New Arrangement: "Drums of Daila" from Golden Sun: The Lost Age (2002)
As requested, here is another theme from the classic JRPG, "Golden Sun: The Lost Age" (2002) - "Drums of Daila", from the first village of the game. Feel free to check it out!
Feel free to download the score and recording here!
If you are one of my Patrons, you can now find the MIDI, XML and SIB files I created for this arrangement now available to download from your Patreon Google Drive folder!
Arranger's Note:
"The original is surprisingly bare, simply consisting of a recurring tabla drum pattern, a sitar-esque melodic pattern, and a descending tambura/sitar glissando.
To me, this speaks of an Indian aesthetic, and so I took that approach further, adding not solely a sitar and tambura, but also other Indian instruments such as the woodwind "Bansuri" (0:16) and the guitar-esque "Sarod" which echoes the main sitar melody.
To further add to this Indian aesthetic, I interpreted the track as if it were a sort of communal/ceremonial gathering of villagers, all contributing to this track. Thus there is a variety of extra percussion (such as shakers, tambourine, drums and finger snapping) that could be played by general people, as well as a simple chanting that follows the main sitar melody.
Hopefully together this creates the aesthetic of a communal oriental gathering.
As for the material itself, it is heavily modal, drawing on the characteristic Arabic Maqam "Hijaz Tetrachord" (E - F - G# - A) which is commonly used in film to denote the exotic other and deserts. The tonic rests on A, even as a lot of material swims around the clash of E - F, but due to the number of semitonal inflections, it is difficult to pin down a singular mode - perhaps the "Shad 'Araban" on A with the presence of the Bb at 0:30.
The tabla notation uses the MacDonald/Mativetsky system."
