Following the post about the Summer Pockets main menu music trancription (Key Musical Transcriptions), I wanted to talk about the original piece itself.
Similar to the Tomoyo After menu music, this is a piece that kept me from starting the actual VN, and I think that the one thing that both pieces of music share in common is their simplicity in composition. Sure, Summer Pockets has some fucked up chords at times, but most of the time it sticks to regular major or minor chords and fifths, which aren’t something spectacular for a piece of music. And the whole track doesn’t have a single alterned note that deviates from its key signature. And yet with such simplicity of composition, it manages to grip the listener.
Most of the track uses arpeggiated chords and appoggiaturas (musical ornaments) that together with the breathtaking performance of the piece turn the simplistic composition into a complex music interpretation. The alteration of the tempo during the first seconds of the track and the last ones is almost impossible to transcribe, and I pretty much gave up with the transcription of dynamic expressions (forte, piano, pianissimo and so on) because the performer plays such an expressive take on the composition that pretty much every note should have a different dynamics anotation.
Without having yet played Summer Pockets nor knowing anything about its story I can tell that the music evoques a sense of relaxation as if the breeze was caressing the listener while he’s falling asleep on the grassy slopes of the island. The listener could be either alone or with some friends, but I’m pretty sure that the listener is alone by the end, as the duration of the notes becomes longer and longer and the piece ends with a very basic “5-1-5” chord that doesn’t even specify if it has a happy feeling (major chord) or dull feeling (minor chord). It’s as if the end of the VN is going to be the main character being left alone in some bittersweet scene and then the reader has to decide whether that’s a good or a bad ending.
Overall, I can’t stress this enough, but the key to this track’s success is its simplicity and amazing performance. Add a relaxing blue and green drawing to an already relaxing piece of music and you have a perfect main menu.