The Skyrim Theme Becomes Elevator Music

Courtesy of the fine folks at Reddit, we’ve got a video of YouTube user (and pianist) live4divin, who performs a jazz reharmonization of Jeremy Soule’s main theme from Skyrim. For non-musicos, reharmonization is when you take an established melody (say, “All The Things You Are“) and write new chords to go underneath it. It can be a really fun practice, and most jazz pianists can spontaneously reharmonize melodies to some extent or another.

(Fun fact: Jazz musicians refer to a reharmonized tune as a “reharm,” which is a term I’ve always enjoyed. Sample usage: Man, did you hear Joe Pass play that “Giant Steps” reharm? That cat is amazing!)

(Second fun fact: Jazz musicians actually do call other players “cats.” I’m serious!)

It’s particularly easy (and fun) to do a reharm for a simple melody like the main theme to Skyrim, and so this player has a good time coming up with some extra-“jazzy” jazz chords to put underneath it. In between melody statements, he does a bit of a noodling vamp that doesn’t do too much for me, but hey—this is YouTube, it ain’t the Blue Note.

My fellow Kotaku editors and I were talking about how this jazz sounded more elevator-ish than some other jazz. The more I listen to it, I started to hear it, so to test this theory out I thought I’d put the music behind a scene from one of the most iconic elevator games of all time.