Hey, would you look at that. It's been over a year since I got a bullshit copyright strike on MuseScore for my transcription of To Zanarkand (exactly as it is heard in Final Fantasy X), which is a score you cannot find anywhere on the internet. It is a meticulous by-ear transcription that several people have referred to as "the most accurate transcription [they've] heard" based on the version in-game, which is compositionally distinct from any "official" sheet music sources published since the game came out.
So if you want the most accurate transcription of "To Zanarkand" you're probably ever going to find on the internet, here you go: mediafire link because fuck you musescore
this transcription got me into grad school for composition so. trust
(A repost from my old side blog no longer in use. All future analyses will be on this one.)
Greetings and welcome to our deep-dive into Uematsu-senpai’s masterpiece of a character theme. We will examine the rich marriage between composition and storytelling – ie. how its musical elements express Tifa’s personality, conflictions, relationships, and story motifs. If you’ve come with zero knowledge in music theory, then my hopes are that you will leave here somewhat enriched (no prior knowledge is required). If you are a fellow geek for music, then I hope this adds insight in a storytelling sense. Ultimately, the goal of this post is to more deeply understand Tifa Lockhart.
I have divided this analysis into five sections each built on the prior: (A) the key; (B) the intro; (C) the leitmotif; (D) the game’s use of the leitmotif; and (E) the compilation’s use of the leitmotif. (The leitmotif of course being Tifa’s recurring melody, of which the first subphrase is sampled above.) Because Tumblr allows only 5 videos per post, each section will be its own post, bar for the first two which will overlap in Posts I and II.
So have your headphones/audio ready, and let us commence.
Disclaimer: these are simply my own interpretations offered with supporting evidences. I can only, to my best limited efforts, speculate as to what Uematsu did or did not intend when composing the piece.
Section (A): The Key
Tifa’s Theme is composed in the key of F major, one of the happiest keys in music. It is argued by many, in fact, to be the happiest key (though this is subjective).
“F major is at once full of peace and joy…”
– Ernst Pauer (19th C. composer).
This is a reason, I presume, that Uematsu-san chose F major for the track which represents home.
“Welcome home, Cloud,” is the first line that Tifa speaks to Cloud in the game. “I’m home” (from the Japanese dub, 唯今 – “Tadaima”) is the last thing Cloud says to Tifa at the end of Advent Children. Home is our first story motif embodied by Tifa’s character.
But of course Uematsu’s decision likely only began there.
“F major is at once full of peace and joy, but also expresses effectively a light, passing regret – a mournful, but not a deeply sorrowful feeling.”
– Ernst Pauer (quote continued).
So we have peace and joy with an undertone of mournfulness; a juxtaposition between two opposing ends of the emotion spectrum. To appreciate how the key of F major achieves this, we can benefit from a quick comparison with two other tracks.
It might surprise you that Tifa’s Theme – our warm song of home – shares the very same key notes as the tensest and most sorrowful track in Final Fantasy VII. Listen to the Cries of the Planet is composed in F major’s relative minor key: D minor. It has the same key chords as F major, yet the chords serve different functions (something we will get to later). Put another way, it has all the same notes, yet they are arranged differently. Where F major is (argued) the happiest key in music, D minor is almost universally called the key of “true sorrow.”
Let’s compare the two tracks here:
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I wanted to begin with this little contrast for three reasons. First, to excite you non-music-theorists about the emotive power of music. Here, from our two related keys, come two completely contrasting moods. Second, we are concerned with what and how the notes will speak. Third, well… that’s a little more selfish. Listen to the Cries of the Planet is my favorite track in the game.
Our other track is the main section of One-Winged Angel (there are a total of three keys in this track.) It is curious that the foil character to Tifa has his theme in the relative minor of hers. Like a mirror – for as Sephiroth is Cloud’s darkness, Tifa is Cloud’s light. D minor is also the key from Those Chosen by the Planet.
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And now, onto our deep-dive into Tifa’s Theme, which features in the original game, Advent Children, and 2020’s Remake. For now we’ll be using the piano sheets from Advent Children.
Section (B): The Intro
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Tifa’s Theme begins with a tonic chord (the ‘home’ chord of our key). The further we move away from our tonic, the greater the tension (‘instability’) will be.
By ‘home’ here I am referring to the music’s tonal center – not ‘home’ the story motif which Tifa embodies. In light of that distinction, however, with the tonic being the home point of the track and home being a story motif central to Tifa’s character, we are simultaneously referring to both.
So we begin with our tonic (the F major chord) which draws us “at once [into] peace and joy.” Yet there is concurrently the hint of a mournful undertone. Only a tiny, tiny allusion – perfect for our introduction to Tifa. When we first meet her after all, we’ve no idea of the burdens locked in her heart.
This opening tonic is presented in whole notes (the longest kind of note in common composition). In our piano version, these whole notes are arpeggiated (see the squiggly lines to their left), meaning that the chord is ‘spread’ or ‘rolled’ – the notes are played and held one after the other from the bottom up. We are at once drawn in by Tifa’s inviting warmth and we linger there.
Our tonic is immediately succeeded by a chromatic chord (a chord composited of notes outside the key; notes that ‘don’t belong’). This second chord is, in fact, is the sort we would expect to find in F minor. It does not ‘belong’ in our key of F major – thus the mournful undertone which would have been further hinted is brought into direct statement. Foreshadowed is the revelation of Tifa’s burdens. She is carrying deep and unsettling secrets.
How does this work? Uematsu-san has effectively ‘borrowed’ the second chord of the F minor key and inserted it into the track’s opening chord progression. This subverts the natural expectation of our ears and creates instability – a trick he will frequently pull to toy with our emotions.
Uematsu-san then extended this borrowed chord to heighten the mournfulness by adding a 7th (a note seven intervals above the root note which further colors the mood). This enlarges the magnitude of Tifa’s mournfulness: we feel that her burdens are heavy.
The next two bars instantly carry us back to the tonic (see the harmony on the bottom stave below). This occurs in a slow fall, a faster fall, then a faster, now extended lift: the intro’s re-establishment and emphasis on the motif of home. We are never to stray from feeling at home when we are around Tifa. Simultaneously, these bars speak the ‘locking away’ of Tifa’s burdens. Her sufferings are buried quickly as her love for others is brought to the forefront.
Where our chromatic chord had an added 7th to heighten the mournfulness, our tonic build is extended with a 7th and 9ths in its lift – heightening home in a stronger comparative sense. Tifa being a home to others, in other words, overpowers her own sufferings.
There are three things we can grasp from this sequence of slow-fall to faster-fall to faster-extended-lift.
First, Tifa holds a profound motherliness toward others which outweighs thought for her own wellbeing.
Second, Tifa is insecure in dealing with her emotions, and thus strives to keep herself distracted from them. We will see this displayed right from the time of her childhood:
At 8, unable to cope with her mother’s death, she treks up the perilous mountain to try and ‘find her’ on the other side;
At 15, unwilling to face the grief of her father’s murder, she recklessly rushes to confront Sephiroth;
At 17 (in Traces of Two Pasts), she confesses to Jessie that she has been “running” from learning the truth about Nibelheim;
At 20 (in Remake), she admits she’s not even allowed herself time to decorate her apartment;
At 22 (in On the Way to a Smile), she avoids being alone in keeping extra busy with the bar and the kids during Cloud’s absence.
Thirdly – and perhaps most jarringly – Tifa embodies home despite her life being plagued by suffering.
Tifa, who lost her home and had to rebuild her life from scratch, provides a home for Cloud, Marlene and Barret, Avalanche, and later, Denzel.
Tifa, who lost her mother as a child, mothers everyone else, is for all intent Marlene’s mother, and becomes the mother of a family unit with Cloud, raising two kids who are not her own.
We have now travelled through the first subphrase of the intro.
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We begin Subphrase Two with our opening tonic again, but this time in a quite surprising extension. Rather than adding a happy 7th or 9th to accentuate the warmth of our home chord, Uematsu-san gives us an E note which clashes with our F. Moreover, he builds the chord from this E as the bass (bottom) note.
What does this mean? Dissonance. Home is re-emphasized, but now directly with mournfulness. Although Tifa’s burdens are locked in her heart, they are ever lingering in the picture.
Compare this tonic (with the clashing E) to our opening tonic in Subphrase One. We now also have an additional climb in the harmony, which includes an added 9th. So while we can more deeply sense Tifa’s mysterious burdens (even though she’s our place of peace), extra emphasis is placed on her warmth and motherliness.
Subphrase One opening vs. Subphrase Two opening:
And so we continue Subphrase Two, following the pattern from Subphrase One. A chromatic chord follows the tonic – again ‘borrowed’ from the key of F minor – bringing Tifa’s plights to bubble once again. But before we can linger on them, we are taken back to an extended tonic chord – this time with an ‘unbelonging’ note.
From the next bar, however, things begin to shift…
Before moving onto this shift, let’s consider what we’ve covered so far. We began “at once full of peace and joy” (Tifa’s warmth pulled us toward her, pulled us home), to be immediately carried into an expression of suffering (Tifa’s secret, unsettling burdens were glimpsed). That suffering was overpowered – but not entirely suppressed – by a magnified emphasis of home (Tifa locked her burdens away behind her nurturing kindness). The suffering surfaced briefly again, and again home was accentuated (Tifa’s endless heartache continues, beneath the bounds of her love).
As is very clear by now, Tifa is facing great internal conflictions. Let us dig into what the music so far has conveyed of those conflictions.
Spoken in long-value notes, our Subphrase One melodic chords convey Tifa’s hesitance in expressing her burdens. That they shift and waver between tonic and chromatic conveys her uncertainty.
Subphrase One conveying hesitance (in long-value notes):
Subphrase One conveying uncertainty (tonic > chromatic > tonic):
Tifa is longing to confront Cloud with the truth of his psyche. At the same time, she is uncertain of both what that will bring and what the truth is: she fears losing Cloud; and she doubts the validity of her own memories from the events he is recounting so accurately. These hesitancies, fears and doubts are gnawing at her heart, buried from the rest of the world under the forefront of home.
Subphrase Two contains less long-value notes and more wavering than Subphrase One, building the intensity of Tifa’s conflicts clashing within her. Rather than wavering from tonic to chromatic to tonic, we go from a dissonant tonic to a chromatic chord to a tonic with chromaticism to more tension in a predominant chord. I’ll get to what this means in the next post, but for now, just know it is a chord of instability.
Subphrase Two (less the final bar) building instability:
Following our new tension chord (the predominant G minor in blue) we have just one bar left to end the phrase. As it is the end of the intro as a whole, we expect to return to the tonic. But (bless Uematsu and his subversions)… the opposite happens.
Our ears expect resolution, but we are instead dragged right into the highest point of tension. Here, we are pulled into the world of the dominant chord.