The right note, hidden as a wrong note

The composer says he took a minimalist approach and wanted to include noises of “humanity” that many sound engineers try to edit out. In many of the game’s songs, for example, you can hear the soft brushing of his fingers across nylon strings as he changes chords.

The composer describes this as trying to capture “primitiveness”. “It really adds up,” he explains. “It creates a tension and texture that make [music] more human, and I’m looking for that, you know? The right note, hidden as a wrong note.”

A Brown on G A Santaolalla, NME

/

Through the windows my father's ghost appeared, sitting in the closed yard, smoking. There is a barn door leading to the yard and to the two entrances of the house, and it's never locked. We walked from the sunny street into the shade. Every year the swallows return to find their nest. They make little ones and they chirp and shit a lot through summer. My father places newspapers under the nest and tries to leave them in peace. The corner gets covered in cobwebs and dirt fast. When you let things be in the countryside, nature makes haste to reclaim.

“Aatj, wi san her.” 

“As det din frinj? Hi as ja en lütt dring.”

“Jo.”

My father greeted the Frenchman with a smile and a nod. The Frenchman posed like a toy soldier and saluted, which was received with a chuckle.

“Nö, hi as en Spaßvogel, eh?”

“What did he say?”

“He said you are a funny one.”

[...]

Few people I know have been here. It's so out of the way, and I've moved around so much, it was never practical. It wasn't practical for the Frenchman either, but he had been talking about it since winter. He had made up his mind to spend this summer on the island. It was of the essence. I don't like bringing people here. I was inclined to find some excuse in order to avoid the visit. But he insisted tirelessly, [...] until it stopped looking like a threat and started looking like a favor.

---

“Has this ever happened to you, that your hearing just disappears for a few moments? That you can't hear a thing?”

“When I'm about to faint.”

“I'm waiting for the sound to come on again but it's not.”

“Well, it is quiet.”

“That's not what I mean.”

“Then I don't know what you mean.”

“A premonition.”

“Nothing can find you here.”

[...]

“Is he there to remind you not to play with a heavy hand?”

“It hasn't worked now, has it? He always sleeps. I've never seen him awake. I think he's deaf.”

“Look at him. He's happy. He's comfortable. He's enjoying it.”

He picked up my guitar from the stand.

“A left handed one, for God's sake. This is going to take a while.”

“I have nowhere else to be.”

“Let's assume the strings won't snap.”

“They're not too stale.”

He took his time tuning it to the piano. He brought it to a modal tuning, DGDGAD or DADGAD or something of the sort. The piano itself is way overdue for the tuner. So the two instruments were right between them, but wrong in the world. He fumbled around, strummed here and there, looking for whatever it was he had in mind. I always pictured the guitar like a keyboard laid out scrambled. It was the only way I could make it make sense. He paused many times, tried one odd thing after another. On second thought, he looked more like he was trying to remember. His face lit up after the progression repeated consistently a few times.

“B♭maj to... what the hell is that? Oh, I know what you're doing.”

“Play,” he said.

He made room on the bench.

“Stay on Am.”

I put my hands on the keys and hung onto Am. He kept traversing from chord to chord, skipping thirds, before returning to the Am. My mind was busy figuring out the chords, working like a hand grain mill: B♭maj, B♭ add ♭5 no 3rd, now this was a creative one, it took me a while, Gm, Gm7 no 3rd, middle step - booze in milk, B♭maj again? No, B♭maj in the first inversion, Dm, Am. 

“Hey! Don't follow. Stay on Am.”

This time I focused and stayed on Am for real. From a tear in reality, emerged things belonging to a strange memory. There was the hiss of his soft finger pulps sliding on the wire strings, the occasional clicking of my ring against the keys, the creaky bench, the old floor. And then the sun appeared between the shaking leaves outside the window, and the sounds morphed into a vision, and

he spoke through me, he spoke through the instruments, he spoke through everything, like God;

I hung onto the Am in trepidation, a mortal.

---

[...]

“You never wanted to leave this place.”

“No.”

“Why leave at all then?”

“I had to go study. Make a living.”

“Do you think about coming back?”

“Every day.”

“Don't. You will turn into a savage.”

“Right. The city's civilizing effects.”

“The city keeps the mind open, if you have the aptitude for it.”

“Do you want to hear about the heron?”

“Tell me.”

“The heron nests close to other herons. They make villages that are called heronries. A heronry is most often near a body of water. It might be on a tree, or in a bunch of bushes or by a pond. No matter where, they are always populous. No heron nests in the middle of nowhere alone. When the heron is looking to nest, he wants to be surrounded by others of his kind.”

/