Musical instruments in the Legend of Zelda

 

In almost every single Legend of Zelda game, Link will find some kind of magical musical instrument.

Most of the earlier or simpler games have an instrument in the form of a normal equippable item - just something you equip to a button, and when you use it, Link plays a tune and some effect occurs. A common effect is the ability to warp to specific locations on the map - seen in Zelda 1, A Link to the Past and Minish Cap.

Link plays his magical recorder to summon a tornado that will take him around Hyrule

Link plays the lost forest boy's flute in order to summon a bird, who will take him around Hyrule

Two games - Link's Awakening and Oracle of Ages, have multiple songs to select from via a menu that appears when you equip the item, and each song has different effects.

Selectable ocarina songs in Link's Awakening

 

Play that Ocarina, Link!

So far this isn't exactly out of the norm - equipping items and using them happens in every adventure game.

Ocarina of Time, the fifth Legend of Zelda game came along and made the use of musical instruments in these games more interesting.

When Link gets the Ocarina, using it puts Link in a stance where he is holds it to his mouth, and the player can press buttons to play different notes. There are five notes, performed with the four C buttons plus the A button.

 

Cute!

There are twelve different songs that Link learns throughout the course of the game that are all played using a combination of these five notes, plus a couple of other things like minigames.

The way these songs have been implemented is quite ingenious in a number of ways. The songs weren't composed purely for use with the Ocarina, they are actually significant songs heard throughout the game - Saria's Song plays all throughout the Lost Woods, and Epona's Song plays while in Lon Lon Ranch, etc..

The songs the player performs with the buttons match the soundtrack heard in the related areas perfectly, and it really adds a level of significance to the music in the game.

It's also interestig to note that Zelda's Lullaby, the first song Link learns, wasn't even originally composed for Ocarina of Time - it was adapted from the song heard in A Link to the Past when rescuing the maidens.

The Ocarina in this game also allows the player to control octaves and sharps/flats, using additional button inputs. This is completely unnecessary for game purposes since none of the songs in the game require these advanced controls, yet having the option to do this adds a level of reality to the sense that you are indeed playing an actual music instrument within this game. It's also fun to mess around with!


Majora's Mask used the exact same system, with each of Link's new playable forms getting their own version of the playable instrument. Each instrument functioned the same way as each other, however.

Let's play on the fishy guitar!

The next Zelda game to attempt to do something interesting with the instrument system was Wind Waker, with its conductor's baton, known as the Wind Waker. The controls for this one are a little odd. The notes are automatically played at a steady beat, and you hold a direction to change the next beat's note. You also hold the other stick in a direction to change between playing a three-note song, a four-note song, or a six-note song. There are two songs of each type, making six in total.

Link with the Wind Waker

The Wind Waker as an instrument didn't really feel to me as anything particularly special. Mostly throughout the game, you're playing the Wind's Requiem (Up, Left, Right) because changing the wind direction is by far the most useful thing the Wind Waker is able to do. The other generally useful song is the Ballad of Gales for warping, but for the most part, the rest of the songs are just keys to progress through various parts the game.

Wind Waker's playable songs don't generally feel as integral to the game world as the Ocarina songs did in the previous games. Perhaps it's the layer of awkwardness to the control, or maybe it's that each note of the songs are played with no variance in tempo, meaning that Link's conducted version doesn't really sound much like the real version of the song.
 
Whatever it is, the Wind Waker isn't much fun to mess around with, other than just rotating the sticks to see Link's arms flail wildly

hehehe

After Wind Waker, we've got Twilight Princess.

This game didn't really have an equippable instrument, other than the Horse Call, which isn't all that interesting, as it only plays one song automatically.

Twilight Princess did however have its own instrument system with the wolf's howling. You have three pitches, high, middle and low, and you hold a button to sustain a howl of the chosen pitch.
The wolf couldn't howl anywhere you wanted, however  - it was only done at designated spots; usually the Howling Stones, which would unlock the Hidden Skills.

 The howling interface

The idea behind these Howling Stones was to accurately copy the stone's whistling by memorising it and howling back what you heard, turning the howling system into a sort of memory game.
If you don't do it just right, there will be blue lines left on the staff to help you get it right next time.

The songs Link howls consist mostly of the Ocarina songs from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, with a few original ones as well. Since howling in Twilight Princess is just a tiny minigame, and not actually an important part of the story, it didn't really matter what kind of songs Link howls, which led to them including these fun callbacks to the older games.

In Twilight Princess there are two types of grass that Link can use to whistle - one type to call his horse, and one to call an eagle that can be used to solve a few puzzles.  Strangely enough, when in wolf form, Link can still call them by howling beside these grass patches - and it even uses the howling system, rather than just being automatic like blowing them in human form is.

...How curious. This makes me think that howling as seen in the final game is the remnants of a system that was originally intended to be much more significant than how it ended up - maybe even something akin to the Ocarina system, with specific songs to learn. Or maybe not. It's just speculation on my part.


Spirit Tracks had some panpipes, which were controlled with a combination of the touchscreen and blowing into the microphone. It's a huge gimmick and to be honest, I don't like it. I don't like how they intentionally made a potentially simple control scheme awkward and annoying just for the sake of including this "fun" gimmick. There are so many Wii and DS games that did this....I don't get it. I didn't finish Spirit Tracks when I played it, so I guess I can't really say anything else about it. Maybe I'll play it again some day.

 ...

I couldn't be bothered to play Spirit Tracks to get a screenshot.

And lastly we have Skyward Sword and its harp.

...You can take it out at any time and strum it by waving the controller back and forth, to no real effect.

Strum it!

 The only time it's useful is during specific story sequences, where you must strum to the same rhythm as Fi's fairy circle. It's... really hit or miss. It's not a fun minigame in my opinion, it's just annoying when it doesn't work properly, which is quite often.

The songs the harp plays are cool and unique, but since you can only hear them during the small portions of the game where Fi sings as you strum, they are quickly forgotten. It's notthing like in Ocarina of Time, where Link's Ocarina songs become so ingrained into you, since you get to play them all the time...in Skyward Sword, all you can do by yourself is strum the thing up and down, and the actual songs don't get any attention at all. It's a bit of a shame.

Nothing ever really felt as cool and cohesive as the Ocarina's system, but it's certainly not due to Nintendo's lack of trying. That's the way it goes sometimes.