New Arrangement: "Sea God Shrine" from Golden Sun: The Lost Age (2002)
Another Sunday, another arrangement; here's an orchestral remix of the mysterious "Sea God Shrine" theme from the classic JRPG, "Golden Sun: The Lost Age" (2002).
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:
"Quite a small track, it opens in C minor with Sakuraba's iconic echoing instruments, here placed in the flutes. To add to the mysterious yet ancient aesthetic, I added high strings playing delicately sustained harmonics in open 5ths. Underneath this, the bass instruments perform intermittent and chromatic melodies.
By 0:18, the material repeats, now with an extra octave of glass harp, an additional contrabass clarinet on the bass material, and the strings have shifted down an octave with sul ponticello tremolandi (to still create a mysterious aesthetic).
In the original, Sakuraba used a low MIDI instrument to create a subtle and ominous sound effect in the background. Here, I conveyed this through the use of a tam-tam, with various scrapes and strikes.
By 0:32 we have the final repeat of the material. The glass harp is taken over by a regular harp, and the strings provide more tangible material with a regular quaver rhythm, still in open 5ths.
I was on the fence about extending the track beyond Sakuraba's original material, which I feel concludes just as things are getting started. But as all of my previous arrangements have remained 100% faithful to the structure of Sakuraba's tracks, I decided to maintain that integrity here."
