to thicken the texture, such as tam-tams, bassoons, and a lot of brass."
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