50 - Tal Tal Heights / Mountain Range - The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening Orchestral Arrangement

Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/album/35WXql...

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Finally we arrive at the Tal Tal Mountain Range Grand Orchestration. Since I first started, I was tempted to arrange it early on, as it is also my favorite track. Through great patience and humility, I held off on it, and even placed it far off in the tracklist, until my skills improved enough to tackle this beast. It is more appropriate here anyways, as this is when you can finally reach the majority of the mountain. Nevertheless, I've been arranging it in my head for the last 9 months, and obsessing over it until now.

With regards to instrumentation, I felt the interpretation from the "Symphony of the Goddesses" concert was suitably epic, though a bit brief since it was a medley, so I kept mine similar for the fast parts. Tambourines really do add a nice flavor to the energetic rhythm and keep it from sounding too heavy. For the repeating ostinato, I used a combination of ukulele and nylon string guitar, which is similar sounding to the Gerudo Valley theme.

Although every characteristic of the original song is preserved in my arrangement, I still made some significant alterations. The first drastic change you'll notice is that the opening phrase of the main melody has been stretched out 4 times. I felt that the original version rushed to the climax too early. By giving it more room to develop, I feel the melodic progression sounds a lot smoother this way. This also gave me more places to try out all sorts of instrument combinations and articulations. Check out those strings playing trills in discord to the melody. Sounds slightly off, yet somehow works!

One possible controversial addition I made is introducing a third arc to the music after the first two repetitions of the main melody. Since the song is constantly fast and rhythmic, having it on repeat might sound a bit exhausting to a listener. A mountain range consists of peaks and valleys, plateaus and caves. I wanted to add some gloom and introspection, as I'm sure Link must be feeling as he nears the end of his journey. This also allows your mind ears to rest in between the awesome main melody.

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening - Orchestral Arrangement
Arrangement and fan art by Jeremiah Sun

Original Composers
Kazumi Totaka
Minako Hamano
Kozue Ishikawa

Original Theme by Koji Kondo

You can buy this game for 3DS from the Nintendo eShop
The remake is also coming out soon for the Nintendo Switch!