The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time "Zelda's Daydream" 3:40

The endlessly-prolific, kind-hearted (and now TikTok-famous!) multi-instrumental virtuoso Shea's Violin has released her first album - Liminal Echoes: A String Tribute to Chrono Trigger. Check it out on your platform of choice and enjoy 12 beautiful instrumental covers from the timeless classic Chrono Trigger soundtrack, brought to life in a way that only Shea could.

To celebrate the occasion, we're sharing another of her arrangements from an equally-iconic series - The Legend of Zelda. Let the waves of tranquility wash over you as Shea lulls us into a daydream with a beautiful acoustic cover of "Zelda's Lullaby" that has an especially improvisational slant. The artist writes:

"I started arranging this song on a livestream, but I made a mistake and forgot to change the time signature from 4/4 to 3/4 before I recorded a piano accompaniment part for it. Without realizing what I had done, I started recording the violin lead line and very quickly found out that I had the time signature wrong, but I improvised the lead line to fit into the 4/4 structure. I was worried it would just be too slow-moving and sparse in the intro. At the end of the first take, I listened back and I really liked how it sounded: super airy, lazy, drifting, dreamy, wandering, and lost.

Instead of going back to fix the song and put it properly in 3/4 time as the original is, I decided to press on and do an entire dreamy arrangement in 4/4 with a string choir and guitar/mandolin lead trading. I kept the first take and built the rest of the song around this "Bob Ross Happy Accident (TM)". I wasn't sure at the time if I should have changed the meter from the original, but I like how it turned out. :) I'm glad I went for it. It's just a prog-waltz. :'D

On the second pass through the melody, I gave the guitar and mandolin a very free interpretation of the melody before heading to a solo section and bringing the melody back at the end with a reharmonized version of the source borrowing the Eb from the B section before ending back at the tonic.

I almost didn't post this because it was such a deviation from the source and spawned from an accident, but, after I did, I got several messages asking me to submit this to OCR, so here we are!"

I am a huge proponent of letting the "happy little accidents" drive your creative process, and also support frequently putting yourself in situations where those accidents can happen in the first place. A realtime collaborative environment, like a livestream or a studio session, is a great way to put analysis paralysis in its place by forcing you to commit to decisions without having the time to overthink yourself into oblivion, and it clearly paid off here.

Much like a jazz standard, "Zelda's Lullaby" is one of those songs that becomes so iconic that it can evolve beyond its original form on a subconscious level, so I'll readily admit I didn't even realize that Shea changed the time signature - it just felt right. Judge Chimpazilla said it "feels so real and organic, completely charming, it makes me smile." What more could you ask for? Smiles all around courtesy of Shea - congratulations on the album release, and cheers to many more happy little accidents like this one in the years to come. <3