ffvii

Sephiroth x 2 (Crisis Core and Advent Children demakes)

Posted by sara-garrard

In my continuing FFVII demake project, two more — one of them one of the more complicated ones I’ve attempted! Someone suggested “The World’s Enemy”, Crisis Core’s arrangement of One-Winged Angel. Y’know, as you do. But, like happens so much with this, the more I thought about it, the more I…. yeah, why not.

The orchestral arrangements from Crisis Core are top-notch! (And I absolutely love the guitar sound and the string-quartet based ones too – it’s all good.)

And this is Black Water, from Advent Children. The fun part here was translating the band sound – all heavy guitars – into something more workable for FFVII instruments.

‘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.

Continue reading →

Cloud Smiles

Posted by sara-garrard

An honorary addition to my FFVII Remake Demakes series… This piece, ‘Cloud Smiles’, plays at the end of the Final Fantasy VII Advent Children movie from 2005. I transcribed it and put it on the original 1997 sounds.

I guess people may wonder why I would do such a thing… mainly just because I want to, but I guess 1) because I enjoy the ‘warmth’ of the old sound samples, and this is a project to make the newer tracks ‘fit’ in the old game 2) it’s practise transcribing and quite a nice way to really get to know a piece and pick up some arrangement/orchestration tips !

I’ve been realising with the Remake Demakes and also I’ve been making some sheet music of Taylor Swift songs, been doing more transcribing/arranging lately — if I think back to ten years ago how much more confident I’ve got with it..! yay!

Avalanche’s Theme (FFVIIR): Piano

Posted by sara-garrard

This is a piano version of the new theme Masashi Hamauzu wrote for Avalanche in Final Fantasy VII Remake. This is intended to be a basic piano version, rather than a pianistic arrangement, like the OST piano album that was made for the original……. in honour of which, I’ve done up the sheet music to look as much like that as possible, because that’s fun.

You can download the pdf sheet music here.

‘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.)

‘Home Away From Home’ (FFVII Remake) oboe and piano

Posted by sara-garrard

I did a quick transcription of another pretty piece from the Final Fantasy VII remake. This piece is by Takafumi Imamura, using themes by Nobuo Uematsu from the original game (Main Theme and Holding Thoughts In My Heart). And I played it on piano and oboe 🙂

Home away from home (in Bb) score on musescore