Analyzing Phrases and Form in Nintendo's Combat Music

This thesis presents a model for analyzing phrases of tonal music in Nintendo's combat music. This begins with a deconstruction of the phrase model as it is commonly understood in western music theory and continues with a proposed modified version of it to be used in tonal music analysis. By doing analysis using the modified phrase model, phrases can be argued to exist in more places than with the previous version, which leads to the observation of new form types that have not been previously described in video game music research. These form types are structured similarly to simple binary form and rely on the juxtaposition of stable phrases and unstable transitional phrases. The data examined in this thesis is sourced from various Nintendo video games that suggest the existence of binary looping structure alongside other common form types described in music theory. By analyzing Nintendo's combat music from select soundtracks, I have found that my binary looping forms can aid in describing form across not only combat music in general, but potentially the larger scale of video game music as a genre.