OCR04817 - *YES* Final Fantasy 7 "Quiet Wish"

[prophetik music]

version without mic pops in the submission thread comments

I think this song might have been the only way I could really communicate something that's been trapped inside me throughout much of my life. There's this impenetrable loneliness that I think we all experience, at least some of the time. For many, human companionship just seems so far away, and all too often that same feeling of isolation heightens during moments of celebration. I believe I composed this song simply to acknowledge that part within myself, who has always wanted to be seen, and yet the emotion was just too "big" to express in words. Almost nothing quite captures it for me like FF7 (particularly this song), and I tried my best to use the components of the remix to explain this "big" feeling: the isolation, the hope, the faith, a distant awareness of community and a simple desire for them (whoever they are) to be loved, and of course grief, tender memories of joy, the suddenness of separation and promise of death, and ultimately the vastness of eternity.

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Games & Sources

Final Fantasy 7 - Interrupted By Fireworks

[prophetik music]

for whatever reason i never think of this when i think of the best FF7 tracks, but it's such a great original. just comes along too late in the OST, i guess.

opens with a huge blurb of non-tonal sound. slowly some spacey bells and a pitchy arp come in. the noise persists underneath as other elements come in to fill in the soundscape. there's a mic pop or rendering error at 1:01. there's an interesting element of time being tenuous through most of this section from 1:30-1:50 as the rumble comes back in a bit. we start to hear some more sustained elements around 2:00 coming in - the phasing on the choir element was neat. there's a string element that comes in around 2:30 that feels out of time because the lower note of the dyad speaks slower - a bit unsettling to me at least. arrangement starts to fill in a bit around the 2:50-2:55 area just in time for the rumble to come back. there's some atonal elements and sfx of celebration here too for a moment before they fade out. the arrangement gets very simple for a while around 3:55, as the rumble comes back and becomes the main thing we can hear. there's another mic pop at 4:46. the track fades out on the non-pitched rumble sfx.

this is a really interesting approach, not just because it's so far outside your normal style but also because of the focus on the rumble sfx throughout. i am historically not someone who is super into tracks that feature non-musical elements, and also this original has some really interesting compositional elements that you just toss out the window because they don't quite fit into your scope (and i think that was a good choice here, to be clear). but i really find myself taken with the direct comparison of such a romantic, nostalgic melody line mashed up against an sfx that is clearly intended to be a manifestation of nothingness.

i think without your writeup i wouldn't have gotten what's going on. but since i do, i like this one a lot as an art-piece approach to an underappreciated part of a killer soundtrack.

 

 

YES but i'd love those render pops to be taken care of

edit 11/8: mic pops are taken care of, i'm unreservedly a yes now.

Edited November 8, 2024 by prophetik music

[Liontamer]

Some rumbling to start, eh? Oh shit, some carnival-style stuff fading in... sets an interesting mood, I'll give it that. Cool idea for this intro. Stays pretty steady as I'm about 2:00 in, but it's a heck of a transformation. Some subtle changes around 2:26 with some light strings added in; could argue this doesn't develop enough by the halfway point, but we'll see.

At 3:00, the glassy warbling was briefly becoming piericng. The SFX of fireworks and a crowd around 3:16 wasn't mixed in poorly, but felt stapled in and didn't provide any synergy; feels more like random audio came on a pop-up ad in my web browser, it's that disjointed. 

Anyway, at 4:00, things quickly got subtractive and went back around to the rumbling audio SFX as a bookend. Wish it did more, sure, and the interruption by fireworks was poorly integrated, IMO. None of that makes me say it requires further work from Rebecca. It's a mood piece and it works. :-)

I didn't read the submission comments before voting, but I dig and appreciate the inspiration and concept. Heady stuff, this music thang. :-)

YES

[Hemophiliac]

This certainly is a departure from your usual soft-orchestral style. A pleasant surprise!

Sparse, yet evocative. Lonely, but at the same time hopeful.

The ambience in this is oppressive, and likely the biggest contributing factor to the feeling of loneliness. With very little harmonic or tonal material in the lows, the top end is left to carry the burden of the melody. In a way, I feel like this is too sparse, but at the same time you could not create the same emptiness and emotion without being sparse. I would have liked this to get fuller at some point or had more going on in the low-end tonally, but I can't argue with the result. Yes, that's a criticism, but your artistry still comes through regardless.

Even though this is a relatively quiet track, the peak still gets up to -0.1, way to use that space! Full dynamic while still remaining sparse and quiet.

I think people will be surprised when they hear this, Rebecca; as I was. Moving.

YES