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OCR02468 - *YES* Final Fantasy 7 'Mother'


DragonAvenger
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Contact Information

ReMixer name - Moomba

Real name - Joe Griffith

Userid - 21941

Submission Information

Name of game(s) arranged - Final Fantasy VII

Name of arrangement - Mother

Name of individual song(s) arranged - Listen to the Cries of the Planet, J-E-N-O-V-A, Those Chosen by the Planet, Mako Reactor

Comments:

Of the above mentioned tracks, I'm not entirely sure how many of them fully qualify as having enough source material included to be considered a solid part of the arrangement, the main bulk of the track is built from Listen to the Cries of the Planet, tinged with a fair bit of J-E-N-O-V-A and chunks of Those Chosen by the Planet and Mako Reactor... there's even a very short cameo by a portion of the melody from Trails of Blood.

The origins of this remix are pretty straightforward. Ever since listening to Nekofrog's arrangement of Listen to the Cries of the Planet, 'The Planet Is Dead', the ostinati from the original have been continuously rotating in my mind. Though for some reason chunks of J-E-N-O-V-A kept creeping into it. In fact, large portions of Aerith's Theme also kept injecting themselves into the mental picture I had of the track, but when it came to writing, they didn't really gel too well with the rest of the track, at least not without altering the melody to points at which it no longer even resembled the source material.

When I first got into writing music, it was with a very minimalistic style and I've never quite shed those roots (nor do I want to). Several of the tracks from the FFVII OST are also quite minimalistic in nature, with lots of awesome ostinati and very simple melodies, so I took it upon myself to go about combining a few. I'd actually already written a large portion of the minimalism heard throughout the track for an original piece... in 4/4. It didn't take much modifying to get them to work in 6/8 though.

I owe a fair bit of the final sound of the ReMix to Jeff Ball (some1namedjeff) for giving me the push to actually go back and make the track sound a bit more unique and interesting.

Lastly, the title of the track is pretty straightforward: Jenova - Mother, the Planet - Mother (of life). Also I suck at picking names so it was the best I could come up with!

Cheers!

---------

- cry

- Jenova

- Those chosen

- Mako
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  • 2 months later...

Right away the combination of You Can Hear the Cry of the Planet and JENOVA is really cool, and I'm surprised it hasn't come up here before. In fact, the arrangement overall is excellent! Super intelligent writing here. I was sad when it finished, you could have probably gone on for another minute or two and fleshed out your ideas even a bit more.

That being said, the production has some aspects that are dragging this down. The melody that comes in at 0:16 has notes that are loud and clear, and others that are understated, which sounds kind of strange. The violin feels a bit stiff, and the vibrato feels a bit unnatural as well. In fact, a lot of the instruments feel a bit stiff. It's not unbearable, but it is noticeable. The glass crashing sound seems a bit random at times, and maybe could have been used less. All of these are nitpicks, although I wouldn't mind seeing them touched up as well.

I think the arrangement itself makes up for the production issues, although I could see some other judges having issue with it moreso than I do. If that's the case, I might switch up the vote to get it back to you quicker, because I think this definitely deserves to be on the site arrangement-wise.

YES

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I agree that the samples aren't blowing me away, but the arrangement is excellent. I love detailed percussion, and if this was ever performed live, i'd hate to be the guy cleaning up all the broken class after the show! ;-)

the blending of melodies is excellent, and the arrangement outshines the somewhat generic sequencing and samples. I wish the ending had been a little more delicate than just ending, but it works for me.

Yes

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Yikes. Personally, this is about as close to the bar as you can get as far as sample quality goes. I definitely found myself wrestling with this one for a while, and as I write this I'm still not sure whether it's a YES or a NO.

On the plus side, you've got some really intricate writing going on that builds off of the mood of the chosen sources, but fuses it together in a very clever way that evokes the feeling of the originals even when the melodies aren't directly being played. Your percussion writing is great across the board, but I echo Deia's critique about the glass shattering being overused.

On the other hand though, the samples are all very weak and unfortunately, the overall mix feels very puny as a result. I think I understand the sound you're trying to go for, but I feel like with stronger samples/production this could make a much stronger impact without losing the understated feeling that you've built up. The sequencing on some of the orchestral instruments isn't terrible, but the lack of any sort of articulations/expression on any of the instruments is hurting this track overall.

In terms of balance, I also felt like the bassline was pretty buried when it finally made an entrance. I'll also echo the arrangement critique that the ending kind of comes out of nowhere here. Maybe it's just me subconsciously wanting to hear more of the remix, but when the song ended it caught me off guard, like the song hadn't really experienced the climax it felt like it was building up to.

Gahhhh... I really do love this arrangement and I hate to start a split vote, but I know we've rejected songs for smaller sample/production issues than this, and there's a lot of small things that are adding up for me. I don't feel like this has reached its full potential yet, so I'm gonna throw in a lone dissenting vote. No hate at all if this passes, I think most listeners will enjoy it for its merits regardless of the problems, but as far as OCR's bar for production and sample quality is concerned, I feel like this falls short. We'll see how this plays out, I guess.

NO (resub!)

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took a while for the arrangement to spread it's wings, but once you layered in the Jenova melody, I was all over this. I gotta agree that the samples here aren't gonna blow anyone away (not particularly any more interesting than some of the original samples, just a little higher in quality) but I thought they were tastefully mixed and well sequenced for the most part. I'll agree that this is a close call but I don't think there are any NO-worthy issues with the samples besides them being just average sounding. 2:52-3:35-ish felt like it was missing something, the melodic focus there just wasn't very strong compared to the rest of the piece. however the mix felt pretty polished to me as a whole. nice work. :)

YES

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