8-bit Music Theory’s Patreon has a 9 $ tier (used to be 10 $) that allows his Patrons to suggest topics for videos on his YouTube channel each month. From June 2021 to April 2022 I have posted a comment under each suggestion post, almost every month.
Note that some paragraphs were originally posted as separate comment replies, as addendums to the main comment. This document might not exactly match the published comments, as certain errata might have been corrected later.
Please also note that I am not a musician, nor am I a music theory expert; I have written all comments below with basic school education of music theory plus the knowledge I’ve gathered from popular music theory channels on YouTube. The sole purpose of these comments was to nudge 8-bit Music Theory (Ben Kidd) to mention the Frogatto & Friends OST in one of his videos. Mainly, this is because I have fallen in love with the soundtrack and could find beautiful patterns in it all day long. It occured to me that I could kill two birds with one stone: share the beauty I found (and kept finding) in the soundtracks on Patreon, and by doing so very thoroughly, hopefully increase the chance of the game and its soundtrack getting mentioned. This goal was achieved. I could’ve also simply commented “Dude, do Frogatto. 😏” each month, but I feel the more thorough way achieved both goals better.
The comments contain musical excerpts with notes like ⟨0.5 D♭5⟩. The 0.5 refers to half a beat; in a 4/4 meter this is an eighth note. 1 would be a quarter note, 2 a half note, 4 a whole note, 1.5 a dotted quarter note, and so on. D♭5 is scientific pitch notation, i.e. it’s the D flat one minor ninth above middle C. ⟨Grace G♭5⟩ is a G♭5 grace note, ⟨0.75 Rest⟩ is a dotted eighth rest, ⟨0.5 A5 → F5 → D♭5 → A4⟩ is a sequence of 32nd notes (approximately). In the future, this should probably be replaced by the more standard LilyPond syntax along with a quick introduction to how to read it.
Note that the links to the original Patreon posts require the 11 € tier for access (as of 2023-01-12; the exact membership amount varied throughout the months).
Okay… I have just now joined the 10 $ tier just to make this one request: please do an analysis video on the soundtrack of Frogatto & Friends. It’s an indie game with a retro pixel look. The game is fun and all, but the soundtrack — sorry, there is not one single word to describe it.
It’s beyond stunning. It contains the most beautiful things I’ve ever listened to. The full soundtrack, around 100 songs, is available on GitHub (of all places), here: https://github.com/frogatto/frogatto/tree/master/music — it’s quite obscure. The composer is Ryan Reilly (https://soundcloud.com/ryanreilly). I don’t know much about him, either.
I, myself, have discovered so many details in this soundtrack, that I almost expect a 5 hour long video series about it. I haven’t played the game itself for a long time, but I’m sure that some standard analysis points apply here, e.g. the music always fits the mood of the surrounding environment, etc.
But there is so much more… for example the track ChipSneak.ogg plays in an arcade level (aside from the main story); it’s a skill-based arcade minigame and it’s pretty difficult. Normally, players don’t get much farther than one minute of playing before they fall down and die and have to start over — well, or maybe I’m just bad. Anyway, the track is 6 minutes and 40 seconds long. It starts like a chiptune song, but then beautifully develops into a piano song, and later a harpsichord comes in (which is also used in various other tracks). The bass (synths or bass guitar — can’t tell) is delicious. What a nice reward for dedicated players! Still, the question remains: why would Reilly compose all these amazing themes and hide them away in a really long track, where players almost never get to hear them, or which players never even discover to begin with? He put so much heart into this soundtrack, it’s unbelievable!
Then there are various other themes appearing throughout the soundtrack; some that make sense (FrogForest.ogg at 5:19 with an absolutely beautiful resolution to the “forest theme”, which also appears, slowed down, in FrogForestVillage.ogg at the beginning, in the background), and some that make no sense whatsoever (neoBoss.ogg and specialitem.ogg have the same theme, but they are unrelated to each other in the game, the theme doesn’t get used anywhere else as far as I’m aware, and the other “Neo” tracks are unrelated to neoBoss.ogg).
I just noticed that some songs actually got replaced (and maybe deleted) over time, so you’ll have to go through the commit history to find the older versions. Particularly, FrogattoStage1.ogg which is an absolute gem.
Ah, I just realized that a variant of the theme from neoBoss.ogg and specialitem.ogg also appears in the unused DumDuhDee.ogg track which is supposed to be used for comedic moments, so again unrelated to the other two uses.
Unfortunately, this comment got deleted. See the August 2021 post.
My July comment got deleted. I’m going to repost it here. Did it get deleted because it was too late? Because it contained too many links? Are you aware of how the deletion came to be and can help me avoid this situation in the future?
Requesting for the second time (a lot of details are in my comment under the June 2021 post): please do an analysis video on the soundtrack of Frogatto & Friends.
The full soundtrack, around 100 songs, is available on GitHub (of all places), here: https://github.com/frogatto/frogatto/tree/master/music — it’s quite obscure. The composer is Ryan Reilly (https://soundcloud.com/ryanreilly). I don’t know much about him, either.
In June 2021, I wrote about the OST for the first time and briefly talked about the themes and the beauty in ChipSneak.ogg, FrogForest.ogg, FrogForestVillage.ogg, neoBoss.ogg, specialitem.ogg, and mentioned that there are two versions of FrogattoStage1.ogg.
Today, I’d like to write about some of the good balance in tone, mood, and dynamics in the Frogatto soundtrack.
Consider CrispDrum.ogg, for example. Note that this soundtrack is 13 minutes and 42 seconds long — in a free indie game. Where else do you find such quality?! Crisp Drum has a nice balance between three vibes which the song switches back and forth between: the melancholic vibe at the start, the happy and bright vibe, and the dark and mysterious vibe. There aren’t really strongly clear-cut sections of one vibe ending and the other beginning; instead, the different instruments overlap each other — each of them creating its own mood. The song starts with a choir-like synth, introduces some percussion, and goes back and forth between melancholy and very dark synth chords. But sometimes, a piano is playing, introducing these little jazzy bursts of happiness.
I really love the contrast between these sections. Two of my favorite parts in the song are around 8:47 and around 10:02, the latter of which has a particularly strong shift in mood. At this last point, the song never returns to the dark or melancholic vibe again; it’s as if you’re leaving a dangerous area and finally reaching safety.
What I want to express about Crisp Drum in particular, is how nicely it balances and combines different moods. Next, let’s take a look at the song Mystic Forest which includes some of the strongest dynamics I’ve heard in a video game OST. And holy heck, this tremolo is amazing!
MysticForest.ogg is actually not a Frogatto OST, but a Weregild OST (https://github.com/frogatto/weregild), which is by the same developers, runs on the same game engine, and has the same composer. The song is also known as Laila’s Forest (https://soundcloud.com/ryanreilly/lailas-forest). The song is a bit over 9 minutes long, but it feels so much shorter. (Doesn’t it?) I attribute this to the various shifts in dynamics (plus the low tempo). The very silent sections in the song make you anticipate the upcoming louder sections and crescendos.
I love how the song just takes its time, so you have all the time you need to immerse yourself in whatever world Weregild is set in (I wouldn’t know; I don’t think the game is even finished yet).
To finish, I’ll briefly mention a few noteworthy songs: Mysterioso.ogg also has nicely balanced dynamics. FrogForest.ogg has different instruments overlaying each other at different volumes and a beautiful crescendo, as mentioned in June. WorldMap.ogg has quite a powerful crescendo at 2:31. You know how sometimes music is just “too much” and you get too emotional to continue singing (or humming), exactly like in the introduction of Adam Neely’s video The most elegant key change in all of pop music? Yeah, I get that from World Map’s crescendo a lot…
Requesting for the third time (a lot of details are in my comment under the June 2021 post): please do an analysis video on the soundtrack of Frogatto & Friends.
The full soundtrack, around 100 songs, is available on GitHub (of all places), here: https://github.com/frogatto/frogatto/tree/master/music — it’s quite obscure. The composer is Ryan Reilly (https://soundcloud.com/ryanreilly). I don’t know much about him, either.
In June 2021, I wrote about the OST for the first time and briefly talked about the themes and the beauty in ChipSneak.ogg, FrogForest.ogg, FrogForestVillage.ogg, neoBoss.ogg, specialitem.ogg, and mentioned that there are two versions of FrogattoStage1.ogg.
In August 2021, I wrote about the balance in tone, mood, and dynamics, and pointed it out in the tracks CrispDrum.ogg, MysticForest.ogg (aka Laila’s Forest), Mysterioso.ogg, FrogForest.ogg, and WorldMap.ogg.
As written in the introduction in June, there are a few themes throughout the Frogatto soundtrack. I’d like to focus on two of them which are interrelated: the hero’s theme — Frogatto’s theme — and the villain’s theme — Milgram’s theme. Unfortunately, defining Frogatto’s theme isn’t that straightforward, especially in relation to Milgram’s theme. There’s also a lot to cover when talking about these themes, so I’ll have to split this into four parts; I’ll talk about Frogatto’s theme today and in October, and about Milgram’s theme in November. In December, I’ll cover a few closely related themes.
Part 1: Defining Frogatto’s theme.
The question “What is Frogatto’s theme?” cannot be easily answered. Instead, you need to have an understanding of the “patterns” used in his themes. Themes, plural? Good question… One thing is certain: there’s a very simple motif used in both Frogatto’s theme and Milgram’s theme: they both start with three ascending notes which are relatively close together (usually the first three notes of a minor scale), and are rhythmically equidistant and relatively slow, compared to the rest of either theme.
So go get ya kazoo or ya otamatone or ya 7-string bass or whatever and play A3, B3, C4, slowly, equally. That’s it. That’s the pattern to be looking out for! It definitely helps having already listened through the soundtrack to get some context for the examples below.
Perhaps the most beautiful example of the “Frogatto theme” would be the beginning of Stage 1 (FrogattoStage1.ogg; I’ve mentioned this in a follow-up comment before, in my June comment: the currently available version on GitHub is a remastered version and there’s an older one, but the themes are identical).
It starts like this¹ (simplified): 4/4 meter, rather fast: ⟨2 G♯5⟩ ⟨2 A♯5⟩ | ⟨3.5 B5⟩ ⟨0.5 A♯5⟩ | ⟨1 G♯5⟩ ⟨1 B5⟩ ⟨1 A♯5⟩ ⟨1 F♯5⟩ | ⟨3.5 F5⟩ (⟨0.5 …⟩) | …
There’s our three ascending notes at the start, followed by a descent back to the first note, and the jazzy melody ending that phrase (of 9 notes) on a raised sixth, providing this dorian vibe. (Note that I’m obviously a layman in music theory, which is of course one of the reasons I’m wishing for a Frogatto video by you.)
So far, this was only the first half of Frogatto’s theme. Frogatto’s theme is actually a call-and-response pattern.
It continues like this: 4/4 meter, rather fast: … ⟨0.5 D♯5⟩ | ⟨2 C♯5⟩ ⟨2 D♯5⟩ | ⟨Grace F♯5⟩ ⟨3.5 G♯5⟩ ⟨0.5 F♯5⟩ | ⟨2 F5⟩ ⟨1.5 Rest⟩ ⟨0.5 A5 → F5 → C♯5 → A4⟩ | ⟨3.5 A♯4⟩ (⟨0.5 …⟩) | …
Now, another good candidate for “the” Frogatto theme is the start of the Title track (FrogattoTitle.ogg, not to be confused with the unused FrogattoTitleTheme.ogg). After an intro of stacked fourths, a very similar tune starts playing.
It goes something like this¹ (simplified): 4/4 meter, rather fast: ⟨0.25 B♭5⟩ ⟨0.25 B♮5⟩ | ⟨1 C6⟩ ⟨1 D♭6⟩ ⟨0.25 D♭6⟩ ⟨1.25 E♭6⟩ ⟨0.5 D♭6⟩ | ⟨1 C6⟩ ⟨1 B♭5⟩ ⟨2 G♭5⟩ | …
Uh, if I had to guess, I’d say the C locrian mode fits pretty well, but what do I know. The actual three-note motif starts at the C6. But now, the ascent begins with a half step and proceeds with a whole step rather than the other way around as seen in Stage 1. Also, the D♭6 is repeated, but this fits the rest of the track which likes this kind of rhythm.
These two examples contain different notes, but the similarity is definitely recognizable. The same track uses the following notes around 01:53:
4/4 meter: ⟨1 B♭4⟩ ⟨1 C5⟩ ⟨1.5 D♭5⟩ ⟨0.5 C5⟩ | ⟨0.5 B♭4⟩ ⟨0.5 D♭5⟩ ⟨0.5 C5⟩ ⟨0.5 A♭4⟩ ⟨2 B♭4⟩
These are the same starting notes as Stage 1 (transposed up by a major second), though it continues a bit differently. This variation also appears in Gazer Boss (GazerBoss.ogg) around 01:08 and 02:30, and in Fanfare (FrogattoFanfare.ogg) around 00:05 (starting with F♯, each).
Around 02:33, the Title track uses the notes G♯4 A♯4 B4 A♯4 G♯4 F♯4 F♮4 which, as it turns out, is the most common Frogatto theme variation. The previous one is the second most common variation. This shorter pattern is indeed an abbreviation of the longer pattern. The shorter pattern appears in numerous tracks such as Symph (FrogattoSymph.ogg, around 00:53 and 03:01, starting with F♯4), Tea For Two (TeaForTwo.ogg, around 01:20 and 03:58, starting with B4), Stage 1 (around 03:56, starting with G♯5), Music Box (FrogattoMusicBox.ogg, at start, starting with B♭6), Morning (FrogattoMorning.ogg, around 00:41, starting with A4), Gunslinger (Gunslinger.ogg, around 01:39, starting with B4), Bedtime Storyline Segment (FrogattoBedtimeStorylineSegment.ogg, around 00:49, starting with F♯5), Boss Mischievy 1 (Frogatto_Boss_Mischievy1.ogg, around 01:02, starting with B4), Boss Mischievy 2 (Frogatto_Boss_Mischievy2.ogg, around 00:11, starting with G♯4), and a few others. Whew…
Now that these melodies are established, let me say that there are far more variations than these. Whereas these are the melodies most commonly associated with “Frogatto’s theme”, there’s a lot more depth to it throughout the soundtrack. Part 2 will cover the variations of these themes.
Footnote 1: I wish I knew some convention of how to do music notation in text form. I know there is some textual notation for music notation software, but is there something general that people understand, even if they don’t use any notation software?
PS: In order to write this I went through the entire soundtrack and wrote down all the instances of Frogatto’s theme, Milgram’s theme and a couple of other themes. I might have missed a few or misinterpreted a couple things, and the timestamps might not be accurate.
Requesting for the fourth time: please do an analysis video on the soundtrack of Frogatto & Friends. A lot of the details are in my comment under the June 2021 post.
The full soundtrack, around 100 songs, is available on GitHub (of all places), here: https://github.com/frogatto/frogatto/tree/master/music. It’s quite obscure. The composer is Ryan Reilly (https://soundcloud.com/ryanreilly). I don’t know much about him, either.
In September I posted about the hero’s theme and the villain’s theme: Frogatto’s theme and Milgram’s theme, respectively, though I’ve split it into four parts; today I’ll post the second part. In the first part I was trying to define what Frogatto’s theme is like. Now it’s time for all the variations of the theme.
Part 2: Variations of Frogatto’s theme.
Recall that around 02:33, the Title track uses the notes G♯4 A♯4 B4 A♯4 G♯4 F♯4 F♮4. When listening through the entire soundtrack, you can determine that this is what Frogatto’s theme sounds like most commonly. Part 1 was entirely about the most common, most fundamental properties of Frogatto’s theme, but there is so much more to it: this theme appears nearly everywhere, each time with a different mood.
For example, if that last note from the Title track, F♮4, was replaced by an E4, we’d get another variation found around 09:11 and 09:28 of the Stage 1 track (but beginning with F5 and C♯5, respectively). I just spent a while listening to this part at 09:11, and I find it beautiful how it starts with F5 G5 A♭5 G5, while D♭ is in the bass, which then goes to B♭ in the lower octave, as the melody continues with F5 E♭5 D♭5; so this means, the D♭ and G briefly create a tritone, which resolves to this B♭m or B♭m⁷ chord — quite beautiful.
And if that last note from the Title melody was replaced by an D♯4, we’d get another variation, which is found in Stage Cycle (FrogattoStageCycle.ogg) around 03:22. If it was replaced by a C♯4, we’d get a variation found in Boss Mischievy 2 at the beginning, and in Village Or Chill Or Whatever (FrogattoVillageOrChillOrWhatever.ogg, gotta love that “title”…) around 00:18 (but starts with G5).
If we take that longer pattern again (A♭5 B♭5 C♭6 B♭5 A♭5 C♭6 B♭5 G♭5 F5) and replace the final F5 by an E♭5, we get another instance in Village Or Chill Or Whatever, this time around 00:27 (however beginning with G5 instead), and this pattern occurs a few times in Harpsichord Finale (FrogattoHarpsichordFinale.ogg), beginning with G4. Replace it by a D♭6, jumping up by a fifth, and we get a variation found in Frogatto And Milgram End Credits (Frogatto_And_Milgram_End_Credits.ogg) around 02:33 and 05:07, beginning with G5.
Crisp Drum, the track I talked about in August, contains two variations: one contains the notes F♯4 G♯4 A4 G♯4 F♯4 C♯4 D4 E4 C♯4 around 08:49, the other one A♭4 B♭4 D♭5 C5 B♭4 D♭5 C5 A♭4 F4 around 10:16. In the first one, the melody goes down from F♯4 to C♯4, in the second one, it goes up from A♭4 over B♭4 to D♭5. Both of these have one thing in common: there are some nice fourths in there.
The beginning could be further altered: the notes C4 D4 E♭4 D4 B♭3 C4 D4 C4 play in Gun Et Cetera (GunEtCetera.ogg) at 01:02 and 07:35, and the major third down from D4 to B♭3 is quite an unexpected “subversion” of Frogatto’s theme with an abrupt ending. That major third down also exists in Stage 1 around 07:13 (A5 B5 C6 B5 G5 A5 C6 D6 C6 B5), but it doesn’t end as abruptly. And in Harpsichord Finale, around 08:21, G4 A4 B♭4 A4 F4 A4 G4 D4 C4 D4 plays. These variations create a sort of gloomy or bittersweet vibe.
Now, let’s briefly turn to the other puzzle piece of Frogatto’s theme: the response of the call-and-response pattern. Look at my September comment again, and Ctrl+F for “Grace”: Stage 1 has this grace note F♯5 right before the G♯5. There are several alternative interpretations of it: Bedtime Storyline Segment, for example, plays the Frogatto theme twice, starting with F♯5: around 00:49 and around 01:08. Both times, when it gets to that point where the original grace note sits, instead of a single E5 grace note moving up to F♯5, there’s this quick A4 C♯5 E5 E5 F♯5 pattern, with a repeated E5. Something similar happens in Morning (around 00:51, with C4 E4 G4 A4) and in Boss Mischievy 2 (around 00:16, with B4 D♯5 F♯5 G♯5), both of which are essentially the same thing without the repetition. Each of these is a major triad arpeggio with a major sixth. Cool! Because the arpeggio just explicitly outlines the chord that is already playing, in some sense it is not surprising to find these variations here; the arpeggio has always been somewhat implied.
I have more variations ready. There are so many… I’ve counted approximately 40. Frogatto has one versatile theme! At the end of the day, whichever theme variation is included in a track generally fits the mood of that track.
There are two tracks in particular that I’d like to highlight, which have a large variety of different interpretations of the Frogatto theme: Stage Cycle and Village Or Chill Or Whatever. The latter is not only very fun to listen to, but also has this peculiar “implied” theme around 04:23 and 05:00.
It goes like this: 4/4 meter, slow: ⟨1 E3⟩ ⟨1 F3⟩ ⟨1.5 G3⟩ ⟨0.5 F3⟩ | ⟨0.5 D3⟩ ⟨0.5 Rest⟩ ⟨0.5 Rest⟩ ⟨0.5 C3⟩ ⟨1.5 G2⟩ ⟨0.5 Rest⟩ | …
Hm… that’s a long rest. A rest where the notes ⟨0.5 F3⟩ ⟨0.5 E3⟩ could perfectly fit inside… Cue the Lisa Simpson quote “You have to listen to the notes she’s not playing”.
I think that’s more than enough on Frogatto’s theme — though there’s a final interesting facet about the hero’s theme: weirdly, it appears in many boss fight tracks, especially for mini bosses, while some larger bosses have their own theme. Obviously, the main villain has his own theme, but even in that final fight against him, you’ll hear both themes. In the next part, in November, I’ll take a look at the villain’s theme itself. Milgram is his name and, looking at him, he looks like a purple dragon whose design seems to have obviously been inspired by Bowser from Super Mario… huh, never noticed that. Anyway, see ya next month!
Requesting for the fifth time: please do an analysis video on the soundtrack of Frogatto & Friends. A lot of the details are in my comment under the June 2021 post.
The full soundtrack, around 100 songs, is available on GitHub (of all places), here: https://github.com/frogatto/frogatto/tree/master/music. It’s quite obscure. The composer is Ryan Reilly (https://soundcloud.com/ryanreilly). I don’t know much about him, either.
In September and October I posted about the hero’s theme and the villain’s theme: Frogatto’s theme and Milgram’s theme respectively, though I’ve split it into four parts; today I’ll post the third part. In the first part I was trying to define what Frogatto’s theme is like. In the second part I’ve rushed through several variations of the theme. Let’s now take a look at the villain’s theme.
Part 3: Milgram’s theme.
Milgram is the villain. So of course, you expect only the most dissonant harmonies, the worst flat ninths, the most egregious tritones! Well, it’s not that bad actually. Milgram isn’t a mindless monster: he’s actually an approachable dude, especially at the end. Can’t tell you any details about this “character development” since I haven’t played the game in a while and it could potentially spoil the ending, but it doesn’t matter — this is a (wannabe) music analysis after all, right?
Let’s just define what Milgram’s theme is supposed to sound like. There’s a short soundtrack called Milgram Swagger (MilgramSwagger.ogg) which cleanly presents the idea of Milgram’s theme:
4/4 meter, slowly: ⟨1 E♭3⟩ ⟨1 F3⟩ ⟨2 G♭3⟩ | ⟨1 D♮4⟩ ⟨0.5 D♭4⟩ ⟨0.5 C♭4⟩ ⟨1 B♭3⟩ ⟨1 E♭3⟩ | ⟨1 A♭3⟩ ⟨1 E♭3⟩ ⟨1 G♭3⟩ ⟨1 E♭3⟩ | ⟨1 F3⟩ ⟨0.5 E♮3⟩ ⟨0.5 E♭3⟩ ⟨1 D♮3⟩ ⟨1 B♭2⟩ |
As with Frogatto’s themes, I’ve also found every instance of Milgram’s theme throughout the soundtrack, and yes: Milgram’s theme also has a bunch of variations, but it occurs much more rarely. Frogatto’s theme is kind of everywhere, whereas Milgram’s theme only occurs in a few places, mostly towards the end of the game. It turns out that the theme above is actually kind of an outlier, even if it sounds like the defining theme. However, lots of soundtracks don’t get to be used in the actual game (yet?) or are simply obsolete. The most common themes, weirdly, occur in such unused soundtracks, or in a location that doesn’t appear to have anything to do with Milgram.
Anyway, here are a few more common variations of Milgram’s theme:
Generic Boss Battle (Frogatto_Generic_Boss_Battle.ogg, at 00:11 and 00:55) and the newer version of Milgram Chamber (MilgramChamber.ogg at the start) both have the same intervals, though the first track is more upbeat and the rhythm is slightly different. The boss battle track starts Milgram’s theme with a C♯5, the other track with a B♭3. Picking the C♯5 starting note (and C♯ minor as the key), the melody contains these notes: C♯5 D♯5 E5 A5 G♯5 G♮5 G♯5 E5 F♯5 C♯5 E5 C♯5 D♯5 D♮5 D♯5 A5 G♯5.
If the last two notes were transposed one octave down, that’s a variation you’d hear in Frogatto And Milgram End Credits (at 03:35, starting with B♭3). If you further replaced that last accidental D♮4 by a C♯4, you’d get the second most common variation, appearing in Harpsichord Finale three times, but in two distinct styles: at 05:26 and 06:40, you’ll hear this modified melody starting with G4 in a similar mood and tempo as Milgram Swagger; but starting at 06:03, a very nice guitar solo plays a few variations of Milgram’s theme, including this one and the one mentioned before. (For the sake of completeness: each repetition of Milgram’s theme might be a slight variation, in particular changing that last accidental as mentioned before; the theme repetitions start at G3, each, then, in another round of repetitions, each repetition start at D4.)
There’s another second most common variation: C♮5 C♯5 D♯5 A5 G♯5 F♯5 G♯5 B5 etc. The first three notes are now a half step then a whole tone, rather than the other way around. This appears thrice in the yet unused Bed Time Story Fugue With Milgram Theme (BedTimeStoryFugueWithMilgramTheme.ogg) (00:40, 01:53, and — one octave higher — 02:17) and works as a “continuation” of the tune played right before the theme.
At the beginning of this four part “series”, I mentioned that there’s a very simple motif used in both Frogatto’s theme and Milgram’s theme. I was talking about the first three notes: in Milgram’s theme they’re also ascending notes, usually in a minor scale. The rhythm is also quite similar.
But that’s mostly all the similarity there is. The differences are a bit more striking. For example: after the initial three notes, Frogatto’s theme goes back down again; Milgram’s theme goes up, instead. Whereas neither theme includes disgusting dissonances, Milgram’s theme variations contain tritones far more often. Some of the villain’s themes can best be harmonized with augmented triads. Frogatto’s theme variations often fit diatonically into a specific key, whereas Milgram’s themes often make use of accidentals, usually in the form of minor seconds. So, there are more dissonances, but rather “soft” dissonances.
Interestingly, while most variations of Milgram’s theme are non-diatonic, there are a few that at least start diatonically, two of which appear in one of the coolest Frogatto tracks, and (somewhat ironically) one of the jazziest as well: Milgram Boss Battle (MilgramBossBattle.ogg, at 00:37 and 01:14, both starting with F4).
Milgram’s theme also plays in his throne room. It’s an organ version, reminiscent of when Ganondorf’s theme plays in The Legend of Zelda shortly before the final battle. Milgram Chamber (the old version) plays the theme at 01:00 containing these notes in the melody: B♭3 C4 D♭4 G♭4 F4 E♭4 F4 D♭4 E♭4 B♮3 D♮4 B♭3 D♭4 E♮4 A♭4 G♮4. I can’t really tell all the notes that are playing, but the harmony in this track shifts between minor and major every now and then, and in the bass, the same notes play, transposed a major sixth plus an octave down (so C♯2 D♯2 E2 etc.). When I compare the whole piece to, say, the “Inside Ganon’s Castle” track from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, then Milgram’s theme is considerably less “doom and gloom”. It’s a bit scary, but there’s also hope and beauty. This fits the “approachable dude” assessment from earlier.
Tea For Two, the harpsichord track where the credits roll, contains Frogatto’s theme and also Milgram’s theme: at 01:48. It starts with F♯5 G♯5 A5 D6 C♯6 B5 A♯5 F♯5 B5 F♯5 A5 F♯5 G♯5 F♯5 G♯5 F♮5 and repeats another three times with a few variations. Maybe it’s the medieval vibes, but at least I hear a flute playing this. What villain has a flute theme? In my mind, I always picture a jester playing this (probably one of Milgram’s cat minions); this is a much more “playful” version, particularly the last repetition. This likely demonstrates the contrast between before and after Milgram was thought of as “scary” by Frogatto and friends.
The Frogatto soundtrack has a few specific themes which may occur in any track. When listening to the soundtrack it’s always nice to recognize these themes. It’s very pleasant to hear how the different themes fit together and how they fit to the rest of a particular track. There are a few other themes which I’ll probably talk about in spring 2022 (assuming there still is no Frogatto video 😅). Once some familiarity is gained by listening to the soundtrack all day, every day, most themes can be recognized. With Milgram this is especially easy since his theme occurs in every track with “Milgram” in the name — a few more variations exist in the soundtrack as well.
However there are a few themes even I had to label with a question mark. They are somehow related to Frogatto’s or Milgram’s theme, but they don’t clearly fit either pattern and they probably aren’t another distinct theme. I’ll briefly look at these in Part 4, next month.
Requesting for the sixth time: please do an analysis video on the soundtrack of Frogatto & Friends. A lot of the details are in my comment under the June 2021 post.
The full soundtrack, around 100 songs, is available on GitHub (of all places), here: https://github.com/frogatto/frogatto/tree/master/music. It’s quite obscure. The composer is Ryan Reilly (https://soundcloud.com/ryanreilly). I don’t know much about him, either.
In September, October, and November I posted about the hero’s theme and the villain’s theme: Frogatto’s theme and Milgram’s theme respectively, all split into three parts, since there’s a lot of things to look at. Today I’ll post the final part, which examines some themes that sound somehow related to either Frogatto’s theme or Milgram’s theme.
But first, I have to include an addendum to the first three parts. The Milgram and Frogatto themes do have a similar start and you could argue that, in Milgram’s theme, the notes descending from up high after the first four ascending notes represent some kind of authority over Frogatto, as if Milgram is looking down on the hero (he is indeed much larger than the little frog, after all). The identical beginning however could perhaps represent something revealed at the very ending — spoiler alert (but not really, because this is a relatively common trope) —: the fact that the hero and the supposed villain have much more in common than initially assumed (in a good way).
Oh dang, I’m submitting this on the last day of the month again… to take this opportunity to wish y’all a happy new year! Hope you had some relaxing holidays! Okay, now, about those themes…
Part 4: Related themes.
There are a few tracks in the game which classify as fugues: Harpsichord Finale, Music Box (probably), Tea For Two, — heck, Bed Time Story Fugue With Milgram Theme even has it in the name! Something I noticed really late: Bach’s Fugue in G minor, probably the most well-known fugue, not only has a lot in common with these “harpsichord melodies”, i.e. this G D A D B♭ pattern, but also with the Frogatto theme itself.
I also noticed that I didn’t mention 0:28 of Milgram Boss Battle yet: G♯5 A♯5 B5 A♯5 G♯5 A♯5 F♯5 G♯5. This might be one of Frogatto’s theme variations, but to me it sounds a little ambiguous. Looking at the last six notes of this patterns, the intervals between them are matched exactly in Milgram’s theme, in the same track, as well. In fact, the only thing stopping this from being a proper Milgram theme is a perfect fourth after the first two notes and before the rest. So replacing the G♯5 A♯5 from the start by a D♯5 F♮5 F♯5 and then playing the rest yields the start of the Milgram theme used in this track.
There are two tracks which include quite a different melody: Boss Mischievy 2 around 00:31 and Dream Adventure (FrogattoDreamAdventure.ogg) around 00:16.
The melody goes like this: 4/4 meter: ⟨0.5 G4⟩ ⟨1 A♭4⟩ ⟨0.5 B♮4⟩ ⟨1.5 B♭4⟩ ⟨0.5 A♭4⟩ | ⟨0.5 G4⟩ ⟨0.5 B♭4⟩ ⟨0.5 D♭5⟩ ⟨0.5 B♮4⟩ ⟨2 B♭4⟩ | …
Here, the expected pattern G4 A♭4 B♭4 is intercepted by this short B♮4 note and the starting G4 is much shorter than the following notes. Ooh, but is it still a Frogatto theme? If this B♮4 was removed from the first measure, this pattern would start like G4 A♭4 B♭4 A♭4 G4 B♭4 D♭5 B♮4 B♭4. I couldn’t find this exact pattern in the Frogatto soundtrack, but the closest match can be found in Morning around 01:22: G♯3 A3 B3 A3 G♯3 B3 A3 F♯3 G♯3, then repeated but ending on an E3 instead. Same intervals at the start — so far, so good. The way I see it, E3 seems to be the root note of a major scale. Translating the melody within Morning to scale degrees, we’d have 3 4 5 4 3 5 4 2 3 and 3 4 5 4 3 5 4 2 1. These melodies outline an E major chord. Now, back to Dream Adventure, where a similar thing happens but in E♭ major: 3 4 ♭6 5 4 3 5 ♭7 ♭6 5. (Ugh… ♭6 and ♭7? May be some other mode…). This 5 4 3 5 reemerges and the ♭7 implies an E♭7 chord or so. Not quite sure here, but that’s the closest match.
And last but not least, I’d like to point out a theme from the Stage 1 track which plays around 04:29; it consists of these notes: G5 A♭5 B♭5 D♭6 E♭6 C6 E♭6 B♮5. This has a similar start to the Frogatto or Milgram theme variations: half step, then whole step. But the following minor third is something quite different that doesn’t occur in either theme. These three intervals appear in a more common variation; let’s pick G5 as the starting note again: G5 A♭5 B♭5 D♭6 C6 E♭6 B♭5. This appears in (*inhales*) Bedtime Storyline Segment around 00:10, starting with D♯4, in Boss Battle Spastic (FrogattoBossBattleSpastic.ogg) around 01:05, starting with D4, in Frogatto And Milgram End Credits around 00:15, 01:01, 01:33, and 04:06, starting with E4 or E3, in Morning around 00:08, starting with F♯3, and in Walking Along 2 (WalkingAlongfin2.ogg) around 00:16, starting with G5.
Both of these alternative themes, i.e. the one in Dream Adventure and the one in Walking Along 2, have a more heroic sound to them. In the latter, the first four notes “add up” to an ascending tritone. I don’t really know how the other one achieves this.
That’s all I know! Now, let’s have a safe and happy new year!
Requesting for the seventh time: please do an analysis video on the soundtrack of Frogatto & Friends. A lot of the details are in my comment under the June 2021 post.
The full soundtrack, around 100 songs, is available on GitHub (of all places), here: https://github.com/frogatto/frogatto/tree/master/music. It’s quite obscure. The composer is Ryan Reilly (https://soundcloud.com/ryanreilly). I don’t know much about him, either.
Yes, that’s been my “boilerplate” text for all of my request comments. I keep saying that the full Soundtrack is available on GitHub — which is weird. Normally, game soundtracks are available on YouTube, but not this one. Searching for “Frogatto OST” on YouTube yields like four relevant results. Four out of one hundred. And I’m convinced that some soundtracks have been taken down from YouTube over the last few years. The game is really that obscure, huh?
Fortunately, as this is an open source game, the music has to be freely available and come from somewhere. All the source code is hosted on GitHub. If you follow the link above, you’ll see the music directory, which has a few subdirectories for each “region” of the game: Seaside, Forest, Cave, Dungeon, then there is an arcade mode in the game, where you can train and test your jump-and-run skills, so there is an Arcade directory. There’s also a General directory and a Deprecated and an Unused directory. Sadly, these two directories are filled with really good music that most players never get to hear. Ironically, some soundtracks in the “normal” directory are also actually unused. In the parent directory of /music (there’s also /music_aac), there’s also a /sounds (and /sounds_wav), which contains various sound effects, but also fanfares, for example.
Whenever I introduce a song, I mention the file name of the soundtrack in this GitHub repository, e.g. like this: Check out the song Beach Town (FrogBeachTown.ogg) which has a soul-soothing melody! What you can do on GitHub, now, is press the Go to file button above the list of files, and type in FrogBeachTown.ogg in the search field, and you’ll immediately find the file path as /music/General/FrogBeachTown.ogg. Click the result, download it (e.g. View raw or the Download button), have a listen, take your cup of tea, relax, think about the good things in life, be proud of what you’ve accomplished, be grateful for the more than 1000 patrons that support you every month. And that’s how GitHub works, in a nutshell.
But there is more that you can find out on GitHub. There is an entire commit history, i.e. all the changes that have been made to any file or directory. Back in July and August I’ve been rummaging through the commit history to find any change in the /music directory. Mostly, the tracks have been trimmed at the start or end, so that they loop smoothly; sometimes the quality got improved. Those are minor changes, but I’ve found a few tracks that have been replaced or deleted altogether. And here’s me praying to the Patreon gods that my comment won’t be removed because it contains so many links!
The track FrogattoStage1.ogg has been updated on September 14, 2016. The old version can be found here: https://github.com/frogatto/frogatto/blob/bcd1c1c3934a48ca8e84319969cceb2f86e7ac48/music/Seaside/FrogattoStage1.ogg. The new version adds a lot of layers to the older song, and even a new section. I don’t think anything is “lost” in the new version. Sometimes a particular bass melody appears in the new version that adds so much depth, and sounds so cool! For instance, around 04:40 there’s this quick ascending sequence of notes outlining (probably) the F mixolydian scale, and a similar one at 04:02.
The track MilgramChamber.ogg has been completely replaced by something else (with the same name), on December 12, 2013. The old version is here: https://github.com/frogatto/frogatto/blob/deda17e6bbdd2a177025a1ea55c33b0c49e4828d/music/Dungeon/MilgramChamber.ogg. Basically, these are two different songs. Both are pieces played on the organ. One version sounds a bit darker; the other version sounds much richer.
The track Symph.ogg has only undergone minor changes on September 8, 2013: only the volume has changed around a few sections. If you want, here’s where you can find the old version: https://github.com/frogatto/frogatto/blob/0593cd6f70a6b4bea3899518b9a6122865815994/music/Arcade/FrogattoSymph.ogg.
And some songs have been moved to entirely different games. For example, the same developers have a game called “Cube Trains” and one called “Weregild”. In the distant past, when the game engine, Anura, was conceived, all its games were different “modules” of the engine. If you downloaded one game you actually downloaded the entire game engine and the other games as well. As a consequence, the music has also been thrown into the same directory, for all games. This has been split around May 6, 2013. Now it’s clear that, e.g. MysticForest.ogg is a Weregild soundtrack, and the Train Songs are part of Cube Trains — they never were Frogatto soundtracks. Even though, they’re amazing songs by the same composer, and sound very similar to the Frogatto soundtracks.
There’s also the composer’s SoundCloud account, where some songs are available. I think I’ll save that for the February post. Have a happy new year, for now!
Requesting for the eighth time: please do an analysis video on the soundtrack of Frogatto & Friends. A lot of the details are in my comment under the June 2021 post.
The full soundtrack, around 100 songs, is available on GitHub (of all places), here: https://github.com/frogatto/frogatto/tree/master/music. It’s quite obscure. The composer is Ryan Reilly (https://soundcloud.com/ryanreilly). I don’t know much about him, either.
This time, I’ll briefly introduce the World Map theme. WorldMap.ogg is quite a heroic-sounding tune. It could be considered to be the “secondary” main theme, representing the rest of the soundtrack pretty well. But it’s used far less commonly than Frogatto’s theme and there’s another candidate for the secondary main theme: the “Symph” theme, defined by the eponymous FrogattoSymph.ogg.
The track itself is a beautiful orchestral piece mainly consisting of strings and a piano, a harp and flutes, and probably some kind of synth. It ends in a powerful brass section finale. The track includes a theme which is used in a few tracks; it consists of a few repeated parts where each part is repeated slightly differently.
One of the theme’s exemplary parts starts around 01:17 of the eponymous track and has these notes: B4 C♯5 D5 A4 F♯4 G4 A4 B4 G4 F♯4 E4 D4 E4 F♯4 G♯4 E4 B4 A4 A4 B4 C♯5 D5 A4 E4 D♯4 F♯4 F♯4 E4 B4 C♯5 A4 E4 D4 E4 F♯4 G♯4 E4 B4 D5 E5. It’s a tune that seems to be in D major, starting with the fifth (as usual, this is transposed in other tracks). Most of the notes are diatonic, though the accidentals D♯ and G♯ appear for harmonic effect.
Certain phrases stand out. For example, that B4 C♯5 D5 A4 E4 D♯4 descends by a fourth twice before landing on an accidental. That last part kind of implies a tritone, since the accidental is a semitone further down and a fourth plus a semitone equals a tritone. Then comes E4 D4 E4 F♯4 G♯4 E4, which has three consecutive ascending whole tones, landing on another accidental. These phrases imply some nice extended chords!
Along with certain variations, this theme occurs in Boss Mischievy 2 (00:41), Boss Thing (frogattoBossThing.ogg) (01:26 and 02:49), Dream Adventure (00:31), Morning (01:40), Title Theme (FrogattoTitleTheme.ogg) (01:38), and Town Final (FrogattoTownFinal.ogg) (01:39) and Jungle Theme Elder (FrogattoJungleThemeElder.ogg) (00:25) (one includes the other). The last two have quite an interesting syncopation.
Your March post isn’t there yet, so this definitely counts as my February contribution! 😄
Requesting for the ninth time: please do an analysis video on the soundtrack of Frogatto & Friends. A lot of the details are in my comment under the June 2021 post.
The full soundtrack, around 125 songs, is available on GitHub (of all places) at https://github.com/frogatto/frogatto/tree/master/music, on SoundCloud at https://soundcloud.com/ryanreilly, and in the links in the sidebar on SoundCloud. It’s quite obscure. The composer is Ryan Reilly.
But this time around I know quite a bit more about Ryan! I’ve done something I’ve postponed for a long time: I’ve listened through all of Ryan’s SoundCloud discography. And it’s beautiful! And it’s chaotic!
Ryan absolutely does not disappoint: with most tracks that were new to me, I had the feeling each track was just better than the last. The musical ideas of him are just stunning! Familiar sounds of Frogatto shine through in his other music — timbre, chords, and anything else pertaining to his style of arranging music.
In Ryan Reilly’s main SoundCloud account you can find links to the FrogattoSound SoundCloud account, and to the Frogatto BandCamp account.
On Ryan’s main account, there are lots of concept pieces for RPGs, lots of remixes from existing games, and obscure games like Crystal Kingdom or Hero Of Allacrost also have some of their soundtracks there. And there’s music for Soka Gakkai International (SGI) USA, which is a buddhist community against nuclear weapons, called “New Clear Future” — a pun on the word “nuclear” (though it ended up unused). When I first heard it, I almost thought this was a Frogatto soundtrack. Anyway, beautiful vocals!
But more relevant for the Frogatto & Friends OST, his main account has lots of older versions, alternative versions, remasterings, etc., but also official versions of existing in-game music. I’ll list some noteworthy findings.
A track simply called “Frogatto Chill” is a neat acoustic guitar piece which features the “World Map” theme and sleigh bells (it’s also on GitHub; I might have missed this back in March); and there’s also the “Jazz Theme For Map And Guitar”, which also has this theme, but doesn’t feel very polished, in my opinion. There’re two really long organ pieces with Milgram’s theme called “Church Of Milgram”. “Milgram Stage Counterpoint” is definitely a beautiful addition to the collection of Milgram’s theme music; worth checking out! The SoundCloud account also answers the age-old question what happened to “Milgram Dungeon 1” given that “Milgram Dungeon 2” exists on GitHub: it’s a track that features the chiptune version of a honky-tonk piano. “Dungeon Orchestra” is a completely unique track featuring Frogatto’s theme. “Boss Battle Spastic” has a unique tune in an alternative version that is worth checking out. There’s an alternative version of “Danger Swamp” with more eerie sounds. There’s a track with “Bombaste” in the title, which is a bolder version of “Boss Thing”. And a track simply named “Chip FM1” sounds like a chiptune-rock version of the “FrogTech” arcade level theme, but has an interesting fresh melody to offer as well.
But most tracks related to Frogatto only have slight differences, or they’re less complete, i.e. older versions.
The link to “FrogattoSound” (found in the sidebar) includes 38 tracks, which is quite a random collection of very old pieces. It also includes things that never really were part of the game, like Weregild OSTs (search “Claudius”) or Cube Trains OSTs (search “Train”). These games were made by the same developers, but I assume that these soundtracks were added to this now seemingly abandoned SoundCloud account at the time when all these different projects were still kind of mixed together in one big messy code base. Only later did each game get split into its own code repository, but the wrong soundtrack associations sill remain to this day, even in the GitHub repository. For example, there are two “Train Song” tracks (no pun intended) — each at a different tempo. These, as is clear today, are part of the Cube Trains game, not Frogatto & Friends. And yet, there is an unused track in the Frogatto repository titled “Rainy Day Train Jazz”, which we can very much assume to also belong to that train simulation game, not Frogatto & Friends — but who knows? That’s what we get for these games still being unfinished, still actively in development.
And it’s a messy list: it has Zelda and Contra remixes, some of the SGI tracks, and some other random entries which have nothing to do with Frogatto.
You’ll also find some really strange or funny alternative titles for some tracks.
For example, what is called DumDuhDee.ogg on GitHub can be found on SoundCloud and BandCamp with titles like “I Got Those Duh Derp Blues”, “Drrrpity McDrrple”, or “DumDeeDooBum Shoop Wop De Doop Wop”. The track MinimalWhyNotSad.ogg on GitHub also has titles like “Minimalist Agenda” on SoundCloud or “Minimal Cares, Lots Of Stares” on BandCamp. CrispDrum.ogg is called “OH YOU ANIME”, in all caps, on SoundCloud. GitHub has WellPut.ogg, which anyone would assume to mean “Well articulated” or “Well said”. BandCamp clarifies this by titling the piece “Put ’er There, FrogFace”, which almost feels like one of those “deez nuts” jokes. The Moth boss battle theme also has “Fly Boss” in the file name. So what is it? Is it a fly? Is it a moth? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? And Mysterioso.ogg is evidently a reference to Misterioso, a jazz album by Thelonious Monk (I later noticed that “Tea For Two” might also be a reference to an Art Tatum song). Some intentional and unintentional misspellings include: “Fanferrr” for “Fanfare”, the word “CONGRATURATIONZ”, and then there’s the “Boss Bottle Spastic Final” — ah, yes, the “boss bottle” as opposed to the “boss battle”!
There’s tons more, lots to be discovered on SoundCloud and BandCamp. And I absolutely recommend listening through Ryan Reilly’s music, including the stuff that isn’t for Frogatto & Friends. It’s full of gems — I guarantee.
Requesting for the tenth time: please do an analysis video on the soundtrack of Frogatto & Friends. A lot of the details are in my comment under the June 2021 post.
The full soundtrack, around 125 songs, is available on GitHub (of all places) at https://github.com/frogatto/frogatto/tree/master/music, on SoundCloud at https://soundcloud.com/ryanreilly, and in the links in the sidebar on SoundCloud. It’s quite obscure. The composer is Ryan Reilly.
I have often noticed that while your channel is named “8-bit Music Theory” you don’t only cover chiptune music, even though “chiptune” and “8-bit music” are often considered synonymous. But it recently occured to me that it’s a bit ambiguous as to whether these two can be considered musical genres at all. After all, you can write a jazzy sounding theme in FamiTracker and it can be considered both jazz and chiptune.
Another example: a lot of the Frogatto tracks are written like a Fugue, just — you know — with a decent amount of bleeps and bloops. Sometimes the musical genres are directly in the name of the track, e.g. Rockability.ogg implies rock, FrogReggae.ogg implies reggae, the tracks with “Fugue” in their names are exactly that. Guess which instrument plays in the “Harpsichord Finale”! And all the titles including “Drum” and “Jazz”, of course, include drum and jazz. But the frogattoHouse.ogg track does not include the House genre! It’s just the classical music piece that plays in the house stage. 😉️ However, it’s the very same jazz genre that manages to pervade nearly the entire Frogatto soundtrack, not just a few select pieces. It is special in the sense that so many tracks are “something + jazz”. The rock theme has jazz elements. The reggae theme has jazz elements.
Even the harpsichord track is jazzy: around 05:35 and 09:57, the harmony there is just precious. Rockability has quite the syncopation right from the start, but the harmony develops throughout the song, including countermelodies, chromaticism, etc., and the song alternates between two distinct sections, of which the second one (the jazzier one) is introduced with an ascending fourth and somewhat dissonant harmony and a single triangle hit (at 01:12 and 02:15). Frog Reggae has, again, beatiful harmonic and rhythmic elements, as all tracks. But these extend the song so it’s not just reggae. The transition to a very reduced sound with only the piano, soft percussion, and some background synths playing (at 02:49) is one of the things that make this song special.
The various musical styles are just blended beautifully in the soundtrack. The fact that the OST sounds so jazzy and is composed so well is what makes the soundtracks enjoyable again and again. I’ll describe a few tracks and summarize a few others.
What is unique about Rainy Day Train Jazz (RainyDayTrainJazz.ogg) are these strongly accented percussion beats that occasionally occur throughout the song in pairs, five sixteenth beats apart, usually on the sixteenth beat after the 3 and the “And” after the 4, creating kind of a second layer of syncopation. Another thing is this measure of almost-silence — only bass playing (sorry bass players) — around 01:45 transitioning from the marimba part to the piano part. When I first discovered this song, this really was the part that stuck with me, and I said to myself “Holy heck! I need to remember this song! This is amazing!”.
The track Chip Jazz 1 (ChipJazz1.ogg), right off the bat, has some strange swing rhythm of 3/4 or 6/4 or 6/8, but also has metric modulation. It has some really nice non-diatonic melodies, and varied instrumentation which is pleasant to the ear. It’s a short and sweet piece with a rather fast tempo, but it doesn’t feel rushed; instead it feels peacefully lively.
Chipperuni (Chipperuni.ogg) has a similar vibe at the start but has this part in the middle where the synth drops out for half a measure, twice. This relates to the thing that makes this song special: in the first section and the last section of the song, the rhythm of eighth beats is stressed in a firm manner. The middle section serves as a transition towards a different, somewhat stronger rhythm. It might feel as if the percussion flips the expectation of what is considered on-beat and off-beat, though the percussion does indeed change somehow. The melody is pretty neat, involving well-placed tritones and chromaticism. There’s a countermelody which shapes a complex harmony. The timbre is as soft and sweet as honey, making for a short but enjoyable listening experience.
A brief look at Drum Jazz (DrumJazz.ogg): it has a very fast melody or countermelody and ends with a melody where some notes are repeated consecutively. The track Moth Boss Battle (Frogatto_Moth_Boss_Battle.ogg) takes inspiration from Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight Of The Bumblebee”. Along with the Milgram Boss Battle theme (already mentioned in November 2021), this is one of the jazziest tunes in the OST. And Danger Swamp (DangerSwamp.ogg) is one of the most precious tracks, which features quite a complex melody, just like others, and a heavily syncopated bass line.
Obviously, there’s much more to say, but I already feel like I’m writing way too much every month. Luckily, these last few tracks speak for themselves, so listening to them is a strong recommendation!
Frogatto & Friends got mentioned in How Simple Chord Progressions Work on April 30, 2022!
I have noted these other ideas for the following months:
- Mention the Happy Forest themes, the fact that one of the themes occurs in Stage 1 Arcade, and the other one occurs in ChipZen Track 1 and ChipZen Track 4, and the fact that Happy Forest might as well be called ChipZen Track 2 or 3, since it’s been published around the same date on SoundCloud. Also mention how cool Happy Forest Part 2 sounds.
- The Symph theme
- Other themes
- Other works by Ryan Reilly
- Showcase those fast melodies as found in Alien Jam, Drum Jazz, Point Break, Forest Village Theme, 8Bitness, etc.
- The Forest theme
- The Prospera theme
- Current developments of Frogatto & Friends
New ideas would get added all the time. Eventually, individual songs would be analyzed, in the usual amateurish manner. All this can now be “paused” since the comments above have fulfilled the goal of Ben mentioning Frogatto in his videos.
This JSON file is the result of collecting a bunch of data for comparing and analyzing the salient musical themes, similarities, and other patterns within the Frogatto & Friends OST. The JSON data was merged into a single file from a few different files with different kinds of information. Please note that this is not, by any means, a complete data set and that it might contain errors.
The JSON file contains several fields that associate some metadata and musical information to a specific song. In detail, this JSON data is a keyed collection of songs. Each key is the title of a song. The corresponding values represent the song itself and have a structure with these possible keys:
sources- A list of URLs where you can find the song.
alias- A collection of keywords that the song has been named with; alternative titles of the song.
themeInstances- Musical information of the song is stored here. Details are below.
relatedSongs- A list of song titles that are remasterings of one another, or whose themes appears here, or that vaguely resemble the song.
releaseDate- The earliest known publication date (in ISO 8601 format) of the song.
The themeInstances value is a list of keyed collections that represent musical patterns, or “themes”. Each collection has a structure with these possible keys:
timestamp- The timestamp (minutes
:seconds) that the theme roughly starts at in the song. Note that subsequent repetitions are often not included as individual entries. startPitchandmelodyInHalfStepIntervals- These two fields encode the melody (without the rhythm) of a specific theme. The
startPitchis equivalent to scientific pitch notation (i.e."C4"is middle C). ThemelodyInHalfStepIntervalsis a list of intervals between two consecutive notes; the numbers represent the number of half steps. For example, the sequence B♭3 C4 F3 F4 yields the interval list[ 2, -7, 12 ], where2is a whole step up,-7is a fifth down,12is an octave up. This allows comparing melodies without specifying the key they’re in. Together with thestartPitch, the exact melody can be reconstructed (if that key exists). impliedMelodyInHalfStepIntervals- Similar to
melodyInHalfStepIntervals, but an alternative melody that feels “implied” in the song. For example, if some expected notes of a familiar theme are not played, themelodyInHalfStepIntervalsdoesn’t mention them, but theimpliedMelodyInHalfStepIntervalsincludes these “guessed” or implied notes. Another example is a simplified melody. This is subjective. themeLabel- The label I chose for a specific theme. For example, what I think to be the “Frogatto theme” gets the
"Frogatto"label if it sounds distinctly like the “Frogatto theme”. This is a rather vague labeling that I kept using after listening to the entire soundtrack several times. comment- Additional notes worth sharing.
Some themes did not get associated with a melody yet. These are representative melodies for the following themes:
- Danger Swamp
[ -6, 6, 0, -2, 2, 0, 1, 2, -2, -1, 1, -1, -4 ]- Happy Forest
[ 2, 3, -1, -4, -4, 2, 2, 2 ]- Harpsichord
[ -5, 7, -7, 8, 2, -2, -1, -3 ]- Symph
[ 2, 2, -5, -4, 2, 3, -5, 12, -2, -1, -2, 2, -2, -2, -1, -2, -1 ]