OCR04469 - *YES* Final Fantasy 9 "Save Your Valediction"

[Emunator]

Remixer Name: Roph

UserID: 26567

Games Arranged: Final Fantasy IX

Name Of Arrangement: Save Your Valediction

Song(s) Arranged: Sword Of Doubt, Protecting My Devotion

 

Features Harpsibored playing harp, Sableprovidence playing flute and Dawnaria's vocal prowess.

 

This came about as an entry for Dwelling Of Duels' Battle Month and started off relatively simple - solo harp leading into the main sword of doubt orchestration, but grew in scope more and more the two tracks blending together, a vocal interlude, and the introduction of live extra woodwind which after ~50 or so revisions and a month of work, resulted in the final piece now. When you love a game as much as IX, a piece like this becomes a labour of love.

 

[MindWanderer]

Gorgeous orchestration and performances, just great to listen to all around.

It opens with 1:45 of "Sword of Doubt," which sort of serves as a very long introduction.  I feel like this is longer than it needs to be, considering how repetitive it is.

After a minute of "Protecting My Devotion" comes the vocal section, which I'm especially ambivalent about.  It's a really strange arrangement decision to introduce a lead singer halfway through a 6-minute piece.  The performance is great, but the lyrics aren't very sophisticated and scan oddly in places.  There's also no source material in this that I can hear, and the instrumentation and cadence are a total shift, so nothing really ties it to the rest of the piece.

And then after 2 minutes of this, it's back to "Protecting My Devotion," a very close recap of the first iteration of the theme.  Some of it even seems like copypasta.  And then it ends abruptly.

I'm torn, honestly.  If I say NO to this, it will be by far the best remix from a sound quality perspective that I've ever voted against.  But the overall structure is so disjointed.  It's a harp arrangement of one piece, then a flute arrangement of a second piece bookending an original vocal piece.  The transitions are smooth enough, but there's very little connective tissue here.  If it weren't for the fact that Sword of Doubt is itself an arrangement of the main leitmotif of Protecting My Devotion, there wouldn't be anything connecting those sections, either.  It really sounds like three different people made three different 2-minute songs, and a fourth person was given the job of sewing them all together.  If that was what happened, it's expertly done, but that doesn't mean it was a good idea.

I'm leaning towards voting YES on the strength of the performances and production, and at least two of the three component sections have an excuse to go together (even if the harp section comes across as a really long intro).  But I generally look for a more cohesive package when multiple melodies are used, and this feels more like a medley.  I'll come back to this.

Edit: Revisiting this 4 months later, I'll go with my original feeling. We don't normally frown on bridges with original content, though usually they're done in a more cohesive way that fits with the rest of the piece both instrumentally and tonally, which this does not. I don't think it's enough to outweigh the strengths of the rest of the piece, though.

YES

Edited April 3, 2023 by MindWanderer

[prophetik music]

rose of may is one of the site's iconic remixes - it's hard to think of Protecting My Devotion outside of that framework. so, good luck! ?

harp is recorded beautifully. it's hard to get the richness of a harp's lower end in most recordings. the performance is truly well-done as well. excellent technique on the upper range to keep them clear without being all attack. the underpinning strings are well-handled and beautifully balanced so as to support without overtaking the harp's sustain tones. the harp's arrangement initially is very straightforward, but the added flourishes and arpeggiation that fills in as the track goes on is great.

some percussive elements come in that are very understated around 1:45, and the orchestral backing begins to build to 2:09's intro of Protecting My Devotion. i initially didn't realize the flute part was live - compared to the flute, the recording technique wasn't as clear, nor was the instrument as clearly mixed. the eventual transition from this part was not as smooth and clear as the transition into it.

the vocal section is much more uneven. i agree with MW that the lyrics consistently don't sit well within the melodic content being used, although the singer's doing a great job making me want to ignore the words and just listen to their tone. you demonstrate beautiful vibrato on the sustained pitches throughout. there are some timing issues demonstrated - notably around 3:50 - both in defining where the pickup notes are in each measure, and in that the singer rushes a bit on many of the runs. there's also a distinct lack of consonants throughout, which makes the aforementioned timing issues more notable. to be clear - this section is really cool, sung with a nice tone, and has some neat orchestral ideas underneath. it just doesn't tie to any of the original tracks at all, and the pronunciation and poor lyric-writing put the singer in a tough position.

the transition back to harp and orchestra is again clearly defined, but the time change and recap to a much more militaristic tone at 5:25 is a curious arrangement choice at best and ruins the mood from the first two sections at worst. the hoots in this part are louder than the first time around to the point of distraction, and out of place as a result. this is a straightforward adaptation of Protecting My Devotion for the last minute with little new material - it's not a copy/paste from before, but it's real close - and then it just sorta ends.

i understand MW's uncertainty 100% here. this is a beautifully realized and arranged representation of Sword of Doubt and Protecting My Devotion...for three minutes. there's an unrelated vocal performance that's pretty to listen to and hard to understand or make sense of for about two minutes. and then there's a minute of a bog-standard realization of Protecting My Devotion that if anything drags the entire piece down for how bland it is compared to the rest of the work.

i would yes the first three minutes in a heartbeat by themselves if the song ended right at the sustain at 3:05. i would maybe yes the first five or so minutes but be on the fence about it, as the track is still barely >50% source at that point despite the first 20 seconds being straight from the track, even if the choice of where to add the vocal parts was as it is now. this would be a difficult choice, though, as it doesn't really feel like transitioning to PMD at the end and doing nothing with it, combined with a mailed-in ending, actually brings the track down quite a bit.

this is borderline, which is heart-wrenching because honestly the first two minutes especially are incredibly beautiful and poignantly handled. if the last minute had been less clumsily approached, this could have been an all-timer. as it is, this is over the bar, but helped mightily by the excellent handling of the harp and subtle, intense writing in the first minute or two.

 

 

YES

[Liontamer]

Nice resonance during the harp intro; the accompanying bowed strings were super soft in volume, but created a nice undercurrent of tension as things gradually built up in the background. About 1:15 in, and this is just gorgeous. Oh shit, the flourishes at 1:20 made me yell out "Bro!" in amazement and appreciation. Awesome, I love the intro's performance. Gradual and fairly seamless shift over into the orchestration starting at 1:35. Woodwind cover of the "Protecting My Devotion" melody at 2:09. The way the percussion hits was a little odd; almost hits too loudly, while also not sounding sharp; nothing dinging this, just a bit of a strange dynamic.

Vocals arrived at 3:09 with a wholly original section; nice tone, though some more de-essing might have taken a little bit of the edge off some of the syllables; some of the highest notes got piercing, but totally not a big deal in the grand scheme. Very nice delivery, and mixed well to give them depth. Solid closing section going back to "Protecting My Devotion" for the finish. All the analysis aside from the other Js, our bar's not that high, so the crits may be on point, but I also didn't feel it was a close call.

Props on the live performances, as well as getting reasonably good quality out of more difficult samples like brass. Strong work at all around; a big welcome to Roph, Harpsibored, SableProvidence, and Dawnaria, and always honored to have DoD crossover submissions!

EDIT (6/2): I listened 5 more times while I was driving. This isn't even in the realm of questionable vis-a-vis the Standards; the issues feel like a matter of taste, just not anything approaching a discussion on where the bar should be. Structure and flow felt fine, the transitions were smooth, the vocal performance and its purposeful, stylized prosody didn't put me off, nor did the length of the original section, which hit a similar enough energy level & mood relative to everything else. In our chat channel, prophetik brought up that we have plenty of arrangements where the structure sandwich is original composition/arranged VGM/original composition (I'll call that O-V-O), so we shouldn't have a problem with an arranged VGM/original composition/arranged VGM or V-O-V sandwich, which I fully agree with. If an arrangement invokes the VGM for >50% of the duration, the sandbox should be an artist's to play in as far as how everything else is structured. Nothing lacked cohesion, no issues for me. Since djp indicated he'd likely vote YES if it somehow came to a tiebreaker, Gario's 5th YES cements the decision.

YES

[DarkSim]

Beautiful intro - the live harp sounds amazing, and the little ambient sounds picked up during recording help make it sound really organic. Live flute is nice, but sounds a little muted compared to the rest of the instrumentation. Maybe a lack of high-end reducing the clarity somewhat.

The vocal section was a surprise, and Dawnaria's voice sounds incredible. It's a shame that the opening lines are so clunky, because the vocal tone is so smooth and luscious. The lyrics are such a mouthful:

"Though this may be our final fateful night
Against endless hordes of relentless mistborn evil blight"

In my view, if you're writing lyrics or poetry, especially for music, you need to pay attention to the accented syllables. Takes me back to my English classes learning about iambic pentameter, but in this example, the melody causes the vocalist to accentuate the wrong syllables so it sounds like "Though this may be our final fateful ni-ight", which sounds totally unnatural. Further, the second line is indecipherable given the amount of syllables in there (10 in the first line, 14 in the second - I had to look up the lyrics on YouTube!). When writing lyrics, if you can't get them to sound fluid, just rework them! The most important thing is the flow sounds right. With a bad flow, even if what you're trying to say is important, people won't be able to understand it anyway (just like I didn't in these opening lines).

The final section retreads ground from the first couple of minutes, and for some reason the 'woof' sounds got louder/more noticeable. I had to check back to see if they were there before the vocal section!

To summarise, it's an extremely strong start, a very good middle section with some dodgy lyrics, and then the final section was ok. Easily good enough to pass, but definitely some points to work on in future. Cheers!

YES

[DarkeSword]

Folks, I'm very curious/concerned at the YES votes on this given that there's an entire 2 minute original interlude slotted in to the middle of this. I'm not a stop-watcher, but I understand this technically is over 50% source usage; HOWEVER, this entire middle section feels entirely unrelated to the rest of the piece. Is this a melody from Final Fantasy IX? It doesn't sound like it at all.

I'll also call out that there are tons of prosody issues with the lyrics here, which I absolutely cannot understand. If the lyrics are original and the melody is original, why are there problems with prosody? Syllables ought to be stressed according to the contour of the melody. These lyrics feel grafted on and awkwardly stressed. Dawnaria's singing the notes just fine but it still sounds messy, and the fact that it's not even from FFIX really makes the entire section feel unjustified here.

Would love to see some more input on this one. NO

[Gario]

Well, this track certainly starts off strong, and most individual moments sound great on their own. I do understand where the other judges are coming from on this, though; the greatest weakness of this track is the sections sound disparate from one another, with two sections sounding uplifting (2:09 - 3:00, 5:21 - 6:19) and two sounding very dramatic (0:00 - 2:09, 3:00 - 5:21). There is some connecting instrumental glue bridging the sections, but there could've been more effort integrating the motifs and ideas from each section to the other sections, just to make sure we all know it's the same song. Heck, just continuing some of the singing to the end would've been plenty to tie it all together.

Concerning the production values, they're quite good. At 2:44 - 3:00 the instruments get crowded so the melody gets lost behind everything else, so lightening up on the dynamics of the textures would've been a good idea. The singing is very pretty if breathy (stylistic choice most likely), and the samples are humanized well enough for our purposes.

I think this is certainly flawed as the arrangement is tied together with some bridges and a recapped section at the end, but I also believe turning this down would make perfection an enemy of good. Keep a song's cohesion in mind when arranging longer tracks like this, and it'll be perfect, but I still enjoyed it and believe others will, too.

YES