Mother 3 "Your Warmth" 4:38

Happy Mother's Day! :-D We've got some Mother 1 and plenty of Mother 2, but we're some lowly mothers for not -- until now -- having any Mother 3 representation. Well, today's the day, and there's no better way to right that wrong than with Sebastien Skaf's heartwarming solo piano treatment of Shogo Sakai's "Theme of Love"! Skaf celebrates a decade since his OCR debut arranging Mother 2 for the keys, once again standing up a serene musical statement on the power of love:

"10 years ago, my first OC ReMix was posted - it was a piano solo arrangement of the love theme from EarthBound - I thought I'd mark the occasion by submitting an arrangement of the love theme from EarthBound's sequel! This one's been on my radar for a while. It's another personal favourite and something I'm glad I finally got around to covering. Saddest song in gaming. :'-( iykyk

Also a small note, in terms of the mix you might notice some low end fuzz and some warbling - there is a vinyl filter on the track.

The source usage is pretty straightforward - I'll consider the original material to be made up of 2 sections, an A theme (starting from 0:00 in the source) and B theme (starting from 0:50). My remix has a short introduction, with the A theme coming in at about 0:30 (bar 8 in the score). It's a fairly straightforward, unembellished statement of the theme, but set over a bed of quiet descending triplets in the left hand (I'm sort of emulating the start of Mahler's famous "Adagietto" here). There are some minor reharmonizations and twists on the melody here, which transitions to the B theme at bar 16. The texture is a bit thicker here with chords in the right hand and a busier 16th-note rhythm in the left, with some ornamental high notes filling the spaces between the melody. It builds back up to a repeat of the A theme in bar 20. After this climax, it breaks down for a couple measures with some soft 4/6 polyrhythms that continue to weave in and around the repeat of the B theme. After revisiting the original setting of the A theme briefly from bar 33, the piece ends with a quiet arpeggio.

Will definitely do more Mother in the future."

Keep the "straightforward" arrangements coming, Sebastien, these ornamentations are a thing of beauty -- nothing but classy compliments throughout to the arranged melody. While Skaf explicitly noted Mahler's influence, judge prophetik music got some Nobuo vibes from some of the presentation:

"bar 20 [...] is worth the price of admission - that's straight out of an Uematsu FF piano arrangement, just beautiful. and repeating it at a lower dynamic really gives two perspectives on the same section, i really like that. [...]

this is a beautiful arrangement! full of character, just like the original. [...] overall i love the concept and perspective. and the performance is very moving with a lot of patience. excellent job."

Your patience will be rewarded in kind for letting this piece breathe, it's incredibly charming. Beyond his effusive and justified praise, judge Hemophiliac confirmed for Skaf that his arrangement approach had all of the transformation necessary to stand apart from the original, and thereby have a warm welcome here:

"This is incredibly lovely! There's a ton of expression in this and emotion pours out of it. The rubato and playing with time really contribute to an incredible feeling of anticipation. I know you called this unembellished, and I know what you mean that it's traditionally unembellished, but for this community it's a good amount of embellishment. The original shines through while you add your own spices to the arrangement. I particularly liked how you handled measure 11 beat 3 and 4 as a suspension and let that be slightly resolved despite landing on A7 and then you give us a resolution on the downbeat of mm12 to D in first inversion. Resolved but still moving forward because it's in first inversion. That was so tasteful. [...] I really enjoyed this, and both arrangement and performance are great."

Of course, the theory-type stuff goes right over my neophyte head, but the core of prophetik & Hemo's praise 100% aligns with mine -- Skaf's piano performance is patient, moving, tasteful, emotive, and beautiful. There's plenty of substantial personalization of the theme, not to mention smoothly integrated original writing from 2:35. Kudos as well for the remarkably genteel approach from 3:18 until the finish, a softer touch that'll make listeners pay attention. We certainly hope Skaf completes the Mother trifecta here one day, because we obviously would love to hear more. Thank you for finally bringing Mother 3 to OCR, Sebastien, we appreciate it -- this is lovely stuff for the mother-lovers AND Mother-lovers! :-)