What makes good “boss battle” music?
This is a question I asked myself after a prompt from a client to create a track in the style of a Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep boss battle. This lead me to the deeper question of what characteristics do classic boss battle tracks from video games have in common?
Listen to this piece from Kingdom Hearts. You don’t even have to watch the video; just close your eyes and listen to the music. You know something big and bad and video game-y is about to happen as this piece starts, right?
What is it about this piece that screams “boss battle?”
I’d argue it’s just three things:
SPEED
We’ve got a pretty fast tempo here. Maybe around 170 bpm. I’d say a vast majority of music is slower than that. Not just in video games, but in, well, life too. Pop music, for example rests between 116 bpm and 150 bpm on average, so this is quite a bit faster than what we’re used to hearing on a daily basis. This increase in speed mirrors the way your pulse might quicken at the sight of a video game boss. (Or the music might MAKE that happen). Either way, an increase in speed, generally, is ingredient number one.
The track I wrote clips along at a steady 170 bpm. Hopefully, your heart races along with it.
CHROMATICISM
This has been used for “evil-sounding” music since people started creating hard and fast musical rules. In the Renaissance, music that was unexpectedly chromatic was considered to be music of the devil, and lord help you if you wrote something with a tritone.
Even though composers don’t get burned at the stake today for writing chromatic music, it still has a sense of uncertainty and maliciousness to it. Think of the theme from Jaws, for example. It’s just two, chromatic notes, a half step apart, chugging along. Evil.
Well, in this piece, I wanted to make sure there was chromatic movement in both the chords and in the melody. Take a look at the main chords for this piece:
D minor, C# Major, Bb Major, and B minor.
That Dm to C# progression gives us a sense of drama to start out. And that Bb to Bm movement rises up like the chordal equivalent of the theme to Jaws.
Now, take look at the melody for this track:
Though it starts off like we’re voicing a Dm7 chord, we quickly introduce some of that chromaticism on measure 15 when we bend from C# to D, and then again in measure 16 as we end it with Bb and bend up to B. Two instances of chromaticism in the melody as well. This, along with the chords, help the piece feel dangerous.
The trick here, I think, is making this sound beautiful in its own way. After all, we might be fighting this boss for a while, so the piece still needs to be tolerable. Making it excessively chromatic or aggressive can easily tip the scale from “dangerous” to “grating.” It’s a bit of a tightrope, but if you can still stomach your melody when you’re done with your track, that might be a good indication that you’ve passed this particular test.
So now you’ve set your piece at a fast tempo, sprinkled in some chromaticism over the chords and the melody, but you haven’t really written a boss battle track until you’ve added in the final ingredient.
SYNCOPATION
Finally, most music in this video game sub genre is heavily syncopated, either in the melody, the accompaniment, or both. I opted for both.
Of course, syncopation involves displacing the beats or accents in a rhythm so that strong beats become weak and vice versa.
It’s not hard to imagine what meaning this might have in a boss battle. If we’re trying to make this adversary seem formidable, hinting that “the strong” might become weak (the hero we’re controlling in the game might not be victorious) is perfectly in line with the challenge we’re about to face as a player.
Now, syncopation is also used heavily in rock and pop music, which also helps give this boss battle track a more contemporary, listenable rhythm if used correctly. So it’s really a win/win with this final musical technique. We get something that hints at a turning of the tables, and something that reminds us of cooler, more present-day music.
So there you have it. If you’re composing this kind of piece (like me), using increased speed, chromaticism, and syncopation will help your track be instantly recognizable as a “boss battle” track.
And if you simply enjoy video game music (also like me), now you have an extra layer or two of enjoyment and understanding related to this very important musical moment in most games.
If you enjoyed this boss track, you might also enjoy THIS GODZILLA-RELATED POST about writing fast-paced action music.
And as always, if you need music for your project, whether it’s a quiet emotional drama or a frantic boss battle, feel free to check out my CONTACT INFO HERE.
Happy listening!
- Matthew