Bits of Music: Banjo Kazooie

Bits of Music is going to be a new project I am starting on that will focus on the finer points of music in Video games. I am a huge fan of video game music as a whole, mostly due to the fact that every single sound has a place in the grand design of the video game. One of the great soundtracks that I love to listen to has to be the soundtrack for Banjo Kazooie.

Make sure to listen to the Soundtrack while you read my review, it's fun. haha

Banjo's soundtrack was composed by one of the greats in Video game music composing, and his name is Grant Kirkhope. 

Grant created many a soundtrack for Rare at the time of the Nintendo 64 and before. His palette includes the Donkey Kong Country soundtracks, Killer Instinct, and Conker's Bad Fur Day. Grant also worked on the sound design for most of Rare's games and he lent a lot of his voice to many characters in Banjo and Conker alike. 

The great thing about Grant's sound design in Banjo Kazooie and other games is that you begin to notice a lot of repetition for most of his music, but it always has something that sets it apart from other tracks in the soundtrack. He also relies heavily on variation for each track to the levels of Banjo Kazooie. For instance, when you go into a cave the main theme may still be playing, but it seems to be much farther off and muffled compared to just walking around in the over world. It takes a great hand when it comes to music to variate each track and bring one core track and make it into many different tracks that better suit the game overall. 

I'm proud to have this soundtrack in my collection, and I believe if you like game music at all it's imperative that you have this soundtrack in your collection as well. 

Next time i'll be bring back another soundtrack for the Bit's of Music series, and we'll hopefully get to see how ambience clearly works for a darker and more mystifying experience.

Thank you for taking time to listen, and remember to turn up the games.