IsolinearMoogle
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Posts posted by IsolinearMoogle
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14 hours ago, Jiggery-Ponkery said:
The Prelude! Its the song that got me to love music. Specifically, Ailsean's "Final Ecstacy" remix (https://ocremix.org/remix/OCR00063), which I think should be attributed to Final Fantasy 4, when the melody first appeared, rather than 7. Unless there's some extra background stuff I'm not familiar enough with... Anyway.
Before I heard this song, music was mainly one of two things: something to endure in church, or something to turn off in the car. There were a handful of songs I found okay, and some songs that, looking back, I love because of having heard them as a child. But I never put music on on PURPOSE. It never occurred to me to consider music from video games as music, I guess.
There was this old flash series, Final Fighting Fantasy. Episode 6, a Cid from one of the games is explaining the plot to some other characters. I think it was the first time in the series that there was voice acting. Suddenly, it was epic. And then that sweet guitar tone starts wailing that melody...! I am pretty sure I cried. First OCRemix I downloaded. When Ailsean re-did the song with, in his opinion, a better tone (something about a wind tunnel, if I recall?), I didn't like it. There was something about that hugeness of it that still grabs me today. Its just sublime. But its not just the tone, of course--its the melody. And where and how its used.
As was brought up, game music evoking a scene is important, especially for those old songs. Music was the voice acting, the character, all the dialogue that could never fit into the small cartridge space. It was the detailed emotion that couldn't fit on the 16x16 or 16x32 pixel sprites.
The Prelude. This guitar, that melody, in that scene, is what Final Fantasy is all about, to me. Heroes vs. villains (who may be other heroes), some cosmic disaster looming, all that. I can't say if hearing the song on its own would have been the trigger I needed. It was everything at the time; story, emotion, characters, melody, instrumentation, mood.
I have to admit, it was difficult for me. I could go on about Freya's Theme from FF9, or Temple of Chaos from FF1, or how it feels like half of all of FF5's OST is connected and the leitmotifs flow and mix together so that you start humming one song and end on a completely different one. Any of the great character themes from 6 or 7. Zanarkand--there's one I've never played, but that song still hits me as if it means something. Like a memory I know I should be able to recall, but can't; proof that the music stands on its own without the emotional baggage and scene-setting (or maybe the exception that proves the rule? (I never understood that saying.)) "The Dark's Embrace" from FF14, which sounds like it should have been a feisty dungeon song on the SNES. "Why" from, what was it, Crisis Core? Pretty much the only song off that OST I kept to listen to again (another exception; never played it!)
But, no. I'll stick with the Prelude! Final answer.
The song that started it all; both for the series, and for me as a composer. As someone who loves music.
Thanks for reading my rambling stream of consciousness. (And please someone do a FF14 remix album where its retrofied. Hard to do modern soundtrack remixes justice sometimes, but crank up the nostalgia on some of those tunes, I bet it would be amazing.)
I'm fascinated by your character arc from not even enjoying music to becoming a composer.
Got to respect the Prelude! I'm guessing Ailsean contributed it as a FF7 remix, and that it's ReMixer's discretion how the track is classified? Or maybe they just wanted to file their first Final Fantasy ReMix under FF7 since it was such a landmark title. I used to spend a lot of time noodling with video game themes on the piano. I loved to start an arpeggio and see if I felt like turning it into "Prelude" or SM64's "Dire, Dire Docks" that day
I'm also going to elevate Temple of Chaos here. FF1 was the most difficult game in the franchise for me to get through -- so many long dungeons with doors that went nowhere but more random encounters. :sigh: That song was the only thing that kept me going through to the end!
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15 hours ago, DarkeSword said:
It's fine because people aren't just posting lists. If actual discussion happens, it's alright.
Thanks, DarkeSword! It didn't even occur to me that this might be against any forum guidelines. Glad it wasn't!
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40 minutes ago, Tables said:
I think my hands down favorite is Mako Reactor from Final Fantasy 7! Maybe not an original choice but it is such a cool atmospheric track! It's been stuck with me since I played the demo as a very young child. I was so happy to hear the new versions in the Remake, including the Battle variant!
Also, shout out to Forever Rachel, I haven't played much of FF6 and haven't heard this one in context, but I adore it so much, so beautiful and underrated.
I mean, it's more original than "One-Winged Angel"
(no disrespect to anyone who responds to this thread with One-Winged Angel)
Honestly, I had to look up "Mako Reactor" just now to refresh my memory. I only played through FF7 once, and don't remember the track. Quality though! I ought to pick up the remake just to enjoy the soundtrack along with the battles again.
1000x for "Forever Rachel". The context is great for that one. Such a plucky male lead in Locke, and then they drop his traumatic back story on you. No spoilers and all, but that whole plot thread was a big part of FF6's narrative strength to me.
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10 hours ago, yangfeili said:
Man, that's a tough choice.....
"Coin Song" from FFVI comes to mind as a favorite...
I feel like I have to name one other, and that's "Into the Darkness" from FFIV...
OK, OK, one more thought to throw out there...
Casting a wide net, I respect that!
"Coin Song" isn't a personal favorite, but I love how you describe it. Music that takes you back to a time and place is the best. Hear the right tune, and you're immediately back with a lost loved one, or feeling the unending potential of youth, or wandering Viridian Forest looking for Pikachus.
I may have ruined "Into the Darkness" for myself by listening to the "Relaxing with Final Fantasy Potion" albums about 1000 times while studying for exams.
I feel you on FF8 too! Maybe because I never played that game, but none of the original tracks resonate strongly with me. But I love some of the orchestral arrangements that have been done, and also Ziwtra's Rain in Chicago ReMix.
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14 hours ago, DeathlesSNESs said:
I can't remember if it was submitted to OCR (surely yes, and probably the place I found it first), but I have my best memories with Ailsean's "Terra in black".
Wow, that takes me back. Entirely possible this was one of the first OCR tracks I ran into. Synth brass from those days has not aged well
But, to quote djpretzel, the track still "fucking kicks ass". Agreed that there's such a wealth of great tracks from FF6. "Dancing Mad" has probably become my favorite of the franchise over time, especially after seeing and being in some awesome live performances of the piece. I get legit goosebumps from zircon's take in the FF6 OCR album, when he drops an ELP tribute in the middle of it.
Also agreed about FF5's musical excellence and under-rated-ness. Although they lost some points for making learning the piano look a lot easier than it actually is.
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15 hours ago, Black_Doom said:
While I've barely played any of Final Fantasy games (only a few hours of FF6), I do know quite a few songs from some of the soundtracks, and I really love them! My pick would probably be "Dash" from Final Fantasy 13-2.
Love it! I'm also probably more familiar with the music than the actual games. I've played quite a few, but I know some tracks from VIII and X without ever playing either. I still think of it as the franchise that made game music matter. I haven't played XIII-2 or heard "Dash" before, but I'm glad you linked it here. Great track, and an awesome violin solo!
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2 hours ago, DeathlesSNESs said:
Wow, free stuff, and it's related to FF music! I'll definitively try!
It's really hard to choose only one track because I love a lot of the FF classic ones, especially in the SNES era. But if I can say only one, then: Terra's theme, from FF6. The melody, the feeling, the samples... everything is simply amazing on this one! It's like mix of heroic, emotional and courageous, very fitting for a character like Terra, who I was in love with when I was younger.Ah, the golden standard of FF character anthems. Such a simple melody, and you can do so much with it! Shout-out to both the Terra covers on the OCR FF6 album -- Jovette Rivera's "6th Kingdom" is so much fun, and it's awesome hearing a vgmusic cover like "Terra's Resolve" by someone with Chad Seiter's credentials.
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7 hours ago, Flash Strife said:
Cool! I love free stuff so I'll bite. Favorite track from mainline entries for me would probably be Let The Battles Begin from FFVII since it's probably the track you hear the most therefore the most memorable. =P
So true! I love a lot of the tracks from FF VII, but this is undoubtedly the one that "feels" like playing FF7 to me.
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Hi all! Looking for anybody who'd be interested in physical copies (CD's) of Final Fantasy OCR albums. I was thrilled to get a bunch of these when I backed the FF6 album KickStarter in 2012, but I've still got some extras that have been sitting in the closet since then. Would love to find them a new home!
The albums in question:
- Final Fantasy: Random Encounter
- Final Fantasy IV: Echoes of Betrayal, Light, and Redemption
- Final Fantasy VI: Balance and Ruin - some autographed by Zircon
- Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream
I've got about 10 of each, and I'll start by giving away sets of all four. All albums are shrink-wrapped except the autographed ones.
If you're interested, tell me your favorite Final Fantasy track and why, and I'll message you to work out shipping. I'll cover costs, just don't want people posting their addresses publicly.
Edit: I'm closing this down, thanks to everyone who posted! It's been great chatting about some of our favorite tracks, and I'm glad to find a bunch of these discs a home.
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1. Ludwig von Koopa
2. Tanooki Mario
3. Q*bert
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I absolutely love Hocus Pocus. Had an 8-level demo of it that I kept and played for years, until I found a CD of the game in the bargain bin at Babbage's. Great platformer.
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It got me thinking, from a company's point of view, isn't 5000$ for an hour of OST not very expensive?
I had a similar thought. I don't think it's a bargain, but it does seem like it'd be a reasonable rate to me, assuming the sponsor highly values the skills of the OCReMix community (which they probably do, since they are donating to this project). A lot would depend on how complex they'd want the music to be.
That being said, I'd guess that a lot of indie developers don't have $5k to spend on their game's music, and that a lot of the bigger companies would rather hire an individual composer or composers, instead of hiring a "collective" like OCReMix.
All purely speculative on my part, though. Regardless of whether or not it's a "good buy", I've no doubt that those two folks are gonna be supremely happy with the music for their game (or other project).
Edited to add: Hopefully this does not spark a massive controversy over whether or not it's ethical for a not-for-profit org like OCReMix to "sell" their talents in this manner.
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Yeah, I like the opening to that a lot better. Maybe something more specific than "foul things" — creatures, monsters, darkness, etc. I tend to think "things" is a good word to avoid.
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Someone...SOMEONE had the cash to put a FIVE K DONATION on the board. Whoever the heck that was. I salute you sir. Good god.
Yeah, I check it every day to see if anybody is going to give at the $10k level although I will be shocked (in a good way) if they do.
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I vaguely remember playing that game on my friend's computer - think I remember the source, too. *checks* Yeah, I remember it now - that track really stood out.
Yeah I used to love it and in fact tried to recently emulate Windows 95 on my Mac just so I could play it. Was struggling with all kinds of sound driver issues when I realized that they have the whole game on YouTube since it was really nothing but hyperlinked video clips.
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I have to say that this is a really interesting point, that there hasn't been a lot of PC ReMixing. I keep meaning to cut my teeth on my first mix on some sort of console RPG, but this thread makes me remember a lot of great games from way back when.
I'd like to state my intention to do a mix of "SuvwI' van bom" from Star Trek: Klingon, a Win95 game. Raucous vocal piece, so I think I could actually pull it off with my current production skillset.
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Glad I could help, post again with some o' them changes when you're ready. Happy mixing!
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One fun trick for using alternate languages is making up fake Latin. Just did the orchestral Zelda concert... almost 100% made-up words for the choral parts. "Fithos lusec wecos vinosec" from FF8 also not a real thing. Experimenting with syllable textures ftw. At this point, though, you might as well stick with English as you've already crafted the words and want to use it for your dual purpose.
I think the opening is fine both melodically and dynamically. I meant "strong" not as a synonym for "powerful" but more an antonym for "weak" — semantics, I know. You can effectively start your piece out quietly and with a single melody, I just feel like compared to the quality of some of your other lyrics here, "Hyrule is under siege" is not your best work and starts the piece off in a less-than-ideal place. I'm not a fan of unison choral bits, but there's objectively nothing wrong with them — although you really need precision in your choral blend to pull it off.
Re: siege — I still feel like it's the wrong word, I feel like by the time of this song Ganon has already won. But it is hard to argue with all the thought you put into it in your last post. Even if it was inarguably the wrong word, it probably wouldn't bother 99% of your listeners, so go for it... your piece after all
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Well, I didn't say "but the asking price was $50" but you're right, we're just talking in circles here.
I may or may not contribute to a non-OCR album that uses similar fundraising tactics, but I will defend with my keyboard's very life that album's right to do so.
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Foxx: I would disagree that the asking price of the album is $50. When I first saw the announcement, I thought they were so clear about the album being free on the site that it would hurt their donations. I can definitely see your reasoning since you don't get the "official" hard copy without donating the $50, but I think it really is open to some interpretation — I am probably going to download the files anyway and put my discs on a shelf until I die, so truthfully the hard copy album doesn't hold a great deal of value for me.
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I'm going to second jnWake's comment earlier about not bringing the tempo down too much. I feel like the beginning of your piece draaaaaags right now. I get your point earlier about bringing the tempo down for some later bits in the piece... there is no reason the entire piece has to be the exact same bpm all the way through, in fact in my experience that would be atypical for a choral work, even one of this length.
Still don't hear Song of Time in here... is it at about 3/4 through with the sentence that starts "Look for the one"? I hear a couple notes in common, but the rhythm and ending of the phrase is different enough that I don't think it really counts as a quote of that melody... maybe I am missing it somewhere in there? In general, if you are working on this for an OCR submission, I don't think you are quoting enough source material for it to pass, but I'm certainly no official judge, and maybe that's not your intent anyway.
However, I have a secondary objective for the lyrics of this piece. They are (apart from 2 key proper nouns for setting purposes) constructed in a way that allows them to be dual meaninged, with Link not being the only hero who matches the call for hope.Are you planning to change "Hyrule" and "Ganon" around and make this a sacred piece? First thing that came to mind when I read that.
Lyrically, I am trying to remember what my thoughts were, haha. I have listened to your piece enough times now that some stuff that was bothering me no longer does... I know my very first thought the first time I listened was (no offense) "Hyrule is under siege? That's corny." which is admittedly a pretty subjective assessment... but some clarification —
1) "Hyrule" is IMHO kind of an ugly word and doesn't flow well lyrically with other English words. Maybe use something more generic, like whatever you are saying there for the piece's dual purpose? "Our land", etc.
2) The phrase "under siege" connotes an ongoing action, but further lyrics and my understanding of the setting of this piece imply the action's all done — Ganon has already won, albeit temporarily. It's also hard for me to think of people singing this calmly about their home being under siege... your singers are relying on faith and playing the waiting game, but an actual siege should call for action.
That might still be sort of subjective, but since you are opening with a unison of that sentence, you want it to be as strong as possible. Another suggestion I was thinking about making was to use a completely different language, but there are a couple bits here where I really like what you're doing lyrically (in English) and that would probably throw off your dual purpose.
My two cents.
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Cool mix. Toe-tapping. Has some complexity which I like. I like the "pingy" main instrument that carries the melody (that is about as specific as non-producer-me can be) — at the beginning. By about halfway through, I feel it's sort of overused and I wish a different sound would carry the lead.
In the beginning, I don't feel the fade-in of the percussion works well. You already do a nice job of starting with the percussion, then adding the bass, and so on, I think a full-sound percussion beat at the beginning would be a fine opener. The fade-in sort of makes me feel like I missed something that was going on before that point.
I like the drop-out and return around 0:43, maybe a little more volume on the one voice that remains?
Around 1:53, where you are basically repeating material in the background, I feel like you are missing a great opportunity to put something in the foreground like a badass guitar solo or some such.
The fade-out and return around 2:56, I don't think is as well implemented as the earlier one. The fade just takes way too long. Especially in context of the fade-in that starts the piece off, I very much feel like the piece is over at that point, and it takes long enough that I the listener am sort of mentally checked out by the time the music comes back in.
The fade-out at the end, I have the same opinion as the one that starts it out. Not necessary. End your piece on a strong percussion beat.
My two cents —*thanks for sharing!
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Source usage — I recognize the ocarina tune at the beginning in the unison portion, and I hear the raised tone at the end of the Serenade of Water a couple times throughout, but largely I don't connect this piece with the source material.
I really like the concept of this piece, and I think I like your arrangement overall, but it is a little hard to tell in parts due to the "rough draft" performance of this recording. A couple things you will want to think about if you only have a couple passes at making the recording happen:
1) Tuning — If your singers can't be very precise with their tuning, you will want to experiment with auto-tune settings and see if you can get one that doesn't detract from the piece. The tuning in this recording skews your harmonies, and really detracts from the unison bits. I would encourage a single voice to a unison portion anyway, since you're not working with a multitude of voices to add diversity.
2) Dynamics — This is a little easier to fix in post if you are doing individual tracks for each singer, but you as the arranger can help your singers out by making some very clear markings for dynamics. I think one reason your source material is a little hazy is because those parts aren't being emphasized in the recording. Make sure you encourage your singers to use the phrasing you want for this piece as well.
3) Choral blend — Have a good idea of what you want to get from this recording... do you want a straight tone or vibrato? Where do you want consonant sounds and cut-offs? Do you want high notes to be powerful and soaring, or ethereal and chant-like?
I have some thoughts on your lyrics, but they weren't solicited, and you might be pretty attached to the lyrics at this point, so I'll keep them to myself, but let me know if you are interested.
As I said, I do like this... it is inspiring me to do an a cappella vocal piece myself.
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I have to assume that a lot of the criticisms about "fat profit" are not taking into account the history of the site. Pretty long con...
OCR Final Fantasy CD Giveaway
in General Discussion
Posted
Love it. Gobble, Snarf, Snap is a great one -- I was pretty underwhelmed by the original "Phantom Train" song from the game. Like it's not bad, just... meh? XPRTNovice's take on it is just delightful though!