Music of the Kingdom Hearts series

The Kingdom Hearts series features an extensive array of music that contributes greatly to the identity of the series as a whole. With over 500 unique music tracks, ten original soundtracks, numerous compilation and arrangement albums, and several live concert performances, the Kingdom Hearts series has a rich musical history that plays an important role in the franchise.

Yoko Shimomura is the primary composer for the series, with Tsuyoshi Sekito and Takeharu Ishimoto joining for later entries. Utada Hikaru created the theme songs, while a number of other artists have made arrangements and orchestrations for the series.

Terminology

Certain types of music tracks in the Kingdom Hearts series are divided into categories. "Field themes" are played when exploring a specific world. "Battle themes" are songs played during combat: "boss themes" are a special type of battle theme used in boss battles, while "world battle themes" are used for standard enemies in a given world. Together, field themes and and world battle themes are "world themes".

Some specific characters have their own music theme used outside of battle, called "character themes", which almost always use the name of the character as the title of the track. Special tracks played during scripted events, such as cutsenes or mandatory encounters, may be referred to as "event themes"; unlike other categories, this distinction is not given by official materials, but is used here as a means to disambiguate these types of tracks.

Original soundtracks

Kingdom Hearts

The soundtrack for Kingdom Hearts was composed entirely by Yoko Shimomura. Nearly 100 original tracks were made for the game. The international release of Kingdom Hearts featured two additional tracks, and Kingdom Hearts Final Mix included a further two more. A small handful of tracks were arrangements of existing Disney, Final Fantasy, or classical pieces, but the majority of the soundtrack was wholly original. Hikaru Utada composed the theme song pair, "Simple and Clean" and "Hikari".

Shimomura composed the soundtrack with the idea of having short, contained musical phrases that would connect different pieces together. Several tracks near the game's climax incorporated the melody of the title theme, "Dearly Beloved"; songs relating to the Gummi Ship all share a two-measure melody; numerous songs relating to darkness are connected by a three-note motif: shared phrases such as these tie the soundtrack together.

Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories

The Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories score consists of nearly 50 compositions, all by Yoko Shimomura. Just over half of the soundtrack is new arrangements of pieces from Kingdom Hearts, while the rest are new compositions. The original Game Boy Advance versions of these tracks have never been released on an album.

Due to the limitations of the Game Boy Advance, sound compression was a more important issue than it was for the first game on the PlayStation 2; as such, returning world themes were given new simplified arrangements. Very few tracks other than world themes are carried over from Kingdom Hearts, allowing the game to form a distinct musical identity. While short themed phrases are still implemented in the game – for instance, tracks relating to Organization XIII share a similar descending chromatic pattern – the soundtrack is not built around these common phrases in the same manner as Kingdom Hearts. Rather, similarities in instrumentation give the Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories soundtrack structure.

GAME TITLE

First paragraph: Information

• Main composers, arrangers, orchestrators
• Development notes (e.g. differing releases)
• Theme song (where applicable)
• Released in an album?

Second paragraph: The music itself

• Musical analysis (where applicable)
• Hardware limitations?
• Common instruments/techniques?
• Reusing tracks, or original arrangements?

Arrangements and orchestrations

• Short blurb about piano collections, orchestral concerts, etc.