Legend of Zelda's Saria Song as a jazz piano piece

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6wdiWP9gfc Backstory/overview: Early in the morning hours I was inspired to write this piece in one sitting when I was listening to Saria's Song in my head and suddenly realized that the main melodic motif is a 3-note repeating figure, which is characteristically similar to the "ragtime riff", which creates a polyrhythmic through grouping straight 8ths in 3. After this realization a ragtime version of Saria's Song started playing in my head, and by the time I started running through a solo on the progression I knew this was something I needed to write down. Hopefully there are others who are interested in this concept as much as I was in writing it. There are a large number of solos in the middle section that are on top of the original chord progression, which is mostly original material but in line with jazz interpretations of standards (that is, almost adding more new things than retaining the old through solo sections). I tried to make sure that the original concept of it being based around the catchy Saria's Song was kept, so there is later section where the original song is quoted more bluntly and somewhat humorously.

Legend of Zelda - Saria's Ragtime Jazz.mp3

Yes, I do improvise on a piano as well, but this level of playing is still too difficult for me! Sometimes I wonder if it is more efficient to just learn to play at that level of difficulty, but meanwhile, I enjoy doing this for writing this kind of piece. I find writing on sheet music more challenging as well if only for the fact that the music is being written in slow motion compared to how it is perceived when played. I started composing through improvisation, so it has been something more acquired, but I hope to become more fluent on paper over time so I have less and less limitations when composing.

Did you have a chance to hear the wind quartet I posted on here as well? It's only 4 instruments, but it's much more of a chamber ensemble writing, and the actual writing is a lot more contrapuntal as well (especially compared to something like a piano improv!).

Replies

Kento August 3, 2009 at 5:56pm

Well, it's great you have an expertise in choral music, because many of us on here don't have access to live instruments when we play and it seems like voices are some of the most difficult to make a realistic virtual instrument of! I still don't completely know what my choral pieces will sound like if they're sung, or sung by high-end groups..I mainly know that it sounds a lot worse with the Finale sound files, because when I once played a Bruckner choral piece in it, it sounded terrible! Homophonic pieces especially seem to suffer from not being played by live instruments.
- Kento > Calle Edlund August 3, 2009 at 10:28am
  
  Yes, I do improvise on a piano as well, but this level of playing is still too difficult for me! Sometimes I wonder if it is more efficient to just learn to play at that level of difficulty, but meanwhile, I enjoy doing this for writing this kind of piece. I find writing on sheet music more challenging as well if only for the fact that the music is being written in slow motion compared to how it is perceived when played. I started composing through improvisation, so it has been something more acquired, but I hope to become more fluent on paper over time so I have less and less limitations when composing.
  
  Did you have a chance to hear the wind quartet I posted on here as well? It's only 4 instruments, but it's much more of a chamber ensemble writing, and the actual writing is a lot more contrapuntal as well (especially compared to something like a piano improv!).

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