So, someone want to tell me how Kass plays the accordion with giant Rito bird feather fingers? I have regular human-sized fingers, and it's already hard enough!
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When I started this channel back in 2012, accordion was probably one of the least likely instruments that I thought I'd want to learn... and yet, here we are. I played Breath of the Wild in the summer of 2017 when it came out, and like many others, took a liking to Kass' character. I love characters in games that are really musical (K.K. Slider from Animal Crossing, Ursula from Xenoblade 2, Big Band from Skullgirls), and Kass is another one of them! It's so nice to stumble upon the comforting sound of his accordion while exploring the wide-open Kingdom of Hyrule.
I knew that I would't be able to do an arrangement of this theme quite enough justice without including a bit of accordion in the arrangement, so I took it upon myself to learn Kass' theme on the accordion. In retrospect, it was actually a really great tune to use for learning! The accordion has the right hand chromatic keyboard side, which I was already familiar with due to my experience with piano, but the left hand button side was a daunting task, since I've never played any instrument that had a system like that. If you're not familiar with accordion bass buttons, this one is the 72 Stradella bass system. It has 12 rows of 6 buttons each, which each row being its own key (organized by the circle of fifths, which is really handy), and each button playing a different note or chord within that key. Kass' Theme is very cyclical as far its harmony goes, so often, I'm just moving down a row each time the chord changes. The accordion wasn't exactly made to handle complex jazz chords with lots of tensions, so it was fun figuring out roundabout ways to get the accordion to play some simple jazz chords (for example, playing Bmi7b5 with the B bass button, and the D minor chord button!)
I don't recall where exactly, but I know I've heard some jazz recordings with clarinet and accordion playing together. I decided to use this ensemble (plus piano, upright bass, and drums) for this arrangement to give it a really natural and airy feel! I've always thought that woodwinds sounded like birds, and clarinet is a good instrumental personification of Kass in my mind... apart from his obvious accordion skills, haha. Kass' theme is originally in 3/4, but I stretched it out to 4/4 for this arrangement to be able to give it a kind of a tango vibe! I've been really digging recordings of Piazolla's "Libertango" lately (especially the Hiromi, Gary Buron, and Yo-Yo Ma versions), which inspired this particular arrangement. The opening section is completely rubato (meaning there's no click track or metronome), so it was a challenge to get all the instruments playing together how I wanted them to. I soon figured out that the thing that was missing was a conductor, so I filmed myself conducting how I wanted the intro to go, and used that video as a reference for all the other parts in the intro! I miss conducting for ensembles, and this is probably the closest I'm going to get to that for a while at least, haha! Hope you enjoy the other little Zelda references I threw in towards the end! Normally I don't try and shoehorn a ton of references to other songs in my arrangement, but I figured these were especially appropriate, since Breath of the Wild uses piano for a lot of its sound effects and stingers!
♫ "Kass's Theme" from "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" composed by Yasuaki Iwata
Mix and Edit by me!
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