Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
If you want a clear path from "never composed" to original tracks for PC & console games, grab the free roadmap: bestmusiccoach.com/roadmap?htrafficsource=yt&el=composers-steal-the-short-short-long-pattern-zelda-and-pokem
When composing video game music, it can be useful to take lessons from the past. One of these lessons is called sentence form. Now, sentence form was originally created in the classical music era of musical creation, which doesn't always fit for what we're going to do for modern video game music. However, the fundamental underlying pattern is going to be a short, short, long pattern. We're going to have some idea, we're going to repeat that idea, and then we're going to either develop that idea or do some contrasting thing that's going to take twice as long as the first ideas. Now, there's way more we can go in depth on this, including looking at a couple examples. For example, Ganondorf's theme from Ocarina of Time by Koji Kondo. Well, this does not follow any of the classical music rules of what would constitute a sentence. It still has the A, A, B, C form that we could look at for a sentence. When the A is our short, the second A is our next short, and the B and the C together create the long. Now, one more example we could look at would be the Casino theme from Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow, where it's a very short, short, short, long, but there is again that A, A, B, C form we can see in the melody. If you want to learn more about composing video game music, check out the new book, Compose Legendary Video Game Music. It's out now on Amazon.
If you want a clear path from "never composed" to original tracks for PC & console games, grab the free roadmap: bestmusiccoach.com/roadmap?htrafficsource=yt&el=composers-steal-the-short-short-long-pattern-zelda-and-pokem
When composing video game music, it can be useful to take lessons from the past. One of these lessons is called sentence form. Now, sentence form was originally created in the classical music era of musical creation, which doesn't always fit for what we're going to do for modern video game music. However, the fundamental underlying pattern is going to be a short, short, long pattern. We're going to have some idea, we're going to repeat that idea, and then we're going to either develop that idea or do some contrasting thing that's going to take twice as long as the first ideas. Now, there's way more we can go in depth on this, including looking at a couple examples. For example, Ganondorf's theme from Ocarina of Time by Koji Kondo. Well, this does not follow any of the classical music rules of what would constitute a sentence. It still has the A, A, B, C form that we could look at for a sentence. When the A is our short, the second A is our next short, and the B and the C together create the long. Now, one more example we could look at would be the Casino theme from Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow, where it's a very short, short, short, long, but there is again that A, A, B, C form we can see in the melody. If you want to learn more about composing video game music, check out the new book, Compose Legendary Video Game Music. It's out now on Amazon.
