The New Horizons Main Theme Harkens Back To Previous Title Themes

[atalkingfish]

I've spent a lot of time listening to the theme for New Horizons, which can be found here, and I started to notice some similarities between it and other Animal Crossing themes. Then, I noticed that these themes are actually shared between many or all Animal Crossing Themes.

I started compiling all of the similarities, but I found that it was hard to convey exactly what I was trying to point out without making a more complicated video that demonstrated, maybe, the notes that are being played? So I made a video just showcasing 3 of the clearest instances of this:

I thought it was so cool that not only do Animal Crossing games borrow from the title theme to make their hourly songs, but they also borrow from each other and develop each other's ideas. New Horizons seems to borrow a lot from every previous title themes.

To add on to the ones demonstrated in the video, here are a couple other things of note:

• The horn used as the primary instrument in the New Horizons theme can be heard in the second section of the New Leaf theme (of course, many instruments like the piano and guitar are shared between many of the themes)
• There is a melodic and rhythmic pattern on the bass at the beginning of the New Horizons theme. This matches a lot with the rhythm and melody of the low notes on the piano at the beginning of the GCN theme
• The percussion instruments throughout the New Horizons theme sound like a more well-recorded version of the percussion rhythm found throughout the GCN theme
• There are many, clear 4-note ascending melodies throughout all songs, sometimes very prominent. I think this is related to the four-note rhythmic pattern shown in the video

Someone more talented than me should make a more detailed analysis... Or maybe I will someday? I don't know, I just thought it was very interesting.

 

[Brookie]

Woahhh the four-note rhythm is so obvious now it's scary! So is the ascending.!

It's crazy how I thought ACNH's was so "different" and fresh. Thanks for this

 

[John Wick]

Wow!

CF and NH sound alot alike!
Thanks for posting that.

 

[TheRealWC]

The New Horizons theme instantly sounded like the Wild World theme to me the first time I heard it. Great video, I didn't realize just how many similarities they all share!

 

[debinoresu]

my brain tries to fool me into thinking the past themes r better but i know its nostalgia. the new horizons theme will be another kids best/nostalgic jingle

 

[Sweetley]

Thank you for pointing out the similarities, I didn't even paid so much attention to the NH theme at first, found it even a bit lame. Now I actually start to really like it, it's kinda charming to be honest.

 

[DylanMcGrann]

Nice observations! I hadn’t really thought much about it aside from the passing thought of “this sounds like familiar Animal Crossing somehow.”

On a side note, listening to it, I’m getting the sense Animal Crossing: New Horizons is going for a distinctly ‘acoustic’ timbre compared to past games. There’s plenty of naturalistic acoustic sound in past games, but its all laced with heavy synthetic sound as well, partly just a result of being MIDI music, but they intentionally lean into the electronic components of the music in past games. Animal Crossing: New Horizons sounds like a departure in this way, at least in the main theme and what we’ve heard so far. If I had to guess, I bet the night themes will feature more ‘odd’ and sythetic sounds, but that’s just a guess.

 

[atalkingfish]

Nice observations! I hadn’t really thought much about it aside from the passing thought of “this sounds like familiar Animal Crossing somehow.”

On a side note, listening to it, I’m getting the sense Animal Crossing: New Horizons is going for a distinctly ‘acoustic’ timbre compared to past games. There’s plenty of naturalistic acoustic sound in past games, but its all laced with heavy synthetic sound as well, partly just a result of being MIDI music, but they intentionally lean into the electronic components of the music in past games. Animal Crossing: New Horizons sounds like a departure in this way, at least in the main theme and what we’ve heard so far. If I had to guess, I bet the night themes will feature more ‘odd’ and sythetic sounds, but that’s just a guess.

I would actually argue that GCN had a synth feel to it, then the three since then have been almost entirely acoustic, with New Horizons harkening to both styles in that it has a lot of acoustic and piano backing with a lot of synth melodies to contrast it.

 

[Xara]

nice observations!