Alefgard March - main title theme from Dragon Warrior

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Genre/Style: Orchestral Video Game Music, Orchestral March

Creative Vision for the Track: When I set out to orchestrate all of the music from Dragon Warrior, this was the first piece I arranged and recorded. Since that time I’ve picked up a lot of new sample libraries and upgraded my computer and gotten an actual workflow sorted out for myself. So my first version of this no longer sounded like it matched the rest of the arrangements. So I decided I needed to redo it. This is my remade version where I took the arrangement I had already made and recorded it with new instruments and fixed a few wonky parts of my original arrangement.

I don’t necessarily think it’s a good idea to retread the past very much. I like to listen to my old stuff, but I want to keep moving forward in new directions. But, I think revisiting a piece and doing it over is something that is good at least once. It is fun to peer inside the brain of a younger version of you, and it’s helpful to see all the ways you have developed since that moment.

Composition Details (Tempo, Key, Main Chords etc): It’s a classic march that changes directions in style a few times, mostly just by focusing on instrument groups at times before letting the full band play.

Tempo is 120bpm, which is pretty close, but a few beats slower than the original. My first version was original tempo, but this time I thought it sounded too rushed.

Key of F major.

Main Instruments used:
For the orchestral instruments I’m getting used to using a combination of Spitfire BBCSO and EastWest Hollywood Orchestra.

For the string quintet section and a few other places I used solo string instruments from EastWest Solo Violin, Solo Cello, Goliath, and Gypsy.

For the woodwinds I mainly use BBCSO because I love the way they sound. I’ll only use EastWest for woodwinds if I need something really short for a super fast passage. BBCSO articulations get less reliable the faster you need them to play.

For percussion it’s a mix of Spitfire BBCSO, Spitfire Drumline, and EastWest Hollywood Orchestra Percussion.

Only other thing is I used the bartok pizz strings from Spitfire LABS. The bartok layer is only in one part and it’s there to add texture to the regular pizz rather than to be bartok by itself, so I just grabbed something easy that I could one-track and that was the LABS bartok.

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And here is a link to the full playlist of all of the music from Dragon Warrior 1.

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I’m not really sure how to comment on this piece. When it first began, to be honest, I didn’t like it - it seemed disjointed. But, as it progressed I really began to enjoy the music. At times it reminded of Sousa’s Black Horse Troop and other times I heard what seemed to hints of the Basil Poledouris in the Hunt for Red October. After listening to the end, I can say that I really enjoyed it. It was like a short journey to someplace that almost seemed familiar. Thanks for sharing this!

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Thanks for the listen! I appreciate the honesty and I’m glad you ended up enjoying it. I understand about the disjointedness. A struggle I have when approaching a piece, especially when it’s one I am covering and reworking, is I want to do ALL THE THINGS! On this piece in particular, I think that was partly just me going “I want to put in a Sousa bridge, and then just the woodwinds so I can play around with the piccolo, and then do an offbeat rhythm that sounds kinda Russian,” and partly me trying to think “how do I make this short, repetitive game theme into a reasonable length piece of music?”

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When I first pressed play I was expecting something dark based on the title being “Dragon Warrior”

Instead, I Was treated to something that would have been at home in The Music Man

Good job

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