Chords: Setting Sail, Coming Home from Bastion
Bastion is an absolutely phenomenal game. In fact, it’s up there as one of my favourite games of all time, that’s how good it is.
A while ago, the sheet music was released for free on the internet by the composer (a very nice chap called Darren Korb) so these aren’t hard to find. Anyhoo, here are the simplified ukulele chords I’m playing for my cover – which can be found up on YouTube right now.
As I said, Bastion is an incredible game, from the visuals to the cunning level design to the narrative themes to the super responsive play, it’s a joy to behold. It also has an absolutely fantastic soundtrack. I played all of Bastion, twice. I got insanely good at it, and completed every…single…challenge. I love this game.
One of the things that people laud Bastion for is the narrator, whose amiable presence is inserted with voiceover throughout levels to tell the story of the world to the player, or simply to provide hilarious and unexpected commentary on how you’re breaking pots. Without a doubt, it was groundbreaking at the time, and exceptionally well done, but for me, the soundtrack of Bastion is what gave the game a special place in my heart.
Put simply, it’s absolutely incredible. It’s full of bangers. It’s great music to work to. It’s western and eastern and shades in between. It’s industrial, and orchestral, and has this mystic edge that is my absolute jam. It’s like ELO, if they were more sampled. It’s the music of the world of Firefly, if that didn’t suck. It’s a great hour of listening.
I won’t go into it too much, but Bastion features a couple of notable songs with lyrics that act as key story beats for two separate characters in the game. One is sung by a man, and the other by a woman, and the latter sounds sweet and gentle because of the lady’s voice, but it’s actually a really threatening, forboding song. Towards the end (SPOILERS!) those songs are interwoven, linking the stories of those two characters in a heartbreaking coda that works beautifully. It’s really, really well done, and haunting as hell.
It’s also really hard to sing and play well because it’s quite slow, but I did my best.
Here’s the video of my Imperfection Project cover. A slightly shortened, split-screen duet with myself:
It came out pretty nice, given I never play to metronomes usually…
And here are the chords I’m playing:
The man’s part is at the very lowest end of my register. While I can do those notes, I can’t do them very loud, and they weren’t picked up so well by the mic above my head. I considered recording another layer of vocals to lift the low notes, but I really wanted this to be what it currently is: just two full takes; one low, one high; one dark, one light; placed together like Pyramus and Thisbe through the wall. Overall I’m kind of stoked with it, even if I did flub the lyrics in the last line. I always think it’s ‘you kept it burning’ when it’s ‘you left it burning’.
If you haven’t already, go play Bastion. If video games aren’t your thing, I’d urge you to listen to the soundtrack, because it really is exceptional.
Have fun with the chords – I’m positive you’ll do a way better job than I did.
Love always,
Fay
xXx
P.S. Darren Korb wrote this: listen to the original here, and then go buy the album. Because it’s beautiful, and you deserve beautiful things in your life.