Jonathan Shaw
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New Arrangement - "Theme of Juri" (Super Street Fighter IV)
🕑 Added 2022-03-20 16:51:00 +0000 UTCAn orchestral arrangement of Juri's Theme (officially "Theme of Juri") from Super Street Fighter IV.
Check out the video above, and you can find the landing page here with links to the recording, sheet music and more.
And for the wonderful patrons on either TandA Tier, you can now find the Sibelius file, a recording, MIDI and XML files attached to this post!
And for the wonderful patrons on TandA (Tier II), you can now find the stems I created for the recording in your Google Drive folder!
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Arranger's Note:
"One of the most sadistic and vengeful characters of Street Fighter, it is only appropriate for Juri to have a musical theme to match.arr
Immediately, the first interval is the tritone (E♭-A), literally named the "devil in music" ("Diabolus in Musica") due to its unstable harmonic nature. We get several instances of this devilish interval before resting in our tonic of E♭ minor at 0:08 (E♭-G♭-B♭).
Here, we get the first statement of the iconic "Juri scream" effect, which I have replicated here with a sliding electric guitar harmonic.
With our tonic commencing in E♭ minor with various swelling instruments, we quickly climb up a minor 3rd to G♭, and then again to B♭♭ (enharmonically; A). The sum of these two intervals brings us once more to the tritone (E♭-A), as the tonality climbs briefly to the dominant (B♭) before dropping to F♭ (enharmonically E; another tritone jump) to slip back down chromatically to the tonic of E♭ minor.
By 0:15, most of the forces diminish, and we are left with an arpeggiated melody that is oscillating between the tonic and mediant (E♭ & G♭) atop an ostinato in the strings and clarinets. This melody swirls around to various dissonances, including a major 7th (D; 0:18) followed immediately by the flattened 6th (C♭), acting here as the minor 9th of the dominant (C♭ atop B♭) - a rather crunchy dissonance.
At 0:21, we drop to the submediant / 6th chord (C♭; enharmonically B), before falling to the dominant (B♭) with the melody bringing us the minor 9th dissonance once more (C♭). This 8-measure phrase is repeated with additional forces (0:27), and development: a heavily syncopated rhythmic dissonance at 0:32 in the lower instruments; and a tweaked melody at 0:37.
As we move into the next section (0:40), we get an expansion on the opening arpeggiated melody of 0:15, now (true to its name) as it climbs up through an E♭ minor arpeggio (E♭-G♭-B♭). This is repeated at 0:43, but with the arpeggio falling to D♭ whilst a pedal E♭ is retained (a harmony that some of you may know similarly as the "gospel chord"). This falls once more to the submediant (C♭) before slowly making its way back to the tonic (E♭).
In the next section (0:53), we abruptly jump via a tertiary modulation to G♭ minor (enharmonically F♯ minor). Here, a solo violin and viola exchange some call and response material while the accompaniment offers another statement of the 0:40 harmonic progression, though now in F♯.
1:06 is perhaps the most interesting section. Here, we slow into a half-time (the tempo sounds half as slow) and we fall back to our tonic of E♭ via another tertiary modulation. The harmony has some more crunchy dissonance (minor-major 7ths; E♭-G♭-B♭-D; 1:15) and we conclude on a suspended 4th chord on B♭ (1:18). Here, the regular 4-measure phrasing is disrupted and reduced to a mere 3-measures. This thrusts the structure into disarray as we enter the climax (1:23).
Here, the tritone reigns supreme with material familiar to the opening (0:02) plus various chaotic developments and chromaticisms as the lower instruments play a new iteration of the earlier violin melody of 0:15. And by 1:32, the structure breaks down and we get an intensely syncopated rhythm, thwarting the regular pulse. We also climb up a tritone from E♭ to A, but then interestingly a perfect cadence into D. This can then climb chromatically back to E♭ to complete our loop without issue.
To finish, I wrote a little concluding outro in the style of the opening material."
