*NO* Final Fantasy 7 "Holding My Thoughts in My Heart"

[Emunator]

Artist: Rebecca E Tripp

There is no piece of music more capable of bringing me to tears than "Holding My Thoughts in My Heart", composed by Nobuo Uematsu for Final Fantasy 7. It's a track I associate with grief, as well as the fragility preciousness of life. Generally speaking, I've avoided listening to this song, in spite of its immense beauty, simply for that reason. However, I wanted to give myself a chance to enjoy this tune in a new way, so I worked on this arrangement over a period of two years. With this, I wanted to bring out the more "hopeful" aspects of the song. I thought, it's not just a song about a broken heart, but also one that's steadily mending itself. Like spring readying itself during the peak of winter.

Edited April 20, 2022 by Liontamer
closed decision

[prophetik music]

enormous amount of headroom. at least 7dba, realistically a lot more. this needs compression so bad. i just don't get the refusal to apply mastering to tracks. it's not like extreme dynamic ranges make the listening experience better.

initial presentation in the flute and harp is pretty. the clarinet right after sounds terrible. no dynamic contrast and an odd chorused tone every time it's used. the part that starts at 0:23 is nice arranging and feels like the main theme's scoring. the subsequent piano parts sound pretty unrealistic though, and the ensemble strings are strangely quiet compared to everything else in terms of their volume vs their timbre. the piano's oddly loud in the right hand and in general doesn't sound like a concert piano. the strings sound like they're playing pretty strong parts but they're somehow under the piano and flute, which is a bit confusing from a soundscape perspective. the melodic content through this section is handled nicely, though, with lots of updates to the overall presentation and the arpeggio being passed between the piano and harp nicely.

there's a bit of a transition point at about 2:00 that hands off the melody to the oboe with some robo-piano playing interesting but unrealistic parts lacking in velocitization under it. the bells at 2:25 are nice but pretty loud. there's an ending section that starts about at 2:37 and it's pretty delicate, but it does feel a little janky with that loud clarinet in there again not demonstrating dynamics.

this is pretty far below what i've come to expect from you, rebecca. the winds across the board are not handled nicely at all - there's little to no dynamics demonstrated, the spacing added to them emphasizes their unrealistic tone more than humanizes them, and the long sustains you use also highlights how not-real they are. the use of string sustains to fill in chord structures is fine, but your non-idiomatic use of an entire violin section to play long unison sustains again  makes it more rather than less obvious that they're not real. a smaller ensemble sound would have felt a lot more realistic since it wouldn't feel like it should be covering up the quieter piano and harp work. the percussion was very uneven as well - there's some beautiful glock with great room verb in the earlier sections but then it's super loud at 2:25 and feels like there's no room sound on it at all. lastly, the overall lack of actually dynamic dynamics is really a problem. nearly everything's the same volume it was introduced at, with no overall shape to the work. it makes it boring, and boring music with unrealistic instruments can't overcome a decent arrangement.

it's not all bad of course, you're too good a musician for that. the arrangement has some interesting use of expansion to emphasize some of the fun chord progressions, and you do a nice job with repetition of interesting parts. the melodic content isn't static and visits most of the ensemble at some point. there's some nice subtlety in the tremelo strings near the end. however there's nothing that's so transformative and unique that it really grabs me and makes me really want to listen to it despite the mechanical and mastering flaws.

ultimately we judge mixes in a vacuum, not related to a specific artist's skillset or history, so i can't NO this just because you can do so much better. i am however saying that the poor use of dynamics, rough wind samples, and truly absurdly quiet mastering sum up to something that's not there yet.

 

 

NO

[MindWanderer]

I dunno, I think that's a bit harsh.  None of the points proph makes are wrong, but I don't think the magnitude of them is all that great.  The articulation isn't the greatest, but it's not terrible. The ones that stand out the most are the string ensembles that play like one person, and the dramatically different treatment of the glockenspiel the two times it appears.  The clarinet is pretty mechanical, but it only stands out briefly.  Everything else is present, but it's fairly subtle.

On the other hand, the orchestration is pretty conservative, and large swathes of it are basically sound upgrades.  Rebecca's arrangements tend to be conservative, and her approach makes more "modern" (I say of a PS1 title, grump grouch) tracks more challenging to arrange in an expansive way.  It does enough, but not by a ton.

I don't think anything here falls below our bar.  It doesn't clear it by a huge margin, but I also don't have any concerns about it falling short, either.

YES

[XPRTNovice]

Ah one of my favorites.

As is typical of Rebecca, the arrangement is lovely with lots of creative, interesting interpretations of the music. I particularly like the harmonization at 1:25 and the switch to minor thereafter. Lots of great moments, including the ending.

Production wise, it leaves something to be desired. Harp in the beginning needs a bass trim and to come back in the mix; it muddied up the melody for me.

The piano felt mechanical and plunking with a real lack of humanization;  by the time 1:45 rolled around I was noticing it constantly. The dynamics don't really seem to seem to change throughout the piece, which creates ear-fatigue for me. There are plenty of places where there are emotional swells and ebbs that would really benefit from some dynamic adjustments. The strings seem to achieve it, but the rest of the instruments need some TLC from a production standpoint. 

That goes the same for tempo; with so much expression in the arrangement, I feel like there needed to be expression in the production as well to take this from good to great, but I felt like we were on a train from the beginning to the end going along at a very consistent, maybe even a little too fast of a tempo, and the emotion of the arrangement gets lost in it. I felt like I was being pushed along, not led along or coaxed along, and with a piece like this I think the latter is more important. 

I keep thinking I hear a wrong note in the piano at 2:48 ish? Or a glissando that just isn't mixed in enough? Again, a production issue. 

I think this one needs to go back to the production phase to really make it shine. I am loathe to give it a no, but in this case I think it is not ready for the site and could really be made to stand out with a little bit more care toward humanization and production in particular. The arrangement is outstanding as usual. 

NO

[Liontamer]

The interpretiveness of the arrangement was solid, IMO; some parts conservative (but personalized with the instrumentation choices), and other areas more original while referencing the source as the foundation. Love the genteel instrumentation ideas; the bells (or mallet perc) and plucked strings always sound nice when Rebecca uses them.

But this is small ensemble stuff, so when parts like the bowed strings and the piano are so exposed as stilted and fake, it kills the whole thing. The strings are the worst offender with fake-sounding note movements from :54-1:09, 1:17-1:23, 1:28-1:57 (and more, but I stopped there, since the point is made). It sounds like a WIP/proof-of-concept in those areas rather than the finished product.

What was up at 2:02? The woodwind, which seemingly had some light reverb, just cut off abruptly along with the effect on it, and the texture got super thin/quiet all of a sudden; not a huge deal, just a smaller detail that should have been smoothed out.

If you can achieve a more humanized/realistic sound for the bowed strings and piano via your production, this would be good to go! I know Rebecca doesn't do many resubmissions or touch-ups because we take a long time to evaluate things, plus she's productive enough where she moves on and quickly makes other pieces. That said, this is well worth a revisit, and certainly has a home here if she wishes to invest some additional time and energy. I look forward to her work as always!

NO (resubmit)

[Chimpazilla]

This is a lovely arrangement of a beautiful, emotional theme.  I'm agonizing over whether it should pass, but ultimately I'm with my fellow judges pointing out the production issues.  XPRT is right that the harp needs a bass trim, it's booming in the lows.  The winds don't sound great, the clarinet sustains sound awkward.  The flute patch has constant vibrato which sounds very unnatural.  The piano needs humanization to avoid sounding clunky.  The strings are the worst of it for me though, the attacks are all the same making them sound very choppy and the patch sounds flat generally.  The chords are gorgeous, they deserve better legato treatment than this.  The glock does get quite loud at 2:25.  There's a small rendering error/pop at 1:07.  And of course, the mastering is falling short at -7db peak.  Even if you do no mastering, perhaps just normalizing the track to somewhere around -0.5db to -1db would put the track in a better volume range compared to other tracks.  This is a lovely tune but I think the production issues drag it just under the bar.  I'd love to hear it again with those issues addressed.

NO (resubmit)