OCR04511 - *YES* Final Fantasy 4 "Mountain of Light"

[Emunator]

RebeccaETripp
Rebecca Tripp

http://www.crystalechosound.com/
ID: 48262
Game(s): FF4
Song Title: Mountain of Light

Songs Remixed: Mt. Ordeals

Here’s a link: 

 

This is my arrangement of “Mount Ordeals" from Final Fantasy 4. The original song, composed by Nobuo Uematsu, is not only one of my favourite tracks from FF4 OST, but also one of my absolute favourite songs of all time! I've been wanting to create an arrangement of this theme for many years, but felt I couldn't really do it justice. The Mt. Ordeals segment of the game is extremely important to me — I would go as far as to say that it was an extremely formative experience for me. There's a strange, yet beautiful feeling associated with that mountain, and, to a lesser extent, Mt. Hobbs, that I struggle to put into words. In this remix, I tried to create a sense of lurking powers, both good and evil. Magic and mystery, courage and challenge. I wanted to make it sound like the mountain is alive with spirits, magics and histories, and as though the heroes are marching towards the summit. I also tried to include something of a “Lunarian" presence towards the end, for obvious reasons.

[Liontamer]

Mixed quietly, but I could hear everything just fine. Sample quality of the brass at :12 was blatty & weak, nothing had any power, and I was glad when they dropped out at :37; easily the outlier weak point amongst enjoyable instrumentation. The orchestration after that was strong, though I'm not digging the brass accents. I liked the stereo placement of the mallet percussion and drumming. While the textures, IMO, got cluttered at times, nothing was so busy to make the production a problem vis-a-vis the bar. String decay was exposed some at 2:33 & 3:05, but it's not the worst instances of that I've ever heard. Overall, a lovely intimate orchestral arrangement approach with beautiful personalization; Rebecca's percussion ornamentations in particular (bells, chimes, tambourines, etc.), are always strong and add a lot of character to her textures. Nice!

YES

[MindWanderer]

Takes a while to warm up, during which period it leans on some pretty weak brass samples, but at 0:37 it starts into some fun balletic stuff.  I could see it being choreographed.  (The brass does get even worse when it overlaps frequencies with something else, but at least it's less exposed.)

Good enough.

YES

[prophetik music]

very quiet initial presentation. agree the brass sounds not-great, and the tuba or euphonium, whatever it is, in particular was not very idiomatic in performance. the melody is clearly present. i found the percussion, specifically the mallets, to not sound great on the rolls but other than that liked the use.

there's a continuing orchestral crescendo throughout 1:10 to probably 1:50, and some particularly nice articulation on the flute at 1:52. at this point the mallets have been on the melody throughout and are a bit played out. the march feel of the track is most notable after 2:00 and is appreciated. there's an extended outro with one more big swell and then it's done.

from a technical perspective, there's a harp flourish at 1:41 that is heavily in the low end and causes the entire track to have a much lower max db than it should. compressing that a bit and adding some overall compression to the track would allow for removal of some 5db of headroom, allowing the nuances of the track to speak more clearly. lastly, i found the left ear's glock to be too loud throughout, but only by a little.

overall this is a fine interpretation. there isn't anything transformative about the handling of the melody by itself, but the overall arrangement survives adaptation to the orchestra well.

 

 

YES

[DarkSim]

I enjoyed the use of stereo space in the beginning to create a wide, expansive atmosphere. Would have much preferred the low brass be centrally-panned though, and the track is lacking in low-mid presence for a long while. Delicate use of percussion is a nod to the march-like source, and was handled well.

As the soundscape fills out the frequency spectrum more at 1:30, the track comes alive. It's really nicely orchestrated, and I think some of the samples are getting better treatment here, particularly the flute. The left-panned harp at 1:40 (and others) has a lot of resonance on it that's quite odd to my ear. Paring that back a bit would be better - it sounds a lot nicer at 2:22-2:26, for example.

Outside of the intro, the panning seems to have been left on autopilot, and as the track gets busier, you begin to notice imbalances. Most of the high frequency content feels like it's in the left ear (glock, flute, harp), and there's only the xylophone in the right to balance it out.

Overall though, a very pleasant remix. It does suffer from a quiet master, but mixing is otherwise clean, with none of my criticisms dealbreakers.

YES