Got a random itch to play Chrono Trigger last night, but it was beyond too late. Stuck with me when I slept on it, so now I'm playing.
The only thing I can really say right now, is the music is even better than I remember. That's yet another thing that makes this game truly unforgettable to me. During the time when I played it the most, I was also a guitarist of 5 years, with the ability to play many songs and enough skill that I was seeking a deeper understanding of composition, but next to no grasp of music theory. This game is a masterclass in effective use of modal theory. Everything that makes those melodies hit so consistently and sound so melodically rich/deep in spite of not having any singing, fancy instrumentation or complexity to back them up, is because they emphasize and combine all of the right notes in the modes they use, to bring out their essence and highlight it. I can say now, with a concrete understanding of modes that they are much easier to identify in Chrono Trigger than they are in say, a song on the radio, or a sprawling classical piece.
The major scale has 7 modes, different sequences of notes that form, depending on what note in the scale you start with before playing 7 notes in the sequence. Scales are repeating sequences of notes. The last note will lead to an octave, where you arrive back at the starting note, only the next pitch level up. Start on the second note, that's the second mode - that's Dorian. Dorian sounds darker and more adventurous than major (Ionian.) 3rd is Phrygian, which is kind of like a bright and zesty minor. 4th is Lydian, which is very dreamy and ethereal. 5th Mixolydian, which is a more exotic kind of happy sound. 6th is minor (Aeolian,) of a very dark and somber substance. The 7th is Locrian, which is the darkest, most dissonant mode and is unstable with a root chord that sounds like pure dread and tension. All the same scale starting at different parts of itself, all with different matching chords and melodic strengths. Most music you hear in the west is written using only these 7 modes. Each one has its own feel and sound... you can think of them like primary colors, stacked like the bands of a rainbow, each color somewhat relating to the ones closest to it. Every mode has certain notes in it that will bring out that sound and add a lot more emotional coloration to the music. You can make progressions bridging the alignments across them, combine colors. In Chrono Trigger, the compositions are stripped back by technical limitations and it makes these things much more apparent.
I mean, the composer REALLY emphasizes the colors of the modes used in each passage, relying heavily on their natural strenghts to stick the vibe in unmissable ways... I think just to make sure the music sounded more distinct in leiu of the many other things that would usually come in to do that, if not for being stuck with a handful of synths and limited ability to have concurrent tones. It makes it basically a petri dish for analyzing composition and seeing how the mechanisms really function. It was as simple for me as beginning to pick out 3 note patterns and piecing together the logic of how they align in the game's music to form these gestalts of emotion through stark 16-bit tones. Everything that makes it sound good is in the note selection, and it's obvious. Games these days often use much more subtle compositions that breathe with more uncertainty or ambivalence... again because they have access to things like state of the art electronic tech, and entire orchestras. With out that, you need to be 'clearer' melodically and harmonically, or it just falls flat.
And because of this, breaking down the music on the guitar was hugely insightful and gave me a MAJOR early boost to my understanding of how music comes together, in ways that learning songs from radio and CD's just didn't. I would not understand and appreciate music in the way that I do today, if not for Chrono Trigger. I had been trying to crack modal theory completely unsuccessfuly until that music captivated me in just such a way that I would analyze its inner workings. I owe more than I can repay to Yasunori Mitsuda and Nobuo Uematsu for such great lessons.
As my first Mass Effect game was 3 (then 2 followed by 1 .......... thank god for a saved game editor) and then I played them in the correct order so now doing exactly the same with Dragon Age 
as I have only played Inquisition and whilst I made some history via the Dragon Age keep I would rather make my own in game.
Afraid to count how many of them are being rotated between. At least five in the last few months.
