Final Fantasy VI "Temporary Tina" 3:11

Audiomancer's all about the dogged pursuit of victory! After taking an unprecedented 10 attempts over 12 years to get his debut arrangement approved, only three attempts were needed this time around for Audiomancer's cinematic send-up of Final Fantasy VI's "Forever Rachel", which includes, as he notes, sampled live flute performances by the arranger himself:

"A haunting melody, the SNES really was ahead of its time for music. The flute is myself sampled in DirectWave for FL Studio. I used automation of saturation, volume, and transient processing to fake the "articulations". [...]

I chose the name "Temporary Tina", as I believe the Terra character is named Tina in the Japanese release. [...]

One of the judges said something about why I don't play the flute live, and that's because I have zero quiet time to myself. The only reason I was able to sample myself is because I got out of work 15 minutes early one day, and rushed home to use that 15 minutes to record myself real fast to make my DirectWave instrument. I wish I could, my live playing is (I think) at least a bit better than this stopgap solution, but it is what it is. [...]

As always, I appreciate the time taken for the feedback given. You know, in all of my years visiting the site, I always liked reading the split decisions the most. It pleases me to do the same thing, more feedback that way. ;)"

He just leans into adversity, let's go! The great thing for Audiomancer is that he finally pulled this track up the third time around to a unanimous approval from Js who had previously not yet been on board, firstly from prophetik music:

"long sustained strings to open the track, and a persian scale vocal sample for a bit. we get into the melodic material at 0:32, and some horns reinforce things at 0:48. there's one more vocal sustain before the main melody comes in at 1:02. 1:42's another transitional element featuring the vocal line, and we're into a chorale section at 1:47 that is mostly brass driven.

there's some percussion and a harpsichord at 2:13, and the trumpet's the lead here. [...] the flute takes the lead for one last run through the B side of the theme, and it's done. [...]

personalization doesn't need to always be a significant amount of altered chords, time sigs, or expansion. what's done here to personalize the melodic line and backing elements is enough for me."

Yep, some folks misunderstand our interpretive arrangement standards as requiring dramatic melodic or genre transformations, when it's always been about personalization, i.e. just putting your own stamp on a theme. Our other two turnaround votes came from our twin magic of paradiddlesjosh and the quoted pixelseph, who both gave props to Audiomancer's humanization improvements for his woodwind & brass, among other partwriting & mixing improvements:

"I was a NO on the previous vote for not enough expressive articulations on the lead instruments (flute and horn). This latest mix definitely addressed those concerns, particularly in the latter half of the piece, starting @ 1:44. The blend between horns and flute here is much richer and dynamic. The choir sounds more like a windbed and is more subdued, which works better in this context. I can't tell if that's the celeste @ 2:13 or a harpsichord, but it works great for providing the counterpoint line with the flute and horn.

I'm so glad this came back to the panel, it's definitely better for the 3rd pass on it! Happy to sign off on it [...]!"

Nice job by Audiomancer giving "Forever Rachel" a more fleshed out, mysterious orchestration. It leans into the theme's somber mood with instrumentation choices that, particularly in tandem, demonstrate a lot of care and intention!