sonicmusicmusings:

Tikal’s theme from Sonic Adventure has honestly been one of my favorite pieces ever composed, and I’m not quite sure why. It’s just an instrumental piece that i love, and it’s very nostalgic to me as Sonic Adventure was my first big 3D Sonic the Hedehog adventure. I was wondering, what are your thoughts on it?

- madosworld 

Greetings, friends! Hope your weekends are all going swell!

Tikal’s theme is one of a few tracks that sounds a lot better when you listen to it by itself, or rather, it’s better appreciated by itself than in game, in my opinion. I say that, because the synth sound that they use at the beginning really doesn’t sit well with me, and it really sticks out in the game. But the track as a whole has this gorgeous, almost haunting quality to it that one rarely gets to hear the whole of. It sticks with you, y’know what I’m saying?

In the intro, there is this low tribal chorus that’s happening that sounds really cool, giving it an almost eerie feel. I love the groove of the percussion, all the different sounds, like the claves! When they pair the synth sound with the piano, it has a nice effect. It’s especially nice with the blue notes thrown into the melody, giving it a jazzy sort of feel. The padding later on in the track, is really perfect, and I love how it swells, then lays back in the next section. There’s this huge layer of sound going on throughout the whole track, and a lot going on, without it sounding too busy. There’s some cool wind chime panning later on in the track as well, going from right to left if you wear your trusty headphones, or have a good sound system. This track seamlessly gets into a constant chordal groove almost without one noticing about halfway through the track, after keeping things subtly changing throughout. The turnaround in the latter section is really nice for me, probably because of the nice use of V7, or even a II-V. II-V’s are popular in the jazz realm, but it’s a bit of a rarity in more popular music, so it always excites me to hear them. This is a really beautiful track, and it’s obvious that a lot of effort was put into composing it.