About

Playing Music In Tears of the Kingdom refers to the practice and trend of arranging Zonai spikes in the 2023 Legend of Zelda game Tears of the Kingdom such that they produce a variety of pitches when struck. Once this quirk of the game was discovered, several players were able to create contraptions, often involving a laser Zonai device, that served as musical Rube Goldberg Machines. Multiple videos of musical contraptions in Tears of the Kingdom that played famous melodies from meme culture and popular songs went viral in June 2023.

Origin

On June 9th, 2023, Twitter user MaxoTunes^[1] discovered that Zonai spikes in Tears of the Kingdom produce a pitch when struck and that this pitch can be altered by changing how deep the spike is placed in the ground or by fusing spikes together. The tweet gained over 480 retweets and 5,300 likes in two weeks (shown below). They noted that while their demonstration struck the Zonai spikes with a laser, hitting them with any device would also produce a pitch.

lasers n stakes will actually produce a pitch #TearsOfTheKingdom pic.twitter.com/yTeTvR40Bu

— Maxo ⬢ (@maxotunes) June 9, 2023

Spread

On June 10th, 2023, Twitter user @bran8bit quote-tweeted MaxoTunes with a video of themselves "playing" "Megalovania" from Undertale, fusing wheels, lasers and spikes in such a way that the song plays on a loop. The post subsequently went viral and gained over 29,000 retweets and 125,000 likes in two weeks (shown below).

just discovered you can create a wider range of pitches by attaching stakes to one another 🤯new DAW just dropped https://t.co/PfmVIail5A pic.twitter.com/BvVytBNCc3

— bran (@bran8bit) June 10, 2023

Over the following weeks, multiple users posted videos of their musical contraptions in action, often showcasing melodies from memes. On June 21st, 2023, YouTuber Benthoven Music posted a video featuring the GameCube Intro, gaining over 120,000 views in two days (shown below, left). On June 17th, user Foxtrot64 posted a clip that played Saria's Song, a well-known track from the Zelda catalog, gaining over 212,000 views in five days (shown below, right).

Various Examples

Search Interest

Unavailable.

External References