Intro
Journey is a video game released in 2012. You play as a robed traveler, exploring the desert and making your way towards this mysterious mountain. The score was composed by Austin Wintory.
The game can be played single player or multiplayer. At the time of release, it was on PlayStation so you could meet with another player on the PlayStation Network. The game was kind of an exploration of how to have interactions between people that are not necessarily centered around violence, but instead on how your relationship develops through exploring the world and the journey that you go through.
I'm going to explore how the soundtrack develops through like the arc of your journey. And we're going to first explore an overview of how the music changes across the whole game. We’re going to look at how the musical key changes, which is basically the “palette of notes” used, if you will.
Cues vs. Original Soundtrack
So I guess just looking an overview of the score, the in the original soundtrack, there are like the, it's kind of an arrangement of the cues that appear in the game. So the cues are like little parts of the soundtrack that play like when is triggered by a certain event. So maybe you crossed into a specific area or you visit like a specific, like monument in the game environment and then a certain cue or something. So I'm just mentioning that that's a reference for what I'm using.
The Hero’s Journey
And I guess just covering the track names, and what the game is kind of based upon. So I guess I might actually just quickly get this slide to show the Hero's Journey. One of the aims for Journey, or inspirations, was this idea of The Hero's Journey.
There's this book by Joseph Campbell called Hero of a Thousand Faces. I'm not sure if it was like just Western literature or literature across the world, but there's this idea that it's kind of a repeated arc that hero goes through, across hundreds or thousands of stories told. And so it kind of starts with a call to adventure and then there's kind of a threshold, a beginning of personal transformation or any transformation, and then on the way you have a mentor and helper and you have challenges and temptations, and then you have the point where everything is kind of falling apart, which is like the abyss.
You have death and rebirth. You have revelation and you have transformation and you have atonement for any sins and you have supernatural gift and then you return to where you started. And Journey’s kind of based on this and you can see this reflected in the soundtrack as well.
So I guess these are the names of the soundtracks and you can kind of see how it kind of corresponds to the big milestones in this hero's journey. So they've got lessons, which means breath*. You got the call. Confluence means meeting, and in the game these refer to when you meet with the ancestors.
It's kind of open to interpretation. But yeah, then you have the threshold and you've got like way of trials, which is like challenges and like temptations, descent and atonement as well and so on. Nadir's the bottom point. Apotheosis means the climax. Those are just taken from the tracks of the game. And yeah, I just kind of in the slide, I just overlapped it, or mapped it, so you can see the names of the soundtracks, roughly where they are on this idea of a hero's journey.
And these are some of the areas in the game where it corresponds to, so yeah, I guess one of the things I wanted to go through, which is like the idea of musical keys.
Keys & Colour Palettes
So I guess, in and I had this painting to kind of illustrate, so I just kind of talk about it first in music, you can kind of have songs, can have particular sets of notes that are most frequently used and like that particular song or like a subsection of the song and I guess like the easiest kind of metaphor to explain that is like with color palettes and paintings, I guess like this in this painting that I bought one
time, you can see it has a very distinct color palette. So you have a lot of warm colors, like red, orange and yellow in like the I guess like in the foreground and like kind of the middle and then in the background, like there's a lot of very distinct, like black, white and grays And I guess like that kind of just sets the club like that's the color palette of this painting.
If you were to like, suddenly do a splash of like, blue or green, like you totally notice it because it doesn't match with what's existing in the rest of the painting. And I guess, like depending on what you want to like because green and blue and purple on already in this painting, if you were to use and use it anyway, like you kind of want to be like judicious about it, like because it would stand out a lot.
And so I guess with music as well, like there are specific like when using a specific set of keys within a song, it can also be used to achieve either a specific effect, like kind of set like almost serious or more jovial kind of mood. Or if you start to use notes outside of that set, like it really stands out as well.
Demonstration of Key in main Journey tracks
Theme
So what I'll talk about for Journey is I guess like the idea of like musical keys is actually used to correspond to, I guess like different ideas. Also most, I guess like at the start, like of the soundtrack, the musical key is in B — B minor and what that looks like, I guess I just try and get my iPad up.
Just give me a moment and let me see if I can record from here. okay. I'm actually not sure if this is recording. Let me just pause this.
Okay. So if I have this keyboard up, what I want to talk about is I guess the key for Journey. So and I'm just going to quickly play the leitmotif of Journey is a motif is like an idea.
It's the term is used across like art and music and like other things. But in music it just means a musical idea like motif is like a musical idea that represents something. So I'm just going to play the one for Journey, and then if you buy the game, you'll definitely recognize it. And yeah, as you can see, it's centered like on this note here.
And if I just I'm just going to hold down and press like all the notes that when using that theme. So, so I guess like for those notes, that's the kind of like quote unquote like color palette of this song or like those are the that's the musical cue of
the song. And if I was to do any I if I do chords like based on that, like within those nights, like so yeah.
So as you can see, like all of those are like they sound consistent within that, that bit of the song because it's like using the notes that are already present in that part and I guess just going back to the slide, just give me a quick moment. Okay. So going back to the slide, so this is so that it's been B minor, like a set of keys that I showed you that's useful.
And I sense the call the first conference and the second conference, like in this area.
Threshold
And then as we reach threshold, then it changes to a different set of notes. And the effect of that is it's actually really reinforcing this idea of like reaching the threshold of the journey. So you're crossing into something new, you're using a new set of notes within the music.
So like so yeah, the music is just reinforcing this idea of threshold and then again, so I guess I just did it with like this part of the journey and like kind of symbolizing what's known. So we're saying in B minor here, they said when I said, I show you this like familiar part of the journey and then in the , there's actually a lot of changes in key here, like just reinforcing that everything here is .
So intentionally, instead of B minor, we have from another note like F sharp minor, I can show you a bit more of that when we get more into threshold. And then in the real child, it's like a minor different set of notes again. And then we go into Temptations, which is like C minor. And just then Atonement. I think it's like D minor.
And then like, I think there's some changes again around here. And then back when we get to the apotheosis, which is like the climax would be journey, we return into B minus the same as what is in innocence and what I just showed you on the keys before and, and I was born for this, which is like the song that's played during the credits.
When you're returning back to your original starting point, that's also B minor. And what it enables is like by having these two songs on B minor like in enables a really smooth transition from like here, like from the, I guess, climax of your journey back to the start of your journey. And it just reinforces this idea of like the journey being a cycle like this is a rebirth.
So yeah, I guess that's just kind of an overview of the musical key, but yeah, I guess from here we're going to go on into the specific tracks. So yeah, this is what I was talking about for, I was one for this. And then a train that means meld into the title screen because it's also in B minor.
I was one this and the the drone that plays during the title screen is like is humming around B so just smells really smelly and reinforces the idea of rebirth.
Actually, I thought we could. Actually, I thought we could do a bit better. And I said, You guys are just going to show you the other case that I was talking about. So for Dash hold, I'll just play a bit of it. It's actually one of my favorite pieces upon piano. I'm just gonna have the theme play a melody of it, because on the iPad, it's actually pretty hard to play.
So here we go. I'm just keeping a moment.
So if I just kind of press down all the keys that were involved with that, I'm going to be able to get an iPad. But that's kind of the palette of keys that is used in Threshold. as also sometimes includes this. But yeah, I guess and all the keys like this is kind of the dominant. Well, I shouldn't use the word tone because that has a specific specific meaning.
Meaning. But this music, this is kind of the route where everything is, like, centered on that note. Like, for example, with the painting. I sure do. It's kind of black and white is kind of the very central colors. And then like the red, orange and yellow are kind of the extras, same as like within the painting. That's kind of like a cool color that it use.
And in music is tends to be a corner that everything else, like when you finish on that note, it sounds like the song is finished or if you finish on another note, it's not like the song is not finished. So yeah.
hey, so we're just going to continue the next part and the next, well, next song that we're going to look at for the keys is going to be, so we looked at methods, B minor we looked at Threshold, which is like F sharp minor.
Road of Trials
I'm going to go to the next major song is right of Trials.
And I guess a lot of people like this section because it's very energetic. yeah, the music is also very energetic and it's, I guess the area itself is also very beautiful. so yeah, I guess first of all, we're going to listen to a lot of trials. you're going to have a bit of this and then we can look at what the color palette, like what the note parties were or the musical key, and kind of explore how it changes again in this like section of our journey where everything's new and different each time.
I guess one of the things I didn't want to mention was, I guess like even the color palette itself in the end. So if nothing else, and I guess in the start, in the Bridge area, like this area is very yellow, everything is very yellow. And I guess like and then even when you get to threshold, like crossing to somewhere new, like they like, I guess the color palette of the environment itself also reflects that.
So you've got like pink sand and green skies, which you haven't seen before. And then when you reach road of trials the game changes again. There’s this very rich gold and bronze in some of the environments And yeah, we're going to look out like in the music reflects the change as well. We’re just looking at the note palette of the stage so we're not looking at analyzing the melodies just yet.
Yeah. Or just looking at like what, what the set of notes is used in this part. So I'm just going to put on road of trials. find it. Okay. So yeah, I guess that's right. Of trials. and I'm going to play like the main melody of that, and we're just going to see what notes I'm using that, it's a lot of, a lot of movement, I guess, like going, a lot of rapid notes and going like from low to high and then back down to low and so on.
So yeah, kind of I pad in GarageBand, they're going to do a version on the piano as well because I can play a on piano.
I'm just going to do a quick demo of that. I like those set of notes. So, so, yeah, I just. I'm just going to press down on the notes. So I use so it's a nice and I guess what this song is centered on the a such a minor, and I guess it has what, similar to the previous sign, it has the sixth note like raised up to this f sharp.
I guess just for context, it's called the Dorian Mode, which is, yes, we don't quite need to go into like the technicalities of it, like it has a six note, like rights to one, but it is often associated with like the silver lining kind of me like I kind of, some of it also had like a positive to it.
So yeah, I guess this song is centered on a which is different to the previous songs being centered on like F sharp minor or B minor. and I guess just like jumping from B minor, like F sharp minor that like they have like a lot of shared notes on like a one or two nice different and then same again with from jumping from F sharp My life to a minor is actually quite a few different notes are different.
So I guess like it's also just highlighting like this is another quite big jump in your journey. You're going to be exploring quite different things. because in pacing like Threshold is not that different to the previous one of, the confluences and so on. I'm just going to get slides up real quick. I can't get the slides up, so yeah, I guess I like Thresholds F sharp minor and like this first area I'd like the bridge area is like in B minor to be minor to shut minor.
There's a lot of different notes, but from a short line of time, I know that's, it's quite a few different notes and I guess like it also kind of reflects how like from here to here there's not a big jump in terms of emotionally, but from like first crossing to something new and then going through like this really energetic area, that's quite a different change in pace as well.
And that's also reflected in like the the speed of the music, the tempo and so on.
Temptations
And then the next part we're going to go into is temptations. I'm just going to go to that slide actually, it's because the music there and let's have a quick listen. I came to mind. It wasn't the part I want to show you, but, this is quite different again, because it's in C minor.
so there's a lot of parts where you can really hear like the low c like I'm, and that's a very, that's quite a different jump right from here to here as well. It's kind of a transition in between. But yeah, I guess it's reflecting again, like this is a very different part of the journey again to this I guess like, the key change is used to reflect like this and then probably do anything like this online.
Atonement
And I guess just getting into the Atonement again, that's in D minor. So it's like this, I'm actually just gonna try and show that. So, I mean, get my keyboard up. So it's like this and you want to edit it. Also put in a clip of the, the Atonement parts, yeah, going back to the slide
Okay, This is kind of like Inception here. We've got multiple recordings going on at once. okay, this should be it. So I just kind of cover it again. Like, this is another change. Very different. Austin Wintory has chosen to change the set of notes using the music as well like the main like note palette used in the music.
And again, I don't really remember much of this area. I haven't really analyzed the music that, but,
Apotheosis
Yeah, I guess the important part is like when we go back to Apotheosis, the climax of the game, when we're in this area, we're back to B minor and I can definitely show that for you.
I've got my iPad up and I'm going to show you Apotheosis. Okay? And he's going to press down all the lights, show what kind of notes we use in this. So that's B minor. And I guess that's the same used in Athens and the broken bridge. So it's like, I also so I guess when not actually returned to our original area, let me get up the right slide.
Okay. So we're not actually up like way back to our original area where we started, but it's like, like the start of the return and have, like back to somewhere familiar. after like, having gone through this, like, really terrible ordeal on the mountain. and it's also like setting up like, I guess maybe the expectation that will return — like this is the end.
I Was Born For This
The end of the journey is back where we started and this is really reinforced in I was born for this, which is also in B minor, and it ends in a drone. It starts and ends in a drone that really melds back into the title screen, which really reinforces musically the idea that this is a rebirth, this is the cycle of our journey.
So I'm going to, first show some clip. So I was waiting for this and then we're going to play a bit of on the piano, which is the scene the, the notes used in the I okay.
yeah. Sorry to stop right there. It's really beautiful music. but yeah, I guess just kind of looking at, piano.
Now let's just stop. okay, so at the start of the song, I was born for this, I guess just for the notebook, I so I guess that's the same palette of notes used in license. So yeah, also centered on that be there. It's in what we call B minor. So it's like most areas, but it's. Yeah, I guess just going back to the slides, yes, I want to record this whole display swing down for the countdown.
And I guess I've also this reinforces the, the return to the idea of return to the original key original colour palette original note palette used. So yeah, I guess like yeah, the music helps to reinforce these different ideas. In here is journey like the of the journey being the nine area using the one theme key B minor, not these songs.
And in like all these other parts of your journey with a lot of change, a lot of transformation of challenges there is a lot of variation in what the key is, what the palette used for the music is. we're just talking about like the notes at the moment. We're not talking about like variation instrument. That's another thing that changes throughout journey, and it's also used to symbolize like particular ideas.
But yeah, I guess we're just looking at the moment how changes in key correspond to different parts of your journey. Hope that was interesting.