Tag: Instrumental

Top 50 Instrumental Songs (Part 3/5)

This is the third in a five-part series to be released daily, in which I unpack my favorite instrumental songs in the history of, well, ever. Narrowing this list down was obviously difficult. There were four “waves” needed to thin out the contestants from my library of thousands, and once we got below one-hundred it was like pulling teeth.

Yet, I stayed true to my original goal of fifty, for my own sake, and not compromise that number. I wanted to know for myself what I believed were my favorites among the gallery of songs I so dearly love.  This following list is the conclusion of those struggles.  They are not in order.  Simply getting a pool of them was hard enough.  I do wish to leave with my sanity.

Many are favored because of their execution and style, while others, because of a particular attachment or association they have with my personal life.  With each entry will be a short blurb, explaining why it belongs. And for a disclaimer: if I couldn’t understand what language they were singing in, I considered the vocals as their own independent instruments, and thus things like Gregorian chants do not disqualify songs from being “instrumentals.”

Enjoy.

 

#21 – “Space Lion” by Yoko Kanno

I have never in all my life heard a song quite like “Space Lion” from Cowboy Bebop, and won’t even pretend like I can do justice to it with one or two meager paragraphs.  While this song makes its debut in a stand-out moment within the series, it holds its place in my top 50 just because it’s so…beautiful.  The dreamlike ambiance, the soul-soothing saxophone—and the way they slowly fade together with an African children’s choir and bongos? Outstanding to the nth degree.

#22 – “Carry the Sun” by Glitch Mob

I think of two things when I hear “Carry the Sun.” I imagine a Captain Falcon montage from Super Smash Bros, as that’s where I found the song.  But more importantly, I am thrown into a deep desire to go skiing.  I discovered this track right before going on my first real skiing trip and so it kind of became the theme song of that week.  Now I can’t hear the hook kick in without it being followed by a blast of endorphins, restless fingers, and a need to move around.  This is the only electronic song in my top 50, and has one of the most visceral knee-jerk reactions tied to it.  Simply thinking about it is urging images of snow-capped mountains into my head space, powder exploding in my wake.

#23 “Beth’s Theme” by Ólafur Arnalds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTmXbUEbjnM

That first violin note is drowning. This entire song is drowning. This is the song of a drowning girl.

I never had a sister, and always kind of wish I did.  It’s a difficult thing to capture in words.  I’m not sure what to say about this song, as it often casts all thought from my mind.  All I know is it makes me feel.  Not sadness, necessarily, though I suspect that’s what the composer was aiming towards.  It’s just a sort of…stillness.  A bastard of depression and apathy, unwanted.  Every time I hear this song, I recognize sad things, but from a sort of observable distance.  That piano—as with many minor-key pianos—acts as a sober lens by which to see the fractures—hairline or glaring—in our world.

#24 – “Dragon Rider” by Two Steps From Hell

 

I’ve never seen a song so perfectly capture the essence of its title.  As evidence, I once played it for my college roommate and asked him to imagine what the composer wanted him to feel, without telling him the name of the song. He’d never heard it before.

He answered: “I feel like I’m riding a dragon into battle.”

Short and to the point, the way the song builds to its apex, you can already piece together the film montage of putting on your chain-mail, saddling over your lizard’s scaly back, and diving from the mouth of a cliff-side cave into the ravines of warring soldiers below.  The velocity of the song gives credence to the intense, romantic power of the dragon, this most legendary of creatures.  Any scene, real or imagined, is made better by having this in the background.

#25 – “Passion” by Yoko Shimomura (performed by the Kingdom Orchestra)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPLbCs48DlU

Before we continue, please understand everything from Kingdom Hearts is spectacular and only picking one song was impossible.  The Kingdom Hearts soundtrack at large is in my top 3 of all time.   I eventually landed on two (second to come later), though getting to that point was like peeling off my own skin.  Seriously, I could make a top 50 list of only the Kingdom Hearts gallery and there’d still be some quality material left over.

This brain-child franchise of Disney and Square Enix has created an unconventional game series, beloved far and wide.  The music is a heavy influence on the outcome of its popularity, wielding the power of a live orchestra and the triumphant genius of Yoko Shimomura as its helm.  “Passion” expands quickly to fill the horizon of your attention, just long enough to know it’s got its hooks in you.  Then it slows down into a fragile, criminally delicate progression of notes, which isolates a new instrument every couple of measures.  It’s almost vain, as if to say “look how beautiful my music can be.”  Cue the transition into a slow march, like brave toy soldiers off to the front lines.

There is perhaps no phrase greater, or which could more accurately depict the core principle of “Passion,” than the one which is most apparent, should you take some time to consider it.  That being, this is true ‘Disney Magic.’

#26 – “Shelter” by Porter Robinson and Madeon

(To see the original song in its debut video, rather than the above piano cover, click here.  The video is…quite special.)

If my writing can somehow create the feeling this song gives me, in someone else, then I’ll have made it.  The unadulterated innocence combines with the up-and-up of the melody, and they materialize into a thing of beauty. Yet, underneath the major key is a subtle, curious sadness, like somebody waiting, but they aren’t sure what they’re waiting on.  As mentioned above, this song was originally an electronic track, composed for an animated short video.  I hope I can say without hyperbole that the animation is one of the most heart-stirring and contemplative things ever found in the medium, and this song always brings me back to how I felt when I first saw it.

This is the song I hope one day might be characteristic of my daughter’s soul, should I be so fortunate as to have one.

#27 – “Attack on Titan Theme” by Hiroyuki Sawano

Oh hey.  Sawano again. That’s three times, now.

Created by recurring favorite composer, Hiroyuki Sawano, there are many things going on with this song in a technical sense, so I will focus less on that and more on the overall feeling, as I don’t want this entry to be an essay.

Basically this is the song of inevitable and unquestionable destruction.  It is armored in a sort of demented marching vibe, punctuated by distant church bells and a Gregorian chant.  This is appropriate, because it plays when a bunch of gigantic freakazoid monsters who resemble people in only the most horrifying way begin to descend on humanity and eat them like cattle, without discrimination.  It is the march anthem of death, trampling innocence and the semblance of safety we build around ourselves.

Plus those discordant noises spread throughout the song.  They’re so creepy.

(Btw the entire AoT soundtrack is worth a listen. There were many other contenders for this list.)

#28 – “Mortal Kombat” by The Immortals

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpE0lvSJdik&t=1s

Specifically, the metal version by Youtube creator Erock.  And no, I don’t count the occasional use of soundboard recordings as “lyrics,” so this still qualifies for the list.  Song begins at 0:22 in the video.

I need to be careful not to listen to this song while I’m driving. The adrenaline in my blood gives me a bad case of tunnel vision, which is great for kickboxing and not much else.  Most audiences have some level of exposure to the Mortal Kombat theme song, but this cover takes it to a different plane of intensity.  This is one of my go-to running tracks.  It makes you want to sprint, to fight, to dodge, to ascend.  There’s not much to talk about for this one.  I just like it a ton and it’s virtually unskippable when it crops up on my playlists.  As the name suggests, I consider it one of the ultimate fight songs, and Spotify has a version without most of the gaudy soundbites, but this was the best video I could find for our purposes.

#29 – “To Zanarkand” by Nobuo Uematsu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCRU5dl8lSE

Regarded as one of the most recognizable songs in the vast Final Fantasy archives, this lone piano captures so much of what made FFX special.  You can sense the fiction of the world behind the notes, its fantastical qualities, yet even further down is the story of a heart.  “To Zanarkand” captures the importance of its subject matter on multiple levels beyond its role as a simple song: it provides world-building, character development, and tonal improvement, all of which amplify the narrative at large.  It is almost ceremonial in its identity, carrying with it a sense of history which does not actually exist.  And to create that illusion, to seem like a tradition at first hearing, is a rare and magnificent boast for any song.

#30 – “Reverse Situation” by Toshio Masuda

This is Naruto music at its prime. Naruto has some next-level music, but in terms of raw enthusiasm, this is the peak.  I don’t attribute this song to any one moment from the series, mostly because I prefer to read it, but regardless it satisfies many scenes.  My imagination sets the track while I turn the pages, allowing me to control the direction and pacing.  There are many Naruto songs which almost made the list, but ultimately this was one of the only two which made the cut.  It’s just so invigorating.  The tables have turned, the situation has flipped.  Things are in your favor now.

Top 50 Instrumental Songs (Part 1/5)

Nearly eight months of godless agony later, I’ve finally completed a project I’ve been gearing up to do for years. This is the first in a five-part series to be released daily, in which I unpack my favorite instrumental songs in the history of, well, ever. Narrowing this list down was obviously difficult. There were four “waves” needed to thin out the contestants from my library of thousands, and once we got below one-hundred it was like pulling teeth.

Yet, I stayed true to my original goal of fifty, for my own sake, and not compromise that number. I wanted to know for myself what I believed were my favorites among the gallery of songs I so dearly love.  This following list is the conclusion of those struggles.  They are not in order.  Simply getting a pool of them was hard enough.  I do wish to leave with my sanity.

Many are favored because of their execution and style, while others, because of a particular attachment or association they have with my personal life.  With each entry will be a short blurb, explaining why it belongs. Click the name of the song to open a link for listening. And for a disclaimer: if I couldn’t understand what language they were singing in, I considered the vocals as their own independent instruments, and thus things like Gregorian chants do not disqualify songs from being “instrumentals.”

Enjoy.
——————–

#1 – “The Beginning” by Factor Eight

As much as I’d like to not start with an eight-minute song, let’s open with a splash of happiness and victory.  It’s nearly impossible to listen to “The Beginning” and not feel hope pervade every atom of your body.  Nothing about this song is complicated, and for the best.  We are introduced by way of orchestral strings, dancing on melting snow.  Sunlight comes in as an angelic piano comes baring its gifts.  The drums dive in with a stomping cadence, bringing with it the claps of soldiers who have come home.  That’s a good way of thinking about “The Beginning.”  It is a rebuilding song, a restarting song.  Post-destruction and pain.  This is the spiritual anthem for recovery and renewal, having survived the long night and sown the way for good things to come in the morning.  It’s men and women seeing their families again.  It’s a child leaving a hospital from whence hope was momentarily fleeting.  It’s not only survival, it’s ascension in spite of whatever wreckage or tragedy lay behind.

#2 – “Unravel” by TK from Ling Toshite Sigure

While I can and have listened to the instrumental versions for hours (there’s plenty to choose from, such as the sexy piano cover I linked above), the soul of this track’s appeal comes from the original version.  Unravel is the opening to season 1 of a popular anime called Tokyo Ghoul.  It is famous for having some of the most immediately recognizable opening notes in anime, so much so that my brother, who has not watched the series and only heard the song once, was able to tell me it was the Tokyo Ghoul theme after only a couple seconds, long after hearing it his one time.

I am trying to make a point of not discussing lyrics in any of these posts, but for Unravel, I’m making an exception.  I believe one of the largest parts of the song’s appeal is that it was specifically written and composed to capture the mentality of the series protagonist, Ken Kaneki, and it does so perfectly.  In any of the song’s iterations, both sentimental and intense, the music synergizes with the feeling you get while watching Kaneki develop as a character.  Matched by deeply introspective and existential lyrics, Unravel succeeds in being a catch-all of cerebral, contemplative, violent, haunting, and heartbreaking all at once.

#3 – “Requiem For a Dream” by Lux Aeterna

This song was the catalyst by which my campaign for instrumental music was founded, when I was a fledgling high-schooler just discovering the wonder of high-speed internet. It wasn’t until I heard “Requiem for a Dream” that I ever sought out more music of its kind, and the deviations which naturally followed. My imagination shifted under the weight of these new strains of music, epic battles waging, worlds taking shape. My music library has never been the same.

#4 – “Rylynn” by Andy McKee

I think this may be the only song on my entire list which is exclusively composed of acoustic guitar.  Rylynn earns its place among my top 50 not only for its stature as a song itself, but for the ties it holds to my personal life.  Specifically, this was the theme I associated to my longest-standing crush and unrequited romantic interest, spanning almost three years during my college career.  In my mind, this was her song, and while I don’t much listen to the song anymore, I can’t deny it is a sonic masterpiece, and she is still uniquely tied to the dream-like strums contained within.

#5 – “Dream Big” by Mark Petrie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHZKnbU61sw

If the phrase “crushing amounts of joy” makes any sense, I’d like to employ it now. This song is immediately and intrinsically filled with hope and overcoming, and for me, is inevitably associated with my favorite series, Naruto. Now, this song isn’t from Naruto, but it reminds me of one pivotal moment in the story: when our scrappy little hero is finally accepted by the people of the village after his harrowing battle against Pain. This song is how that series makes me feel, which is why, despite any arguments against Naruto’s quality which might arise (and being the fan I am, I’m more aware than most regarding its shortcomings) the series means so much to me. No amount of argumentation could divorce that narrative from the feeling “Dream Big” provides. This song is like walking into a pole, but a pole made of buoyancy and tranquility and victory. It makes you stop and be thankful to simply exist.

#6 – “I Could Have Done More” by John Williams

John Williams is so masterful in so many ways. There’s an almost trans-existential ache behind this one.  One heart speaking directly to another, confiding about little demons hidden for years on end.  It’s somebody telling a best friend they want to die.  You can feel it, behind the strings. How that harping violin files down your ribs into chains? Your sternum into a lock?

I mean, it IS a song about the Holocaust.

#7 – “Blumenkranz” by Hiroyuki Sawano

(Get used to seeing the name Hiroyuki Sawano. He shows up a lot on this list.)

Beautiful evil. This is a theme which both perfectly captures the villainess of its series, and transcends her. When I hear “Blumenkranz,” I can only imagine a fallen angel, glorious and lithe and bathed in colors.  But even while shining for all to see, that angel maintains an essence of absolute cruelty.  “Blumenkranz” is the modest seductress, the scheming man with the world’s best smile.  It is power, proud and terrible.  Honestly, most of this is credited to the choir, which really sells the song on merit of its divine, alien sound.

#8 – “One-Winged Angel” by Nobuo Uematsu (The Black Mages Version)

If the spirit of menace could have its own soundtrack…

This song is one of the most well-known video game tracks ever made, and inspires both terror and awe in many a veteran player. It is the theme to Final Fantasy VII’s nightmare pretty-boy villain, Sephiroth. When those staccato strings and slamming drums break in, you need to prepare for the worst. And after about a minute, this childish foreshadowing settles into the ashes, throwing wide the gates for a sound pulled from the belly of hell itself, full of darkness insurmountable and infinite.

#9 – “Spring’s Melody” by Masaru Yokoyama

“She is the journey with no destination.”

There’s a wonderful anime of world-class caliber called Your Lie In April, which plays your heartstrings like a violin (ha).  Whenever this song begins, you want to soar.  It rounds out the narrative beats perfectly, breathing life into the tone of the story and the animation.  This track might be simple, but from the first note it jars me back into that same zeitgeist of joy and sadness I experienced through every poetic second of YLiA.

#10 – “Seigi Shikkou” by Makoto Miyazaki and various others

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsYdLeeHiu0

From the anime “One Punch Man,” this song is, for lack of a more appropriate phrase, heroic as hell.  Now, unlike many entries on this list, my love of Seigi Shikkou exists independently of the source material (which I am infamously known to dislike among my social circles).  I am enamored by this kickass, pulse-pounding song for two particular reasons (outside the obvious one of it being a mega-dope song in its own right).  First, it works wonders at breaking through mental barriers, and as such it is commonly played every time I go to the gym.  Few things cast my inhibitions to the curb as violently as when those strings break into the song hook, like a superhero taking flight.  Second, I keep the track on hand during the writing of my current and most ambitious story ever.  It is the end game—how I want the conclusion of this story to feel when people read it.  All of my work and creative labors are aiming to inevitably land upon the feeling Seigi Shikkou generates.  It is impressively, almost impossibly cool.