habnem

As a matter of fact, the guitarist had been playing for ten years when he recorded this song. Perhaps he meant the playing to sound simplistic?

Thanks, Steele, for being the first to notice (or at least mention) the Main/Highwind theme cameos. I was kinda proud of that touch. This piece was meant to have sort of a drum-circle vibe to it--almost like a Red XIII treatment of the Aerith Theme, with a gently-weeping guitar carrying the melody. The imperfections that have been picked apart numerous times thus far were left in intentionally, and I'm really not sure why they're such a source of consternation. One person (yours truly) performed and recorded everything here, but great care was taken to make it sound as much as possible like something played by a bunch of people. As DJP noted, had this take on the song sounded like it was performed by a computer, it would have been something totally different, and considering the emotional quality of the song, in my estimation that something would have been a good deal worse. Finally, I thought it might be nice to have a look at Webster's definition of the word "arrange," which is the source of another complaint I keep reading which baffles me. here we go, from m-w.com: "3 a : to adapt (a musical composition) by scoring for voices or instruments other than those for which orig. written b : ORCHESTRATE" "Prayer" may not be a radical reworking of Aerith's Theme, but an arrangement it most certainly is.

Thanks, Debotron, for making the post I was going to. I'd also like to point out that, in my estimation, "Aerith's Theme" is one of the more famous video game songs out there, and unless I've missed one in the last couple of months, this is only the second remix on OCR. Debate the wisdom of covering FF games until doomsday; you can still hardly say that this particular song has been overdone.

To answer questions I've seen thus far: Yes, the lead guitar is real. In case you're that curious, it's a Fender Standard Fat Strat played through a Digitech RP300 effects pedal. While I'm listing things that are real, so are the acoustic guitar and the 5-gallon mop buckets (the left one played by hand and the right one with drumsticks). The reason the buckets are panned the way they are is because if they weren't hard to the sides, i found they got confusing. The rhythms they use are different enough to sound jumbled if they share any parts of the stereo field. Incidentally, nothing in this mix is "sequenced" at all, but played live on instruments and/or synthesizer to hard drive. I still can't figure out MIDI to save my life. Finally, the chords are really easy. I've never compared it to the original to see how faithful they are. D-Am-D-Am-D-Am-Bb-Gm-D for the first part; Bm-A-G-D-F#m-G-F#m-G for the second part, and D-G-F#m-G-A-G-D for the coda. Oh--and all you who are sick of FF songs, sorry. This is my first OC mix, and my favorite VG song (and one I felt has been underrepresented thus far), so they kinda went together that way. At least I didn't do "Terra," right? If I get around to it, my next mix will be a swing version of Gruntilda's Theme from Banjo-Kazooie, if that makes you feel any better.