Actual Leitmotif page reorganization proposal

Wiki Discussion
1

This is sort of a followup to the text wall from a week ago, but mostly to discussions that have been going on in the Discord server. We eventually came to the conclusion of doing these changes, and Kocka wanted me to make a post in here to properly lay it out and have it on record in Discussions.

First, introducing a new "Arrangements" section that includes arrangements and alternate versions of tracks. This is because tracks that are versions of each other share a lot of similarities that aren't actually "motifs", they're just shared from one track being a version of the other. Describing these as motifs would be inaccurate, and transcribing every element in common between them would be both unhelpful and an absolute pain, often amounting to transcribing the whole track. You can see how this would look like at https://deltarune.wiki/w/User:Kapola7/Leitmotifs#Arrangements, though it's not exhaustive yet. One question I do have is whether this section should include entirely unused tracks.

Second, removing the major/motif distinction. It's arbitrary, it creates confusion, it gets out of date whenever new tracks are released, it makes things harder to automate, and it's basically meaningless.

Feel free to voice your opinions on this, and I'll make the changes if there seems to be general agreement, which seems to already be the case on the Discord server.

2

Also, I didn't say this in the post itself because I didn't want it to get in the way of the main point, but I do think there is some argument for splitting some very sparsely used melodies off from the main motif list, specifically ones that aren't even used in multiple in-game tracks (making them basically unused) and maybe melodies that just appear in two tracks without thematic reason (like Fanfare) as well. However, as Kocka pointed out, this is kind of separate from the major/minor distinction issue anyway, and the organization would be immediately improved by just removing the distinction, and then potentially discussing this separately later.

3

An arrangements section seems like a great idea for things like the Rude Buster variants and kris_piano pieces, but I want to know where the line of something being an "arrangement" is drawn. You've mentioned on Discord planning to add Friends<->The Diner Song of Best Friends, but what about Knock You Down !!<->Knock You Down!! (Rhythm Ver.), Digital Roots<->BIT ROOTS, Doom Board<->Metaphysical Challenge, Lost Girl<->findher, Vs. Lancer<->lancer_annoying, A Town Called Hometown<->happy_town, or The Ol' Jitterbug<->jitterbug_muffled?

If Field of Hopes and Dreams<->Field of Hopes and Dreams (Credits Version) is included, shouldn't Scarlet Forest<->deltarune_piano_collections_by_trevor_alan_gomes be there too?

Is cybercity_alt close enough to WELCOME TO THE CITY to count as an arrangement?

Are Who might you be?, I'm Telling! and Stop, Criminell! similar enough to count as just arrangements of each other, or is that sufficiently covered in the Six Flowers section?

What about tracks where there isn't a definitive "original" version, like Catfession...?<->Bratfession...?

If snippets of tracks count,[1] then are all of And Now For Today's Sponsors...!<->baci_distort, I'm Telling!<->meeting_flower_orange_highpitch, Pink<->pink_theme_mad, and Cutie Mew Mew Magic<->snd_pink_stretch_2_troubled<->snd_pink_stretch_2_fixed included?

Anyway, I do think that the major/minor distinction is more trouble than it's worth, and that we can decide what to do with motifs like Fanfare, Friendship, Raft Ride, Digital Roots, and Unused Section of Main Theme later, after merging the minor leitmotifs into the main list.

  1. e.g., most of the kris_pianos and Field of Hopes and Dreams (Credits Version) ↩︎

4

Basically everything in your first paragraph here is stuff that probably should be added and that I just haven't gotten around to adding them to the page yet. Same thing for Scarlet Forest.

cybercity_alt and the like is a little arbitrary. There's no objective way to say for sure what counts as an arrangement or not, but I think I'd count that one.

Who might you be?, I'm Telling! and Stop, Criminell! (along with meeting_flower_upbeat_drum) all definitely count as versions of each other. Rude Buster and Field get their own motif sections as well, so it makes sense for Six Flowers to also get that, especially since they're used in a lot more tracks.

for Catfession...? and Bratfession...?, they're both versions of Confession from Undertale, which also plays in Deltarune, so we can just include that.

As for your last paragraph, this is where the issue with section bloat really arises. I mean, it's kind of a problem to begin with, but there are a lot of unlisted and unused tracks that are just slightly altered versions of other tracks, and not all of them feel worth including in there if you know what I mean. In a lot of cases, it's for songs that wouldn't otherwise be in this section too. There's all the examples you listed there and I can think of a lot more that I won't list here. The reason I included the kris piano tracks in my original draft is because at first I was focusing on things that would otherwise end up in the motifs section. Shop 3 was in there, but only because it's in Shop 3 and its piano version, so not a motif. But then if I was gonna include kris_piano_shop in the arrangements section instead, I just included the rest of the tracks there as well. Rude Buster was mostly to avoid having to deal with part 3 and the piano riff in the motif section (since again, not really motifs); same principle with the other ones. The problem is that it leads to all the other tracks that are versions or arrangements kind of having to be included in there, and there are a lot of them. I'm honestly not too sure how to deal with it. I might try to make an actually exhaustive list, and then see how it looks, but I suspect it'll just look really big for no real reason. Then again, if people think that's fine, then it's probably fine - I did make this thread partly to get an idea of people's thoughts on this after all.

5

Ok, I already said this on Discord but there's basically two things that I think we could add to the restrictions to drastically cut down on tracks that really feel like they shouldn't be included.

First, tracks have to be actually musically modified. The arrangement must be changed, or the instrumentation, or a new melody must be added or it must be extended. This means if any track is a version of another track, and the only ways in which it is modified from the original track are, in any combination:

  • Taking one or multiple snippets of the original track
  • Changing the pitch and/or tempo
  • Applying some effect like reverb, muffling or distortion,

then it isn't included in the list. This means we can exclude a ton of tracks that are just a snippet of another track or a sped-up version and the like.

Second, no unused tracks. I'm less sure about this one, but we can easily reduce unneccessary bloat to the section by just not including any tracks that aren't either in the OST or in-game - basically, anything on the unused music tracks page.

This leaves in all the core stuff this was made to deal with in the first place, like the Rude Buster and Field variants, Inappropriate Recycling, the Kris piano songs (change in instrumentation and arrangement), the flowers' overworld themes (ditto). It also leaves in a decent amount of other things with instrumentation changes, but it cuts on most of the truly unneccessary stuff.

6

Looks good to me to get rid of jitterbug_muffled, mus_knightthought, snd_pink_stretch_2_troubled, etc.

Also sounds good to me; listing cybercity_old, noelle, flowery_iog, cliff_jump_ambience_nowind, meeting_flower_upbeat_drum, etc. seems like it wouldn't be that useful to a reader.

Unused tracks would also include the scrapped tracks that Toby's shared online, like Giga Queen (Old), Hammer of Justice (Piano Sketch), and The Sunset of 7 Suns, which would be ridiculous to include as arrangements since we know for a fact that they were composed before the final versions.