FF7- Guitarlicious Cid's Theme ReMix (Shinra No. 26)

[Manji]

Just to clarify, first off- I'm looking for comments/tips/etc on the arrangement of this ReMix, not the sound quality; the whole thing was done in Guitar Pro, so obviously the midi guitars sound like ass compared to real ones. I'll deal with sound quality once I'm sure the arrangement is rock-solid.

That said, click below to hear it:

Shinra No. 26

I've wanted to do a really kick-arse guitar version of Cid's Theme for about... ooh... three years now, so this is really just me revisiting my absolute favourite song from the whole game (and probably from any Final Fantasy game... or any video game at all, full stop) and making it prod just a bit more buttock. I'm aware that the second part of the Main Theme, the first time it plays, is rather empty with just two guitars, bass and drums; any tips or suggestions on how to fill that up/what to fill that up with compositionally would be greatly appreciated, keeping in mind that I'm going for a very symphonic guitar-type thing.

Thanks!

[Spirit Level]

maybe more complicated drum fills

or you could speed it up

[Binweasel]

I say, I rather like this so far.

For the emptiness, how about palm-muted arpeggios? Start 'em off nice and slow at 0:34 when the melody comes in, unmute and/or speed 'em up at 1:17 when the drums really kick in. Maybe make the arpeggios, hmm, bigger at the same time? That'd fill in all the bits that sound lacking, and it's easy to switch up to keep interesting. Not sure how I am at explaining, so here's an example: http://www.mediafire.com/?jgm9xnowbne

Some grungy power chords would also do the trick, I should think. The speed sounds okay to me...

[Manji]

Hey, thanks for the feedback! I played around with putting some arpeggios in, and they sound pretty nice played slow under the second part of the main theme, from 1:17 until 2:00. I mixed up the drums for that part a little bit as well... it was kinda a copy-and-paste job at first so I could move onto the rest of the arrangement, kept on hitting the same cymbal every other beat

As for speeding it up... ehhh... I'm not going for anything particularly fast and rocky, more a sort of mellow, melodic guitar ballad type thing. A tempo change might be possible somewhere, but I'm unsure as to where to put one in without completely ruining the flow of the piece.

[Nekofrog]

Going to forgo the standard outline due to the fact that this is purely for arrangement:

I don't know that this could be exactly called "guitarlicious"... yes, it's mostly (or will be, I suppose) guitar-based, but it seems very very very very VERY mellow. Probably too mellow to be "guitarlicious" (which evokes blistering guitar awesomeness in my mind).

Don't take that as me calling it bad, it definitely has potential, but after a while it does start to drag at over five minutes long. Maybe the final product, un-midi-ized, will help it to not feel so long.

Good luck!

[Manji]

I have been toying with the idea of throwing in a shredding guitar solo over the latter part of the acoustic mid-section to give that a bit more of a progression... or perhaps shorten the acoustic section and put a solo over the variation on the main theme after that? Three guitars doing different (but in harmony, obviously) things = very nice, in my book.

[ocremixfan]

love this song... but I can't make much of the outcome with the midish sound

Will wait for your next version