Big project from last week — a mashup of Ignition Flame from FFVII Remake and Vivaldi: the Presto from Summer. Because they really fit together! The other thing I was working on here was the production and and sound, trying to make it sound like it would fit with the Remake tracks (in terms of sound anyway, some of it remains unrepentantly classical, or rather baroque, and that’s fine.)
I’m realising that mashups / combinations / syntheses(?) of things are clearly something I’m very interested in! …I ahah can actually tie this back in to my thesis, heh, and all the collage of song texts I started doing, which was also an Old Hispanic liturgical composition technique………….
I was just looking up when I did the Infinity Crystal soundtrack last year — it was a little later in Spring. Which is just as well because this new sequel/prequel/spinoff project I have in mind might take a little longer than that did… but it’s hopefully coming sometime… soon… this Spring?
Another RPG soundtrack (that I plan to put on itch.io as well as bandcamp and streaming etc, so people can use it in their games), this time with a slightly different sound and style. Something a little more “action” and also with more fancy/realistic sounds …. but mainly …. I had the idea to do a score that included:
taiko drums
electric cello
And I’m really pleased how well that’s actually working! Taiko (..and though I’m also looking into the genre and music for real on the side, I’m not writing accurate or drum-only music here; if it’s slightly more in the realms of reality than most of what’s written with like EPIC TRAILER TAIKOS!!!11 that’s good though) broadened into including a few more traditional Japanese instruments (making up something like the ensemble Japan Marvelous Drummers uses for softer numbers). And electric cello brought a general rock band with it, so I also want to feature massive fun electric guitars for this kind of mood.
Field Running‘Private Words’‘Rush’ – one of the battle tracksNo title yet, but uses the background countermelody from Private Words and slightly unites the two sides/styles.Theme: ‘Now is the cherry in blossom’ (ensemble version)
Now is the cherry I actually wrote first as a song! and have recorded and played a couple ways. it’s gonna be a recurring theme in this game and go with some of the relationships/characters 🙂
So, remember “aerial combat” one of the midi tracks I did last week? I’ve made this a whole thing, a whole mini soundtrack thing.
It’s inspired in a general way (and name-wise!) by Keiki Kobayashi’s Ace Combat soundtracks which I hear are really really good, but I’ve so far only listened to one track of them, and the track he did for FFVII:R, The Valkyrie. Then I wrote “The Absolute”, from this soundtrack, decided this was a fighter pilot/space shooter thing and wrote the rest. So I’m not sure how similar Space Combat is to Ace Combat, but…
…yes, midi is standard, not a particular “sound”, but also it kinda is; we know what that means. Plus it’s a catchy title.
These ones in particular I was trying to go for a 90s game midi ‘feel’, very quickly and unabashedly.
Aerial Combat in particular though I kind of am tempted to redo with full sound, even though it also feels very native to this format at the same time, heh.
Kind of on a roll after Cloud Smiles … Earlier I finished up a piece that I’m not posting quite yet as it might be part of something bigger, and then I did a couple of ‘warm up’ sketches. This is one of them arranged two ways, with the FFVII soundfont again. (Yes, exactly like Aerith’s Theme and Flower Blooming in the Church.)
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!
An arrangement of an arrangement! I did a piano mashup of Midnight Rendezvous x Interrupted by Fireworks back in May, and it was one of the first videos to get some views and love on my channel, as well as being a really pretty piece to play. Since then I’ve been doing a bunch of original FFVII style versions of some of the new-composed FFVII Remake tracks. This kind of combines the two. I based it closely on the arrangement I’d done on piano, but got to add more layers in, like the Main Theme, as well as the two main tracks and a bit of Aeris’ Theme.