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• 1 media/pokemon route 11.png 2016-12-10T20:39:59-08:00 Pokemon Route Themes 4 How fans transcribe the music that takes them from place to place image_header 2016-12-10T21:18:13-08:00 Some of the most frequently-heard music in the Pokemon games are the "route" themes -- the music for the paths they take from town to town, or landmark to landmark. These are the most likely to repeat across the game world, and also the places where the players will spend most of their time anyway. "Routes" are usually full of obstacles, including other trainers, wild Pokemon, and items to pick up. They might include caves or bodies of water to navigate as a part of the route. Pokemon is a game focused on exploring a world, so the roads that take you there are an essential part of that world.
  
  The "routes" are also among the least indicative in terms of particular musical genres or timbres. This gives players a wide berth to re-interpret them musically. This was evident as I scrolled through MuseScore to find fan transcriptions of the themes from different routes in the Pokemon world. There was a wide variety of approaches, more so than the other themes I studied in this project.
  
  Timbre-wise, percussion ensembles seemed to be particularly popular with these musical works. This version of the Route 22 music (mislabeled here as "Route 2," probably because it is actually the second route the player finds in the game) includes a percussion ensemble. It can be listened to here and viewed below:
  
  
  
  Here is the original music for the route in the first generation of games. Note how the game includes non-melodic, snare-drum-type sounds within the 8-bit texture, which the arranger for the "Route 2" music above likely drew on in choosing to write for percussion. However, it also includes longer notes in the melody than what the other percussion instruments could achieve. 
  
  
  
  Still, not every "percussive" Pokemon theme results in fans following those suggestions strictly. This version of the "Route 38" theme, which also has that percussive, snare effect, eschews the implied drums to instead create that rhythm in mallet percussion instruments, trombone and upright bass. It also gives the marimba the melody, and the vibraphone the countermelody, when it enters the texture:
  
  
  Here is the original music:
  
  
  
  One thing that these two orchestrations illustrate is the different ways that fan transcribers deal with ending these pieces. In the original versions from the games, the music loops indefinitely. Obviously, that does not work for a live performance, so the player must come up with their own solution -- similar to transcriptions of rock songs that end with "fade-outs" and other electronic effects that are difficult to recreate live. The Route 38 transcription plays it once before coming to a very abrupt conclusion. The Route 22 transcription conclusion is even more abrupt (literally just ending on the note that would have begun the phrase again), but the arranger has the theme play more than once, so it feels more "complete."
  
  The music of the first route that appears in the game tends to be popular in transcriptions. This music is in a major key, and usually somewhat cheerful and gentle, as though to guide the newbie player into the game. This is the equivalent music for Pokemon Gold, Silver and Crystal, on Route 29:
  
  The transcriber I found on MuseScore seems to almost overemphasize the youthfulness and cheerfulness of the music, which sounds almost brassy in the original 8-bit version. Their transcription is for flute and slide whistle, playing the melody in unison, with a piano playing a sparse bass texture. It only plays through the first few phrases of the melody:
  
  
  By the third generation of games, the games had moved to the GameBoy Advance. The technology had advanced enough that the music could begin to suggest specific instrumental timbres. For example, the Route 101 theme, which is likewise for the first route in the game, suggests flutes as the melodic instruments:
  
  
  
  Many fan transcriptions picked up on that, but I was most interested in this version, which kept the "high woodwinds" scoring but moved the melody instrument to soprano saxophone in order for it to be played by a saxophone quartet:
  
  
  The music sounds different from what the video game version suggested, but it still keeps much of the character of the piece. The one place where it sounds "off" is in measure 4, because the notes are not exact to the ones in the theme. This is an area where amateur transcription can run into trouble, when they have difficulty identifying and correctly transcribing the notes from a piece that they only know by ear. This is especially difficult with pieces with many competing lines, as is the case with Pokemon music increasingly going forward.
  
  The third-generation games had a variety of interesting timbres, to reflect its many new types of environments. One of them was Route 113, which was on the underside of a volcano and featured falling ash. The game gave it a melancholy tune, seemingly dominated by wind instruments, with many fast moving lines to suggest the ash perpetually falling from the sky:
  
  
  
  
  Musescore user "Pride the Arrogant" chose to transcribe it for a small wind ensemble, seemingly mimicking the implied textures of the game music as closely as possible. It draws the listener into the music very well -- but falls into the same difficulties with endings as other transcriptions, happening more abruptly than any of them. Perhaps, like many works on MuseScore, this is a work in progress:
  
  
  Between these various transcriptions, one can see the many different directions that fan composers have taken the "route" themes from the Pokemon games when transferring them to acoustic instruments. Though they fall into many traps common to amateur arrangers (a guess, since it is impossible to know the musical backgrounds of anonymous users of open online sites), they show a great deal of creativity in their approaches to game music, falling at the edges of curative and creative fandom.