New Transcription: "Fodlan Winds" from Fire Emblem: Three Houses (2019)
With "Fire Emblem: Three Houses" nearly upon us, I wanted to tackle one of its early released tracks that seems to have flown under the radar - "Fodlan Winds" - which has certainly been the most difficult track to transcribe and recreate thus far!
If you're after the sheet music for "Fodlan Winds" / "Fodlan no Gyoufuu", you can find it here!
This includes individual part scores for:
Flute
Horn in F
3 Trumpets in Bb
Timpani
Suspended Cymbal
Clash Cymbals
Tam-tam
Snare Drum
Large Drums
Filtered Drum Kit
Reversed SFX
Scratching SFX
Sweep Upward SFX
Sweep Downward SFX
White Noise SFX
Piano
Violin I
Violin II
Viola
Violoncello
Contrabass
If you are one of my Patrons, you can now find the MIDI, XML and SIB files I created for this transcription now available to download from your Patreon Google Drive folder!
Arranger's Note:
"Known in Japanese as "Fodlan no Gyoufuu" (of which the official English translation is not yet 100% decided), this track was composed by Takeru Kanazaki, rather than the past composers Hiroki Moshita and Rei Kondoh. As such, the change in style is quite evident.
While generally, the aesthetic of orchestral samples has remained the same, there are new elements of electronic dance music (EDM) scattered within, including many synthesized and filtered instruments, risers and drops. The most obvious of these can be heard at (0:42).
As to whether this new EDM aesthetic is suitable for Fire Emblem, well, that is soon to be decided (I am sitting on the fence for now!)
To dig deeper into the track itself, there is a fascinating rhythmic syncopation going on which decimates the time signature. Although we are in 4/4, Kanazaki creates a strong metric grouping of 3 semiquavers (0:02), making the track appear to be in compound time rather than common. This disjunct meter persists nearly throughout the entire track, until the shift to the subdominant key (F minor) at 0:35.
This syncopated meter helps to add interest to an otherwise very typical harmonic structure: I - VI - VII - I (C minor - Ab major - Bb major - C minor), which is a very common progression to the Fire Emblem series, and music in general.
Just before the drop (0:43), Kanazaki jumps a tritone (augmented 4th) into Db major (from G), with crunchy added notes of the 7th and 11th (C and G), which are then resolved to Ab major/F minor, with the appearance of the main "Three Houses" theme in the violins (0:48).
This "Three Houses" theme contains a surprising major-minor clash, with both a B-natural and a B-flat at the same time, in the key of G major (0:56). This dissonance is resolved downward (B-flat - A-fat - G), as it similarly does so in various other musics (see J.S.Bach "Contrapunctus 9").
Note: I have no experience in making EDM, so forgive the very shoddy recreation here (all those FX, filters and synthesized stuff is new to me!)"
