OCR04665 - *YES* Final Fantasy 7 & 5 "Flight of the Cosmonauts"

[Emunator]

Credited Artists:

Emunator: Arrangement, sequencing, orchestration, mixing
Shea's Violin: Lead violin

Additional Credits:

Chimpazilla: additional mixing (bass), mastering

Comments:

This is my 3rd round submission for Darkesword's Game Set Mash!! competition, and I think it's my favorite of the three. Knowing that our PSX team was behind in total points leading into the final round, and that we needed to win this matchup to even stay in the running, I knew I had to go all out. No half measures here. Over the next 10 days, I put roughly 60 hours of work into this arrangement, crafting easily the most heavily-layered, orchestrated piece I've ever made. At the end of it all, both teams were tied in points, so I guess the real victory was the friends we made along the way??

My elevator pitch for this arrangement is "What if James Horner composed the score to Avatar like normal, but he dropped acid for 30 seconds in the middle of one of his sessions?" My other key influences here were the Ori and the Will of the Wisps score, specifically the Windswept Wastes theme, and E-Bison's classic Xenogears remix, Zeno Paradox (I spent so much time trying to capture the magic of the surprise bass drop featured in Elliot's track, and while I don't think I was nearly as successful here, I've always wanted to pay homage to one of my all-time favorite OCReMix arrangements.)

This ended up being a fusion arrangement in the truest sense of the word, pulling influence from Chinese, Arabic and Indian composition styles as well as contemporary western film scores. I let the character of the two sources drive the arrangement initially, but didn't hold myself back from exploring other pathways as they opened up. The final project file used over 180 plugins, 250 channels, and 25,300 MIDI notes, so instead of attempting to break down the production or tools used, I'll just let the music speak for itself.

After the competition was over, I went back and did some minor polishing to the mixing, tapped Shea to record a more expressive version of my sequenced violin performance, and asked Chimpazilla to lend her secret mastering magic to finish it off, but aside from that, this didn't need too much reworking to get it to its current state. I'm walking away from the competition with a sense of confidence in my ability to work quickly and decisively without having to make compromises on my vision. I'm truly grateful to Shariq for providing that avenue to expand my musical skills and meet so many wonderful collaborators and friends in the process. Team PSX for life! ?

[Liontamer]

Stamp of rubber.

YES

[prophetik music]

i am admittedly surprised that this is using Cosmo Canyon and not Launching a Dream Into Space.

opens with strings, flute, and ethnic percussion. 0:38 starts the more melodic material, and opens with the iconic main theme riff of FF7 - oh wait, it's the Unknown Lands theme (i see what you did there!). shea does a gorgeous job there on the violin. the bamboo percussion at 1:27 sound great behind the overall orchestral tone, although i'll complain that the plectral instrument under the orchestra is a lot louder than the orchestral sound which lessens some of the impact of the orchestral ensemble.

there's a beautiful dovetail of the CC theme into this around 1:51, and then there's a bit shift at 2:19 as the acid hits. much more aggressive use of rhythm-synced synths in this section - i love hearing the CC's arpeggio in those tight arps you have going on. the high fades pretty quick at 3:18 and we get a much more standard playback of the CC theme with a sudden transition to the soaring elements of the second half of Unknown Lands. the Horner influence is nowhere more obvious than at 3:57 with that chord shift and the vocals.

the fadeout at the end is abrupt and i wouldn't mind more of a sustained tail, given the fairly quick ending shift already.

this is excellent, demonstrating a broad scope of approach and a ton of flexibility and imagination from the creative side.

 

 

YES

[Gario]

One of these two sources are a favorite of mine (cough Unknown Lands cough), so perhaps I come in with a little bias in saying I think the arrangement was very enjoyable. The production and instrumentation was great, as well, even if the bass was a *tad* heavy for the orchestral genre.

Aside from the cut-off at the end (I agree with prophetik's comment that it should've had more of a sustained tail at the end), I also think the transition between sources was abrupt and unexpected when they happened. Not at all a deal breaker, but the sources didn't really transition in a way that made great sense. I hear the source references to one another, there's blending, but the key change and source changing is very abrupt and definitely took me out of the music for a second when it happened (at 1:42, specifically, and a bit at 3:33 as well). In contrast, that opening minute handled the two sources together gracefully and naturally, so it took me out of it when it was so jarring later.

That aside, fantastic arrangement and definitely worth the front page.

YES

[MindWanderer]

These are both personal favorite sources of mine, though I couldn't easily imagine them going together. And it sounds like Emu struggles a little bit with that as well. The sound design is cohesive, but it still sounds like the two sources are chopped up and spliced together somewhat awkwardly, with a lot of filler gluing them together. If I were voting on this in the remix compo, I'd ding it for that.

However, this isn't for the remix compo, and smooth integration of the two sources isn't one of the factors we judge on here. And what we do judge on is impeccable. The Asian sound design works fantastically (which we already knew works for Cosmo Canyon). The padding may be padding, but it's very good padding, and the little insertions of the themes' leitmotifs are brilliant. Sounds great, post it.

YES