Boards›Story, Art, & Sound

EKKO - Music Analysis

Näzgul·4/25/2019, 6:44:07 AM·11 votes·7,198 views
EKKO - The Boy Who Shattered Time | League Of Legends Official Amino

Hello!

This is my very first entry, but I'm really excited about this.

I'm Näzgul, and I've been playing league for 9 years, probably. Last year I found this great community named LEAGUE AMINO, where I blog monthly. My blogs are mainly about music, because I've been (oficially) learning music for 11 years (I keep learning by myself) and I'm a music freak. Let's make this clear:

I LOVE LEAGUE OF LEGENDS' MUSIC

Anyway, I love sharing my thoughts in that community, and this is not selfpromoting.

I've just seen composers giving feedback to blogers through these boards. And I thought it would be awesome if they manage to see these blogs. I would love to ask them a lot of my ideas to know if I was right (or if I just made up).

So I plan to post these blogs here aswell. My only problem is that I don't know the format here, so it will take a while for me to get used to it.

https://pa1.narvii.com/6621/ba831709d8ae6f04c86f8b2c80796d22e4193fca_hq.gif

Ekko is one of the funniest champions to play, a brave boy and almost the only good guy in Zaun, which makes him even more interesting. And he can manipulate time!

With all of this, Sebastien "Chemicalseb" Najand worked on an unique piece of music, a song that fits perfectly with this unusual champion.

https://pm1.narvii.com/6621/65a1cc5b7946745b7dc9fb752e67d1d18fc9900f_hq.jpg

Probably his first idea was to play with time beats, as Ekko plays with time. If you count beats like "one two three, one two three..." you can realise that music breaks that beat times, and you'll probably lose counting. That's because Sebastien broke it to create a mix of 6/4 and 5/4 (or 11/4).

https://pm1.narvii.com/6621/eefbd99bda4ec90d1432514fb4f3880c63786343_hq.jpg

Ok, let's just say that traditionally classic music consider as balanced beat times 4/4, while 3/4 (or 6/4) are usually dance beats (valse/waltz). 5/4 is a weird meassure, artificial, human manipulated... As Ekko manipulate something so natural and ordered as time!

About the chords, the most of the song is played in Ebm. Maybe it's just coincidence, but Ekko starts with E, like Ebm... Hehe. And at the end... Well... I'll finish that a bit later.

https://pm1.narvii.com/6621/c78fc266398dbfa376cfa4717a8021a39f21ec01_hq.jpg

Let's talk about melody now. The main theme, played mostly with distorted electric guitars (distorted as the time, I think you get the idea), is played in a pentatonic scale, mostly know as chinese scale. They don't show you the tone or the mode properly, instead they just play consecutive notes without meaning.

https://pm1.narvii.com/6621/c4c1f5323b97a37ff24a8cf7c1148e19424453c4_hq.jpg

[1:28 - 1:37]

Well, I'm wrong, they do have a meaning: the directions. As you can see the melody go up and down, really fast and with huge jumps. As Ekko does ingame with his skills. It starts with one of the highest jumps, 8th, which suddenly go down and up (like a dash). This motif repeats a lot of time you with, more and more low and short, because Ekko and "his energy" are going down, to end up when it begun.

https://pm1.narvii.com/6621/eb456d98cb97b581cf244b2bf7fb15a3d31e0e1e_hq.jpg

https://pm1.narvii.com/6621/76d546bf3aee3ffe393de1ee187c19b2e2f16140_hq.jpg

https://pm1.narvii.com/6621/6e7544d2019ee00a80aa06fe39770dfe0c04eb32_hq.jpg

While this theme sounds, well, during the whole song, there's a sub-theme repeated all over the piece. A mechanical ordered theme. Like a clock's tic-tac, but really really distorted.

https://pm1.narvii.com/6621/a82fb4b7a7f4264c15dc38be8da7bb726091814f_hq.jpg

[0:00 - 0:35]

Between the versions of this sub-theme there's a serie of dissonant notes which creates discomfort, monothony and dark situation: the bad and evil strugling inside and outside Ekko.

https://pm1.narvii.com/6621/8361b71f3863a5ff5646f90993a76eb0d803ec03_hq.jpg

https://pm1.narvii.com/6621/a802c40f3d428a2afa7eff219fab9e6297ff0e6e_hq.jpg

There's also another motif, which consists in a kinda of ascending scale which suddenly goes down to his first note (visually similar to Ekko's ultimate). As you can see, the long this motif goes, the shorter it becomes, like an actual fatigue Ekko is facing.

https://pm1.narvii.com/6621/168946b380ca819032153924112d96aa603c7b6f_hq.jpg

And in this section voices change their role: the one which was playing the ascending motif (basses) now plays the inner strugling motif, and the main voice (with guitars) do the opposite. I guess that could mean that, as he plays with time, his old him was struggling, while his new him now try to climb. I don't know, you can help me with this in comments haha.

https://pm1.narvii.com/6621/e94300d2f589ad431882517d66bce552ba89a19e_hq.jpg

https://pm1.narvii.com/6621/46a0dc372472a78f660753cf44455c757d193dd8_hq.jpg

https://pm1.narvii.com/6621/f0e0c107d549ebd8df30a82e5106c23995406dac_hq.jpg

https://pm1.narvii.com/6621/54420d6b05c9f87d3ef2a06395fdf18eb19cb1cf_hq.jpg

[0:46 - 1:03]

If we observe the instruments, they're all synth and distorted versions of modern instruments, there's nothing much to talk about them, except they sound extremely well! They create a [punk/futurish] style which fits well with the champ.

I'll finish this with something that freaked me out. We can call it the "structure" of the song. It starts low, introducing the theme, while suddenly breaks in high levels of sound and rythm, and it goes back to low tones...

It repeats a lot, until near the end, when after all this strugle between high and low, good and evil, without meaning as I said before, it arrives to a mix of both themes (evil and good), while good theme adds just a single note, a note which is not contained in pentatonic scale, a SINGLE note that gives a whole meaning to everything has been played.

That note says that we're in a Major scale, a "good" scale (traditionally we can say that Major = Happy, Minor = Sad), saying that Ekko may live in a hard dark place, and he might not be always good, but at the end, at the end of the strugle and the song, he will always be good and brave. JUST WITH A SINGLE NOTE! I can't show you this very well, I hope you get that one!

https://pm1.narvii.com/6621/f0b5150fc604f1a4b3820e5660849036dcd84ded_hq.jpg

https://pm1.narvii.com/6621/a1ef3a50e0dc5c435bdf245ffa992631d4bd46df_hq.jpg

https://pm1.narvii.com/6621/9c8b2a9b6efedc5c08d0d12dc5fb03c82184cd68_hq.jpg

https://pm1.narvii.com/6621/fb04fadab9565379460c830eb4c43dc7e62b7a72_hq.jpg

https://pm1.narvii.com/6621/1e3d797ffc660e1fc422f9d66846f93be1e490a4_hq.jpg

[2:03 - 2:15]

Well, I think this is enough for now! Please comment what did you think about this. If you want me to make more stuff like this, and what champ you'd like me to analyse. If you didn't understand something and you want me to explain it, I'll answer everything to make you guys apreciate and love music as I do!

Here's the whole song:

https://youtu.be/8_OSWJeVTg0

All sheet piano credits to Winged Souls! Search his web site for more sheet piano music like this: http://wingedsouls.net

Thanks a lot for reading! Bye! :D

8 Comments

RiotChemicalseb4/26/2019, 11:16:51 PM5 votes

Hi Näzgul!

Wow, very cool analysis of Ekko's theme! :) It's really cool seeing the meaning that you attributed to some of the musical choices! (even though a lot of it was done on intuition alone :P )

I'll go in detail below:

Probably his first idea was to play with time beats, as Ekko plays with time. If you count beats like "one two three, one two three..." you can realise that music breaks that beat times, and you'll probably lose counting. That's because Sebastien broke it to create a mix of 6/4 and 5/4 (or 11/4).

You're correct! I thought of it exactly as 6/4+5/4, but I wanted to keep it as a repeatable pattern so that the listener could quickly latch on to it and not be confused.

About the chords, the most of the song is played in Ebm. Maybe it's just coincidence, but Ekko starts with E, like Ebm... Hehe. And at the end... Well... I'll finish that a bit later.

I think at the time I was just messing around with detuning my guitar down to Eb and just stuck with that :P No particular reason other than that.

Let's talk about melody now. The main theme, played mostly with distorted electric guitars (distorted as the time, I think you get the idea), is played in a pentatonic scale, mostly know as chinese scale. They don't show you the tone or the mode properly, instead they just play consecutive notes without meaning. Well, I'm wrong, they do have a meaning: the directions. As you can see the melody go up and down, really fast and with huge jumps. As Ekko does ingame with his skills. It starts with one of the highest jumps, 8th, which suddenly go down and up (like a dash). This motif repeats a lot of time you with, more and more low and short, because Ekko and "his energy" are going down, to end up when it begun.

This theme came from one of the few ideations I had done. Each ideation was a way to figure out the overall sound and energy of what Ekko's theme would feel like. This melody was improvised probably in 1 or 2 passes. I thought it sounded cool so I kept it. By improvised, I definitely don't mean random; any improvisation is done with an underlying emotional purpose, which may or not be clear at the time of composition, but if it feels right it usually clicks right away and ends up staying in the piece.

While this theme sounds, well, during the whole song, there's a sub-theme repeated all over the piece. A mechanical ordered theme. Like a clock's tic-tac, but really really distorted.

This just came from messing around on the guitar. I was messing around with bending those longer upper note to give it that edge. Their rhythm just came naturally by improvising on top of the drum groove.

Between the versions of this sub-theme there's a serie of dissonant notes which creates discomfort, monothony and dark situation: the bad and evil strugling inside and outside Ekko.

I was really into distorted minor 2nds at the time and you're right that it creates this sense of discomfort and darkness, while still having a lot of energy. Since Ekko is from Zaun the music needed to have that distorted and "put together" vibe to it. Alex Temple and I (we both worked on the Ekko cinematic), used a bunch of that minor second stuff in there too.

There's also another motif, which consists in a kinda of ascending scale which suddenly goes down to his first note (visually similar to Ekko's ultimate). As you can see, the long this motif goes, the shorter it becomes, like an actual fatigue Ekko is facing.

This sub-theme came from when Alex Temple and I were working on the Ekko video together. I just ended up reusing this groove here. The notes themselves just sounded cool and had good momentum, and felt like the right fit for Ekko.

And in this section voices change their role: the one which was playing the ascending motif (basses) now plays the inner strugling motif, and the main voice (with guitars) do the opposite. I guess that could mean that, as he plays with time, his old him was struggling, while his new him now try to climb. I don't know, you can help me with this in comments haha.

Indeed! the idea was to make that section almost sound like it was going backward in time - conveyed mainly by the movement of the bass. One of the reasons for this section being in there was to add variety to the overall song. This particular section didn't exist in the song for a long time and was made toward the end of the process.

If we observe the instruments, they're all synth and distorted versions of modern instruments, there's nothing much to talk about them, except they sound extremely well! They create a [punk/futurish] style which fits well with the champ.

You're exactly right that those instruments were chosen/made to reflect Ekko's punk attitude and Zaun :)

I'll finish this with something that freaked me out. We can call it the "structure" of the song. It starts low, introducing the theme, while suddenly breaks in high levels of sound and rythm, and it goes back to low tones...

It repeats a lot, until near the end, when after all this strugle between high and low, good and evil, without meaning as I said before, it arrives to a mix of both themes (evil and good), while good theme adds just a single note, a note which is not contained in pentatonic scale, a SINGLE note that gives a whole meaning to everything has been played.

That note says that we're in a Major scale, a "good" scale (traditionally we can say that Major = Happy, Minor = Sad), saying that Ekko may live in a hard dark place, and he might not be always good, but at the end, at the end of the strugle and the song, he will always be good and brave. JUST WITH A SINGLE NOTE! I can't show you this very well, I hope you get that one!

That bridge section with the major/minor stuff is probably my favorite part of the song. It actually came from another ideation test I had done while developing some of the instruments. The song needed a bridge here and I felt like using this melody would work well as a breather. In regards to the major/minor stuff, I just really like that sound :) and am glad that it worked well for Ekko. I've also used that modal sound in a lot in other pieces I've composed for League.

I hope this helps shed some light on the thought process behind Ekko's theme. Unfortunately for a lot of these it's basically purely intuition based on understanding what the character is about - and what could be perceived as deeper meaning is often not thought about until after the fact (in my case anyway). :P

-Seb

zounet4/25/2019, 1:28:32 PM2 votes

[slayer-pantheon-thumbs] good job!

Schoenberg4/25/2019, 3:41:25 PM2 votes

And like that, you've won me over.

<3

Ahri Body Pillow4/26/2019, 4:35:25 AM2 votes

Great analysis!! Awesome!