New Arrangement: "Sol Sanctum Erupts" from Golden Sun (2001)
With quite a hectic start to the game, here is "Sol Sanctum Erupts" from, "Golden Sun" (2001). 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:
"Blimey, where to begin - this has been the biggest arrangement to create so far! The original is intensely chromatic and dissonant - very surprisingly so for the capabilities of the Game Boy Advance! - with an incredible amount of tritone intervals ("Devil Interval") of an augmented 4th (e.g. B + F) and semitonal clashes (e.g. B + C).
With respect to this chaos, I had a field day with orchestrating it, bringing out those semitonal clashes and tritones even further and adding several other dissonances (e.g. the suspensions in the opening horn melodies creating a further semitonal clash).
By the time we get to 0:32, all hell breaks loose: the winds go off on their own chromatic scales and trills (with homage to Stravinsky); the trumpets bring in sporadic staccato passages and crescendo semitones; and the harp litters in occasional glissandi - all the while the original material (which was already dissonant) is sounding in the choir and strings.
The choir largely sing random text, with some references to religious themes (e.g. "Sanctus" = "Holy", and "Agnus" = "Lamb"), which I thought fitting for an event related to Alchemy (arguably the religion of Golden Sun's universe).
The Cubase file for this arrangement hit my limit on MIDI tracks (I can only have 64 per project!), so I had to use two projects to create it. Thus the Cubase footage above is the raw MIDI information, rather than the tweaked MIDI (as I couldn't fit it all into one project!). I think it's time to upgrade my workstation!"
