*NO* Final Fantasy 6 "Terra-ble Journey"

[Liontamer ⚖️]

Artist Name: Audiomancer, Aka Eric

This is a ReMix I put together with a few solo instruments. It's an arrangement consisting of trumpet, violin, and flute. I had trumpet carrying the melody throughout, but paradiddlesjosh said something about switching the lead instrument in the WIP forums, so I had the violin take the lead for the B section. As always, thanks for the time taken to review this submission!:)

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Games & Sources

Final Fantasy 6, Terra's theme. Nobuo Uematsu,

Edited 14 hours ago by Rexy

[prophetik music ⚖️]

the quality of the samples for each isn't good enough, but we can review the arrangement at least. opens with some flutter tonguing in the flute on a sustain before the other members of the trio come in. the trumpet's the lead instrument initially, and i like the articulation and personalization of the trumpet part. the three instruments are all pretty centered which makes it hard to tell them apart. there's a wrong note at 0:46, and again in the trill at 1:01. the backing trumpet part at 1:08 isn't really idiomatic to the instrument (be better in the flute actually). it's over very quickly.

there's a lot of interesting arrangement ideas throughout, so that's good. what's here however isn't really enough (we usually require at least two minutes, and considering the opening, this is less than 1:40). i'd encourage you to find ways to extend the arrangement that aren't just looping between the A and B themes from the original. similarly, finding more ways to make this yours - chord changes, more variety in the backing elements that aren't the same as what's in the original - would be a big help with extending the overall duration. from a technical perspective, you're doing a nice job with the instruments that you have, but anytime you're working with something so exposed, instrument quality becomes paramount. i couldn't hear enough of the flute to tell, but the violin and trumpet both don't sound particularly realistic despite a lot of attention paid to attacks and cutoffs. separately, i like the combination of violin, flute, and trumpet, but in general the trumpet overpowers everything else (as expected), and the scoring and range of the other two instruments doesn't help that. finding a way to balance your three instruments (whatever they wind up being) is very important in a small ensemble like this.

this is a surprisingly good arrangement given the duration, but it's definitely not there yet.

 

 

NO

[Hemophiliac ⚖️]

I want to start out by saying there's some good personalization here and embellishment on the source material that is uniquely you. Good work there. The arrangement is ok, but definitely would not hurt from being expanded upon further more. Use of articulation was also executed well, aside from a couple of the trills. Specifically the trill at 1:01 and 1:07 both sound like they have notes in them that don't fit in with the other parts.

0:47 I'm not sure if it's the trumpet, trumpet + flute, or one of the string parts going a chromatic glissando here, but it's not sounding very idiomatic or good.

For being a "treble" chamber piece, the trumpet is overpowering the other parts for most of the piece. It really makes this feel more like a solo trumpet piece rather than a chamber ensemble. Right now it feels like foreground and background parts only. Bringing that trumpet back into the ensemble so it sits amongst the other parts and is a group would be a benefit. A suggestion I would make is to consider swapping a part to a lower instrument like a cello to round out the low end some. That's not a requirement, but a nice to have.

I don't have as much of an issue with the samples used as prophetik did, but having them be up front and exposed as they are now does not help them feel more realistic.

With a track this short, everything would need to be firing perfectly on all cylinders to pass. Expand this out more, add more variation or another contrasting section, and work on the blend of the parts so they are working together as a group. The personalization is a good start here, but it needs more work on production and arrangement to get it over.

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[Rexy ⚖️]

Well, this differs from all of the Dragon Quest submissions I've heard from you - an arrangement of Terra for a small chamber ensemble.  This adaptation for trumpet, violin, and what sounds like a very low-pitched flute made it a quick single-loop adaptation and a return to the A section for its ending.  It's a valid approach, and arrangements under two minutes had been possible on the site before - but for that to work, one expects to hear more complicated techniques relating to arrangement and presentation.  In this case, adding more to the arrangement would benefit it far more in its current state.

As it is, I have heard three VSTs with considerably too much reverb for a chamber setup.  As Brad outlined above, the current staging of your instrumentation can't carry this alone despite your attention to articulations.  One idea is to ask for live performers for works like this - but with your history of repeated revisions of rejected works, something like this requires considerably more patience and perseverance.  Should you stick with your current loadout, it'll be a good idea to think of the natural ranges of your chosen instruments and figure out what would be your best option for writing it - it's not wise to go for something with a wide range for the sake of having a wide range, to switch note spectrums several times as you've done with your violin.  Even instrument sets based around a theme - like all strings, all winds, all brass, etc - would make it so much easier to figure out which virtual performer gets to emphasize what part, and it could be easier for you to figure out how to add more to the arrangement side of things.

It's not a bad start, Eric, but I definitely want to hear more.  Further arrangement and a more concise direction for your instrument presentation would greatly benefit this, and with all the ideas given here, it's all up to you to figure out the latter.  Keep up the effort.

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