Genshin Impact - Frost Moon Battle Theme // Reaction & Analysis

[00:00:00]Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome back to another Genchin Impact reaction.

[00:00:03]Today we have Frost Moon as requested by Harshett. They also requested another song, but I just don't have the time for two today. I need to just do the one.

[00:00:11]I've already recorded like five videos so far, so doing a backtoback right now is not realistic. Regardless, I'm excited to hear what this battle OST is going to sound like because Frost Moon already sounds kind of badass. So, you know, it's probably going to be pretty good. So, without further ado, let's go.

[00:00:32]starting lighter than I thought.

[00:00:38]I guess I don't really have much of a uh a place of expectation off of this one, but when you hear battle OST, you always think it's going to be a little bit more aggressive, but this is light so far.

[00:01:04]That was a nice change though. [music] There's some more tension, but only a little bit. It's still fairly light.

[00:01:19]Ooh. [music] Oh, I love that little bit there.

[00:01:42][music] [music] It's kind of interesting that there's really not so much urgency on this one.

[00:01:54]>> [bell] [music] >> Like there's tension just not urgency.

[00:02:26]Oo, [music] little triplet change in there.

[00:02:35]Oo, again, choosing a more fragile, tender path on this one.

[00:02:44][music] >> [music] >> Still has that lift. Still has that brightness.

[00:03:05][music] >> [music] >> lift into the resolution.

[00:03:26]Okay, I like what I hear. This is weird because like this picture made me realize they actually go to the moon. I don't think I've ever caught wind of that. So, spoilers. Uh, [laughter] I mean it makes sense given what happens.

[00:03:41]I know roughly. I just didn't know that like actually took place in any part on the actual moon, which is pretty sick.

[00:03:49]This song is a lot of linear mumbo jumbo and I really enjoy that. It's not meant to be a negative thing like I kind of framed it to be by saying that. It's just constantly moving up and down. Like most of the relationships in this entire song are moving up or down basically in perfect intervals within the key of F# minor until it wants to move to something else. Then it does like a larger jump. So for an example of that jump, we have the F# minor 7th that a lot of this song is mostly cycled around. It is the key after all. So you're going to have the F# minor in there, but that seventh is just there for flavor profile. [music] We have that goes to E and then it also jumps up to A. And that's a lot of movement right there. But that's the exception, not the rule here. An example of the more linear stuff is like F# minor to G sharp minor to A to B. And like that happens a lot. That sort of relationship is all over the place. And the entire song ends on one of those. It ends with a C minor to a D minor to a [music] D sharp to a E sharp which is the same as an F to a G minor.

[00:05:01]And I actually really love that G minor there at the end because what it does is create a little bit of a seventh there that then lifts up to that higher G just to make sure that you're coming full circle and it just [music] rings out really true. I love that chord there at the end. But that is the exact relationship this entire song has. This linear quality that is almost like unabashedly linear. I didn't really notice it much when I was listening to the song how linear the chord progressions were, but every single thing was playing off of the prior one within the key. It doesn't really move far away at any point unless they're moving to a different progression. It's like you go through three to four chords and then it jumps back to a different one and then it follows that linear path up or down. Most of the time it's up.

[00:05:52]And that's that feeling of constant motion in the entire song feeling like it's lifting you up all the time. And that works really well for a battle theme because not only do you have this giant expanse of, you know, the [ __ ] moon, but also the feeling that there's always a tension going somewhere, but it never really leads anywhere. It keeps stepping back. It's almost like the musical equivalent to the staircase from Mario 64 if any of you are players of that or have played it and you know what that sounds like. It's not the same thing. It's not like constantly moving up a scale like that theme is, but it's more the feeling of that staircase.

[00:06:28]You're constantly going up and then it restarts somewhere that sounds close enough but also keeps moving in a different direction. Almost never do we have the exact same chord progression.

[00:06:38]When it moves away from the four or five chords maybe that it's playing in line, it jumps back to a different spot and then it moves up to a different chord before moving to another connection in there and it's never the same set twice basically. So this entire song has that going for it. and having things included like the sevens in there, which do happen on quite a few of these chords, it just helps make room for some of that to move somewhere familiar. So for like this one, [music] we have that there, but this is a, you know, that's all F# minor is with that in there. Well, with the seventh on it is a. So you have that room for A to be included now because you're including it in this progression by just introducing it so early on. So by the time you get around to that C minor there at the very end, that final chord progression, and you put a seventh on that, what is this? [music] It's the D sharp that we move into. So we have that relationship nice and strong, right? But then add a seventh to that.

[00:07:41]Look at that. What is this chord up here? A G minor. It's where we ended.

[00:07:46]And we of course just add the lift onto that one. And again, we have another one of those in this quality of how this song works. Right there is another chord that we had in the song which is a B minor. So we just end up with a lot of that natural progression. Again, a lot of this song is just connected by the chords right next door to it or utilizing sevenths in order to open that door for those continuations. It's not like they use the sevenths exclusively for doing that. In fact, I added the sevenths to that last chord progression just to show you the example of how linear this song is. It's just following the pattern up and that's how it stays alive. But it keeps itself going with that. It would have fallen apart if they didn't do that. The emotion that the song had, the I guess kick in the ass that the song had was the fact that it kept moving forward and kept going by having these relationships involved. So, it just feels really good listening to it. And even though it's a lot more calm than I would expect for any fight theme really, again, this kind of makes sense.

[00:08:50]There's a lot of room there. It's very void. And that kind of does work for, you know, the moon. So, I think this works really well. It's just not so conventional for a battle theme, not even within The Guys of Genshin, which has a lot of variety in their battle themes. This one is significantly more open than most other ones. Even though the others tend to have a little bit of adventuring quality to them because, you know, you're adventuring, but it's just it's empty. And that works for the moon.

[00:09:18]Again, this all kind of comes down to being the moon, the setting of this song works really well. And I think the linear qualities of it are just supposed to keep the energy building, knowing that there's no real goal at the end there. And I think that works really well if you look at it in the wider guise of it being in space. You know, just having something that it reflects an open kind of seemingly endless location. And that's why that whole endless staircase feeling comes from it, too. because if you're looking out from the moon, you're going to just see Black Void. And you know, it works out really well thematically. So, I think that's about all I got to say on this one.

[00:09:54]Thank you all so very much for watching.

[00:09:55]Sorry I couldn't get to both of these this week. But we'll see what happens next week. But if you have something you want me to get to, by all means, drop in the comments below and I will do my best as always to get to those. But if you don't want to do any of that, maybe just want to follow me and support me for more stuff coming in the future, you know how to do all that. And I'll see all of you in the next video. Goodbye.

[00:10:12][music] Heat.

[00:10:18]Hey, Heat.