Sky Waltz – Kirby’s Return to Dream Land

This is “Sky Waltz” from the 2D side-scrolling action game “Kirby’s Return to Dream Land”(2011), developed by Hal Laboratory and released by Nintendo.
This is composed by Hirokazu Ando.

It has been 11 years since the last release for a console game system, “Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards”.
The game features four-player play, but its development was difficult, and it took three development attempts after “Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards” to complete it.
(Interview article Note: Japanese only.)

The character Magolor from this game has been reintroduced in a game “Kirby Star Arise”(2018).

If you put a capotast on 1st fret, you can play in the key of the original song, but I didn’t put a capo in the video to make it easier to play the high position.

As the name suggests, this song is played on a stage in the sky.
Overall, there is a lot of use of the 4th degree ascending progression, and the image is one of moving forward and forward.

What I personally found interesting is the first inversion of II7 (secondary chord) in bar 30.
I felt that it sounded darker, probably because the third degree of the chord is the base, which is the same as a half-diminished chord with that note as the root.
I think that the dark atmosphere mixed with the bright atmosphere makes it sound nostalgic.

Also, VI is used throughout, I thought it raised the overall mood a notch by turning off the darkness that one would normally feel with vi.