After we ran our article on the Golden Proportion in Zelda music (and its follow-up article) barely over a week ago, one of our readers was lucky enough to meet with Mr. Koji Kondo himself last week, at what I assumed was either GDC or Mr. Kondo’s Video Games Live performance. Grand sent this in to me:

“I had the good fortune of meeting Koji Kondo in San Francisco recently, and asked him about the golden ratio in regards to his Zelda music (going so far as to draw it out as a diagram). He told me that he’d never heard of it!”

Just as we guessed, Mr. Kondo doesn’t consciously use the Golden Proportion in his music. It can be an artistic tool, yes, but more often than not, it’s simply an aesthetic phenomenon. His music just happens to have significant golden sections, as well as a high correlation with the number of people who hear a Kondo melody and love it.

It’s nice to know that Mr. Kondo doesn’t purposely use the Golden Proportion, and that he’s gifted enough for it to show up in his music just naturally!

Thanks, Grand!