Something totally off-topic from anything I’ve written recently.
A few months ago, I got the soundtrack to Riven: The Sequel to Myst. Myst and Riven have both held a dear place in my heart. I remember the first time I played through them both. I was very impressed with each game as they did not really feel like a video game but an adventure. I coached several people through Myst and some through Riven. Disappointing to me is that the Windows version of Myst truncated some of the most excellent soundtrack, and seeing that new Intel Macs cannot run Classic Mac OS applications, the only option I’ll have to play the games — and expose Rosanna to them, hopefully! ;o) — is in the Windows environment. Ick. Riven, thankfully, is equal on both systems, and the program runs on both Mac and Windows environments, so it should still be playable with a new Intel Mac booted into Windows.
Okay, that’s not the interesting thing. That’s just back story. Side note: the thing about blogs that are frustrating is that you feel like you should appeal to your audience but at the same time want to write about things that may only interest you. This is one of those times where I feel like I’m the only one interested.
As the soundtrack was playing (it’s great music for school), I began to notice a trend: almost all the songs — and I do believe all of the songs — are in the same key. They all begin with a droning warm pad that’s low, but always the same key. I need to listen to it all the way through to confirm this, but in my precursory skipping around, it seemed like none changed to another key. Ever.
“I wonder why?” I thought. Then it dawned on me. I’ve searched the net and haven’t found anyone who has ever noticed this next part. I may well be the only person to have even speculated this stretch of a speculation. But, as Rosanna has noted, I’m weird that way to notice such things. What’s new, really?
In the game of Riven, the antagonist has an unhealthy fixation with the number five. Riven itself is the fifth age “created / linked to” by the antagonist, five is a theme in many of the puzzles, and the game even comes on five discs (except for a re-release a few years later, on one DVD). Five. Five. Five.
“If all these songs are in the same key, I’ll bet they are all in the fifth key, G,” I speculated. G, of course, is the fifth note on the C scale, the “standard” key for piano players. I seem to recall back in my music theory days that chords could be described using numerals (which would make the sheet music adaptable to other keys), hence a C chord in the key of C would be “I” and an F chord would be “IV.” G is “V” in the C scale. I believe this is called a triad of chords: I-IV-V.
So, Robyn Miller, the soundtrack creator and co-creator of the entire Myst series, designed a soundtrack entirely in G minor. Everything revolves around the G minor, the fifth key of the C scale.
Coincidence? Maybe. It just seems so much like something the Miller brothers would do. There’s meaning all over their games. It wouldn’t surprise me that G minor was intentionally chosen to be the key for Riven.
…
Well, I found this fascinating, anyway. :op
Update! (5:11pm) — Due to the magic of the internet, I was able to get in contact with Mr. Robyn Miller, posing the question whether the same key was an intentional stroke of genius or not. While he would like to be able to say it was intentional, he said it was due to his lack of composing skills more than anything else. Here is what he told me.
Hi Rob,
Ha! yes the G Minor thing… you’re right. but you’re not the first to notice. A music mag slammed me for it.
I’d like to say it has something to do with the number 5 but it doesn’t. It has everything to do with the fact that I am not a real composer. And I wasn’t being careful as I should have been.
It wasn’t smart. The environments could have been more effective. More provocative. I could have created more tension and better staging with a well-designed change of keys. (oh well) … a great lesson!
Thanks for your interest!
rgds,
Robyn
How about that? It was a good thought. Now I feel like I’m sounding more like the guy who wrote this story about the original Matrix movie being a veiled cover for gnosticism. Creative parallels don’t always indicate truth! Let that be a lesson to you. Go to the source.
