181022
definitely very dramatic! mood and atmosphere are set up strongly here. though to my ears, the triangle especially gives me an ominous feeling... like something lurks out in the snowy woods outside my home...
I tried to avoid hokey "winter cliches" on this one - no white noise winds or C-major carols.
Everything outside the triangle throb is based on the magen avot scale, which is very similar to E major, except you start on C, and because C natural isn't in E major, you add it, which gives you eight notes total. Here, it's transposed up to D, because why not. The triangle pulse remains on C, because it sounds better that way, and, I reiterate, "why not".
Magen avot always strikes me as very winter-y. A night somehow warmer than the day preceding it, much as the thermometer would try to convince one otherwise. Snow on the ground. Scattered bare trees. The knowledge of a warm abode in the vicinity. Enjoying that certain quiet tranquility that only comes on cold winter nights.
The second half of the song is a little more experimental, utilizing staccato notes and the acoustical beating caused by different pulse-widths and the extra "root-sharp" in the scale to create what, to my ears at least, is a really interesting dance through tremolo both actual and illusionary.
So much for the theory. I suppose it's a bit slight in practice, but it's a cutscene - the music is setting the mood, the text is telling the story.
This is nsf-vanilla. Actually, it's full-fledged "nsf_classic compatible". Expansion chip audio can be fun, but I think it would have been gratuitous here.