fanmusic

‘In My Heart’ FFVII x FFVI music arrangement

Posted by sara-garrard

An arrangement combining “Holding Thoughts in My Heart” and a bit of “Aria di Mezzo Carattere” (the opera scene from FFVI), both by Nobuo Uematsu.

I made a video combining footage of me on oboe, harp and music box together with shadow puppet theatre and a string orchestra….. that sadly is not actually playing this piece, I’m just using images their lovely Dvorak footage (Orchestral Ensemble Seoul OES conducted by Gyu-Seo Lee, licensed under Creative Commons).

You can listen to 63 other chill vgm covers on the SoundoleChillOut2022 playlist here.

FFVII Remake Demakes come to Spotify! (and elsewhere)

Posted by sara-garrard

Very pleased to announce and Original Soundtrack Plus-Minus Vol. 1, the first volume of my FFVII Remake covers in the style of the original 1997 game is up for listening on Spotify! also incidentally the first covers/arrangements of any kind I’ve officially released.

Avalanche’s Theme, Jessie’s Theme, Critical Shot, Run Run Run, together with an original composition.

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Two kinds of music boxes

Posted by sara-garrard

I’ve definitely ironed out some mechanical issues I was having in music box tape making, and made a couple 30 note tracks I’m really pleased with:

I’m also though trying out making pretty short and loopable ones back on the 15-note box; sounding something like a mini box with cylinder you might buy.

These are a lot quicker to make, obviously because they’re shorter and lesser in scope, but also specifically because it’s 15 notes all the diatonic ones of 2 octaves, it’s not too hard to write notes straight on and get a feel for where the notes are. (The 30 note box has a wider range with some chromatics, but only a few notes, all the chromatics in the middle, only tones towards the top etc — so it’s hard to glance at the grid and appreciate where a note might be. Though I’m sure you can learn it too…) But yeah, even though the tone of the bigger box is… mwah, beautiful… the smaller one is actually still very sweet and idiomatic and we can do things with it.

‘A Broken World’ piano and orchestra arrangements

Posted by sara-garrard

Hiii so I seem to have posted a bunch of stuff on youtube that I haven’t updated here! For the sake of completeness and because these are quite nice….

‘Return to the Planet’ and ‘A Broken World’ are tracks from the Final Fantasy VII Remake soundtrack by Masashi Hamauzu that are original to that score – and, as you might be able to guess from the titles, really emotionally charged.

I did a fairly faithful piano arrangement:

And a really reimagined/new genre’d orchestral/soundtrack one:

FFVII R OST demake: Collapsed Expressway

Posted by sara-garrard

Another Final Fantasy VII Remake track done in the (broad) style of the original FFVII game. Actually this piece is really such a long way from the original style/genres and I didn’t completely rewrite it to make it fit, but I tweaked a few things and of course used the soundfont, so it sounds kinda like the original. And it sounds cool!

Also a little while ago I did the same with Avalanche’s Theme:

(Which I think actually sounds pretty reasonable as a FFVII era track.)

A Tale

Posted by sara-garrard

words by Lina, Nessa, Jesta, Em

Crashing waves and darkning skies
Bring warning of the hail of pies
On these seas, I bob and float
Like fishes in an empty moat

Silver moon shining bright
In the forests of the night…
To quote from Blake just is not good
Far better to quote from Robin Hood!

Maid Marian and Little John
Lived in our twin town, Bonn

Castles, museums are all too old
To be standing in the cold
The orange game worries me so
But why that is, I do not know…!

So leave aside these follies now
Wear a silmarill upon thy brow
A Tale this is of glory, I think
And we wrote it Nessa’s bright pink ink

an Epic Ballad of Epicness, with lyrics written in … that game where you write a line, pass the paper on, next person writes a rhyme to complete a couplet then a new line – fold over paper to only see that line – pass on to the next person etc…

from 2007!

King of Figaro Castle

Posted by sara-garrard

What if FFVI’s Edgar and Sabin’s Figaro Castle/Coin Song in the style of Lord of the Rings, particularly The King of the Golden Hall?

Bit of a self-indulgent film orchestration exercise 😀  With a little of Terra’s Theme in there too.  The instrument is a Hardanger fiddle (hardingfele), though I’m afraid I haven’t worried about writing particularly idiomatically for it.