game music

Updates on the top secret crossover fighting game/RPG soundtrack

Posted by sara-garrard

It started out just as a way to write more upbeat fight music and then morphed into a project to rearrange old themes…

Talking through the process of revamping a 2003 battle theme:

Samples:

First set, all new ideas

  1. Voyaging (story mode mission select loop)
  2. Main menu (VERY EXCITED AND BOMBASTIC and orchestral)
  3. Battle Stage 5 (ALSO EXCITED AND BOMBASTIC but x rock band)
  4. Another battle stage feat. piano quintet (in prog)
  5. Sad/story segment 

Second set

  1. ‘A voice on the wind’ — character/world map theme originally a midi from ?2004
  2. ‘Rosalie’ — character theme string quartet version, originally a piano piece, from 2010
  3. ‘Warriors of Orpheus’ — original midi from 2002!!
  4. ‘Forest Path’ — original from 2002, even earlier
  5. ‘Arrow to the Sky’ — the original of this was day 6 of pianowrimo last month
  6. ‘Goblin Song’ — original from 2003

Also includes Long Road Ahead, which was also originally a wrimo piece from last month:

Cloud Smiles (FFVII Advent Children) – oboe and piano

Posted by sara-garrard

The last thing I filmed before Christmas, this gorgeous piece from the end of the Advent Children movie, by Nobuo Uematsu. I watched Advent Children last Christmas Eve, for the first time since it came out (and in the Complete version which I guess I hadn’t seen) and honestly loved it this time round. Also felt like I’d been missing out on the soundtrack all these years. I’ve made a ff7 soundfont version, a music box version, and now…

The first melody is on the oboe in the full orchestral version too so I wanted to see how an oboe and piano take would sound.

I had to practise that piano part quite a bit!! (And even then don’t expect me to ever manage it live.) And the oboe, phew, a lot of sustaining needed.

Long Road Ahead (pianowrimo arrange)

Posted by sara-garrard

I took November 28th’s piano piece:

…and arranged it out for a few more instruments

The original inspiration was pretty much Takeharu Ishimoto’s Crisis Core sound and we continue with that idea here… (Not exactly similar, and I’m not sure the string quartet was ever combined with the rock band there, but here ’tis.)

I historically haven’t been very into “developing” or “revising” my older pieces, tending to just think of them as done and move on to the next thing, but lately I’ve been doing a few things like like this… I think it’s because of arranging a lot of beloved vgm pieces this year, and that’s made me approach my old stuff (okay, in this instance it’s not at all old, but there’s others) not in terms of developing or revising but doing a different, new arrangement.

That’s right it’s …

Posted by sara-garrard

…more music boxes. I will do something else at some point (as well as more music boxes. Actually I’m off and on thinking about how to do some bigger piece including a music box.)

One of these days I might make a post outlining “tips and tricks” of how to do these because I feel like I’ve racked up a bunch of things I could have used earlier. But at the same time I don’t think I’m anywhere near done discovering really obvious things, and I’m still having trouble making the tape feed smoothly as a main thing, so maybe not quite yet.

Anyway, absolutely loving the 30 note music box. It offers a LOT of potential and flexibility, and with the recent two (you can see a little preview of these) especially I’ve been trying to make more of the potential of the box and its kind of characteristic style.

This one is an arrangement of a piece in a really very different style, so that was fun! also involves winding the handle VERY FAST. Collapsed Expressway by Mitsuto Suzuki.

Things to come? Ahead On Our Way and Cloud Smiles by Nobuo Uematsu. Hear those runs! and octaves!

Tifa’s Theme music box

Posted by sara-garrard
Tifa’s Theme (Final Fantasy VII) unofficial music box

I have a new music box … with 30 notes! Which means slightly bigger range than the 15 note but really more importantly, some chromatics. Tifa’s Theme from FFVII is the one I always wanted to do and really couldn’t with only diatonic notes, so I’m very happy to finally have made this. It also has a really nice tone, I think ❤️