djpretzel Posted July 11, 2005 Share Posted July 11, 2005 email sub file CrystalForest for Piano.mp3 Hi, this is my first submission. Hope you like it. CONTACT INFO o Your ReMixer name: lbeyer o Your real name: Lon Beyer o Your email address: lbeyer@bprlaw.net o Your website: www.ascensionpicturesinc.com REMIX INFO o Name of game(s) ReMixed: Final Fantasy X o Name of individual song(s) ReMixed: Crystal Forest o Additional information about game is on the site. After many long hours of running through the Crystal Forest to upgrade my sword to the Ultimate Weapon, I began to hear this song in my dreams. It actually became my favorite FFX song, and I was surprised not to see it already on the site. I therefore took it upon myself to bring my own piano version (from my dreams of course) to all of you. Enjoy Lon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sam Ascher-Weiss Posted July 11, 2005 Share Posted July 11, 2005 http://www.tzone.org/~llin/psf/packs2/FFX_psf2.rar - 204 "Silence Before the Storm" First off it took me a while to adjust to hearing this song in A instead of Bb and I have to say, that while this may be a personal opinion, it sounds 300 times better in Bb. Uematsu is the man when it comes to key choices, so you should keep that in mind. Anyway I won't let that effect my judgement, so here goes. You took alot of the juice out of the chord progression at 0:48. The original [i'm transposing to A for your sake] went B-7, Cmaj7, Ab-7, F#-7, A-7. You took the two chords that travel the the furthest away from A-Minor [Ab-7 and F#-7] and replaced them with much safer ones [A- and Bb]. The brilliance of the original progression was that it strayed away from the tonic in order to return from a minor third below giving the second section a real jump start. In your version this effect is completely lost. On top of that you removed almost all tensions [9, 11, 13] and 7ths from the chords which is part of what originally made them so beautiful. Luckily Uematsu, being the genius that he is, put alot of these notes in the melody so by simply sticking closely to the source you manage to make up for the harmonically limited accompaniment part. There's also alot of inappropriate pedalling in here. Chords that shouldn't bleed into eachother do so on a regular basis. Everything Uematsu does [key choice, chord progression, phrasing of the melody] is always done with a very specific purpose in mind, so if you're gonna change any of it without totally altering the feel of the song, then you better have a damn good reason. Interms of arrangement style this was very very very close to the original minus the detractors that I pointed out earlier. Ok then, I think you picked a wonderfull source tune and I commend you on that. Rather than just putting back the original chord progression, I think it would better to try to make a greater stylistic departure from the original. You could start my having you left hand move twice as fast, or try playing the melody in chords instead of single notes. Also, Uematsu leaves holes in the melody here that you are more than welcome to fill in... you can think of it like call and response with Uematsu doing the calling and you doing the responding. Finally, careful with the pedalling. If you're playing this live than It's hard for me to help you with out being there physically and it's something you should talk to your teacher about. If it's being sequenced, just make sure that you send a Controller #64 = 0 a few seconds before every chord that doesn't sound good when played simultaenously with the chord before it.... if you can't tell the difference between chords that go good together and ones that don't, it'd be safer to just un-pedal before every bar [there's a new chord just about every bar in this song]. n0 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liontamer Posted July 24, 2005 Share Posted July 24, 2005 Too much hiss here was the first thing I noticed. I actually thought the key change was alright though, so I don't really see it as weakening the original, and I'm a big fan of the original. Sounds a lot more delicate this way, if anything. Certainly not a bad thing to do when trying to create a different feel as compare to the original. The performance was certainly decent, but aside from the key change and the obvious transposing of the source tune to piano, there wasn't much here on the interpretation front. This is a nice cover-style take on "Silence," but rearrange things much more substantially next time. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
danny B Posted July 26, 2005 Share Posted July 26, 2005 Well, first off - i'm fighting a major bias here, since this is the song that made me love FFX. I'm even in the process of remixing it myself, so there's plenty of bias to go around. In fact, funny thing - I just erased my long writeup on why I was rejecting this. Because I'm not. I thought to myself that I should reject this because it seems to follow the original in form and overall presentation. But I realized that the similarities are superficial in nature. The melody, and overall feel of it, is in a much more direct, full-speed-ahead kind of mood. Where the original set up a landscape to explore, and slowly meandered throughout said landscape in a journey of self discovery, this is a full-speed-ATV ride through Macalania Forest. I'm somewhat reminded of the brilliant score for the movie K-PAX, and that is a high compliment. It's ethereal while at the same time driven. I understand that sam has a full volley of ordinance to launch at the technique and arrangement ideas, but as someone who doesn't have superhuman piano chops, I need to go with my gut. It's emotionally stirring, and, in my opinion, effectively transmogrifies the original into a new entity with a creative new chord progression and interesting rhythmic alterations. The transition to the second section near 1:50 is pretty jarring, the over-pedaling does get a little bit cluttered, and the sample gets kinda icky at the high velocities, but that's just a one-way train to Gripesville, and I'm not aboard. I'm a fan. But i'm just a n00b. YES -D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vig Posted July 27, 2005 Share Posted July 27, 2005 There is very little arrangement here as far as i can tell. Not nearly enough for OCR. It's a very straightforward solo piano interpretation. it sounds nice, but for OCR we demand creativity and whatnot. the harmonic simplification is a big no-no in my book. aside from that, the piano sounds cheap in the higher octaves. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GrayLightning Posted August 3, 2005 Share Posted August 3, 2005 I actually agree with Dan on a lot of issues here. There's quite a lot of subtle ornamentation going on here. I have no issues with the performance. We can't expect rachmaninov or chops like horowitz - it's just not very realistic to expect even with our piano standards (yes I'm exaggerating slightly). Here we go again with Larry's piano hiss comments. He must not listen to much classical piano recordings. Don't expect ultra pristine studio quality recordings bro - plus I think something's wrong with larry's monitoring equipment with over treble wonkiness. As far as the arrangement changes, to some degree I agree with dan. I like the changes done here, I think it's more interesting than the original, actually but... I am tempted to yes, but I'd like to hear this cleaned up a little more, with some more expansion in the composition (it's still a little too close and straightforward for my taste). Production could be better, but this is fine enough. Work more on the arrangement, I'd like to see a little more expansion here and there with a little less subtlety. Please resubmit. NO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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