Recipe: How to cook up a peaceful JRPG village theme

We wanted to serve up some simple, quick, and digestible musical recipes for video game music staples. This time, we take a look at what goes into creating the serene atmosphere of the typical sleepy village in Japanese role-playing games.

Listen while you cook: Here’s a YouTube playlist of some of the tastiest ‘peaceful village’ tracks from JRPGs.

Example dish: “Village of Dali (Frontier Village)” by Nobuo Uematsu from Final Fantasy IX:

By Thomas Quillfeldt

Ingredients

1 gentle 4/4 or 12/8 tempo, between 62 - 95 bpm (110 bpm if in 3/4)

2 tbsp gently plucked guitar arpeggios, synthesised OR harp

4-5 chord progressions passing through minor 2nd and 6th, resolving at the major tonic

1 large synth string pad to play held chords OR a live string section

2-3 heaped tbsp of saccharine lead woodwind melodies – ideally flute, pan-flute, or ocarina

1 backup lead instrument – synth mouth organ or bagpipe sound

Optional: Light percussion – a single shaker or tambourine

Optional: Plucked synth double bass


Example dish: “Peaceful Days” by Yasunori Mitsuda from Chrono Trigger:

 


Method

  1. Optional: Start with a dainty intro that leads the listener to the home key and tempo
  1. Take your gently plucked guitar arpeggios — solo or layered — and lay them over the opening bars, establishing the key
  1. Bring in one of your saccharine lead woodwind melodies over a synth string chord progression, possibly with some plucked synth double bass – let it run for 8 to 16 bars, and consider adding some gentle shaker
  1. Optional: Have the melody pass to the synth strings whilst the lead woodwind instrument plays a counter-melody

Example dish: “Saihate (Frontier) Village” by Manami Kiyota from Xenoblade Chronicles:

  1. Repeat 8 to 16 bars of the opening melody, with a dash more volume, thicker chords and maybe a different lead instrument
  1. Optional: You could have a sorrowful-sounding middle section passing through more minor chords and modulating – remember, always resolve back to the tonic major key
  1. Serve alongside immaculate green grass and hedges, blue skies, quaint rural houses with timber beams, an item shop or two, and an inn (which should have one bedroom with four beds)
  1. Loop until the player character leaves the village, or a scripted story event occurs that leaves the villagers looking worried
  1. Upload an ‘extended’ version to YouTube so people can zone out to 8+ hours of the same two-minute piece

Example dish: “Cobbleston, Nestled in the Hills” by Yasunori Nishiki from Octopath Traveller:

 


Be sure to keep an eye on our social media for more tasty recipes in future: Facebook.com/LacedMusicLtd, Twitter (@Laced_Records), and Instagram feed (@Lacedrecords).