Ahmar

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__ The Opened Way __
__Composer:__ **Kow Otani** __Performed by:__ **Eminence Symphony Orchestra** __Musical Time Period:__ **Contemporary**

This piece is from the video game "Shadow of the Colossus". It starts to play when you battle a colossus. It's the most popular piece from the soundtrack and makes the game more memorable. The whole thing is very intense and sets the mood when you start to fight a colossus. The title, The Opened Way, means that a path has been opened for you to save your loved one by killing 16 colossi. When it starts playing in the middle of the first fight, you know that your journey has just started. It's also one of the first themes heard in the game. It has a total of over 1.5 million views on YouTube. There are also many covers which include a violin cover, piano arrangement, an electric guitar cover and many more.

The composer of this piece is Kow Otani. He was born on May 1, 1957 in Tokyo, Japan. He has composed many Japanese Films, Anime and Video Games. He is best known for creating the soundtracks to many Gamera films and the soundtrack for Shadow of the Colossus. The instrument he plays is the piano but he mainly composes and arranges music. Kow started his composition career in 1987 with City Hunter, and anime, which earned him recognition. He later went on to do several more anime and Gamera films. He started composing for video games in 1995 with Philosoma, a video game for the Sony Playstation. In 2005, he composed the soundtrack for Shadow of the Colossus which is his most famous video game work. Kow Otani is also a founding member of the music production company Imagine which features many musicians who have become well known in the industry for their cinematic scoring and orchestration.

 I chose this piece because it is one of my favourite themes from a video game. It does a great job in setting the mood of the moment and makes you feel as though you're in the character's shoes, fighting something over 1000 times your size. It's very intense and full of energy. The harmony in the beginning is very powerful and makes the song start off intense, giving you a sense of fear, trouble, danger and restlessness. The rhythm is also very powerful throughout. The melody the violins play right after is powerful as well, but it's also beautiful and gives you sense of hope and ambition rather than fear. The tone colour can be described as dark, piercing and rich. I really liked the performance of the piece. In the beginning, however, they played at a slightly faster tempo than they were supposed to. Other than that the Eminence Symphony Orchestra did a great job at playing this piece.

__Other works by Kow Otami__
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