Phantasy Star: Fringes of Algo

It is the very whole tone Floating Castle theme from Final Fantasy. I hesitate to say on piano, since it's a very effects-ridden, psychedelic tone. I tried to record it with a straight piano sound, and I couldn't get a good sound, so I went with this. But yeah, this is my favorite game ever, and I always loved this song, with all of its weirdness.

Ooh, this one's interesting. I wasn't really sold on the dissonance until the higher melody came in around the 0:20 mark, and then I could see the appeal of the piece. Nice job!

Thank you, augmentedfourth! You know, I was actually going to ask you about this one. I actually found it a lot trickier than I was expecting, since it's clearly a pretty simple piece, but for some reason the bass part was really difficult for me to keep consistent because of all the quick shifts. I wasn't sure if that was pretty routine for a whole tone-oriented piece or not (I was guessing it sort of necessitates a lot of octave switching, just because of the limited number of tones). I know it can be kind of tricky to play whole tone stuff on guitar or bass, just because the intervals are kind of weird when switching strings, but this one kind of surprised me.

Speaking of the weird tonality, I have to agree that it's a very weird one up until the second part, which is a little prettier. I like that the structure remains really weird there, with all the chromaticism, but it also kind of resolves into something more familiar. I really like how eerie the first part sounds, too. I think the atmosphere is perfect for the abandoned space station that is the Floating Castle. I love how music can be so evocative.

Excellent piece of musical work, Bragatyr ! Excellent music and you're right : a very weird piece of music but very interesting ! About the dissonance in the melody from the 0'20 mark, it's really impressive to hear and with it's quick pace, it's really a music that is perfect to represent a floating castle (a floating castle ? reminds me of a famous game that is starting with Phan but I can't remember its name... )

The unusual intervals can be tricky, as I think our fingers might want to go to a certain place, but we have to force them towards the dissonance. Whether or not this is easier/harder depending on whether you're reading the notes on the page or doing it all by ear...well, that would be quite the debate!

Also, I'm with Myau - the title of the piece made me think of a slightly different game....

Thank you, myau56! You know, it's funny that you were both thinking of another famous floating castle, because I totally didn't even think about old Lassic's place. It's pretty pimped out that he just kind of hangs out in a giant flying fortress.

You know, augmentedfourth, it's weird, but I always find the more dissonant moments in music to be the most difficult to transcribe. I don't know if it's because the tones are really close together, in certain cases, just making them more difficult to distinguish, or what, but that always trips me up. My mind wants to kind of "correct" the tone to the more predictable one, usually, in those cases (which has often proven to be trouble!).

It kind of reminds me of something one of my professors said about editing old manuscripts, in that the weirder or more difficult reading is usually the accurate one, the logic being that a monk was more likely to "correct" a given word to a more conventional meaning than to assign a bizarre, seemingly misplaced one. But there are always exceptions! It always makes me nervous when I can't be sure what the note is in any given situation. But I've often come back to find that it was the more unusual note that was accurate, so I have to be careful.

Good rendition of another underrated FF classic song, well done. Like I said earlier, I don't know anything about playing piano but from what I hear, you have an excellent control of your hands, your tempo/speed hardly ever varies. You could have said it was made in an electronic sequencer and it would have fooled me.

As for how it sounds, I would personally have been a little less heavy handed on the reverb. I know you wanted that psychedelic feel but since your notes tend to stretch, the frequencies add up. I don't know if you're familiar with how amplitude vs frequencies work but basically, in a amp-dependent, closed audio system like an electronic piano, same frequencies add when they are played at the same time and this eventually reaches over to create audio distortion which isn't happy to the ear, especially in a world of youtube compression. Ask any electronic musician, *clip* is our very own F-word. If you have an option to limit the reverb, I'd try that but if it's the feel you were looking for, ignore that paragraph.

Bragatyr wrote:You know, augmentedfourth, it's weird, but I always find the more dissonant moments in music to be the most difficult to transcribe. I don't know if it's because the tones are really close together, in certain cases, just making them more difficult to distinguish, or what, but that always trips me up. My mind wants to kind of "correct" the tone to the more predictable one, usually, in those cases (which has often proven to be trouble!).

Oh, absolutely. One of the reasons I loved studying (and later teaching) music theory so much is because it reveals so much about how much we, as people having grown up listening to the conventions of Western music, already subconsciously know about structure and tonality. My favorite example of this is teaching the different types of cadences - it doesn't matter what you know about chords and inversions or what not. You can tell whether or not something sounds "finished", and based on that, you already know two types of standard cadences (half and authentic). Some dissonances are common, even if we're not really paying attention to them - like if you take a dominant 7 chord and break it down into its four notes, you'll find a tritone (or augmented fourth ) in there. On its own, it can sound jarring, but when you add in the other two notes, it sounds like the harmonious dominant 7 chord we all know and love. (And if you think you don't know it, yes, you do.)

In pieces like this, the dissonances aren't as common and they go against what our Western ears want to hear. Because the melodies/chords aren't going in the direction that we want them to, that makes it a lot harder to transcribe.

Funny anecdote (that everyone else can skim over) - as I've said, I love music theory, but I was dumb and took a 7-week elective in it during one of my busiest semesters of college. The name of the course was Advanced Aural skills, and the name didn't lie. I was already stressed out about the million other things I had going on in the middle of the semester, which is when I had to do the final multi-part project for the class. One of the components of the final was to listen to an excerpt of a Stravinsky (your favorite! ) wind quartet and transcribe the melody and the bass line. I was getting all stressed and twitchy over it because it was challenging, and the kicker was that the bass line was played by the bassoon, my instrument. I was sitting at my desk with the speakers blaring, muttering "I can't hear the bass line. The bass line is in the bassoon. WHY CAN'T I HEAR THE BASS LINE?!?" for a while before I had to stand up and walk away to avoid having a mental snap. Damn Stravinsky. It's always his fault.

Yo Aeroprism! Thank you very much, man. I have to admit that I wouldn't have thought my tempo control is very stellar; I feel like I'm just about doubling the tempo at the harder parts, most of the time. I used a metronome a lot of the time back when I was doing bigger arrangements, but with these solo keyboard things I'm just trying to freestyle it. And I totally understand where you're coming from about the reverb thing. I probably went a little overboard with it, but overall I'm pretty happy with it, since I was definitely shooting for a spacier sound. My ears are not very sensitive, I have to admit, and I don't know crap about recording, so I maybe lean a little more towards noise-rock than anything else sometimes!

augmentedfourth--that darn Stravinsky strikes again! I love him, but God, I can just imagine having to deal with that in an ear-training class. I don't blame you for any massive frustration that may have occurred. I just about blow a gasket sometimes just trying to figure out tough passages in video game music. But especially about that bass line, I can relate. I started off playing bass guitar, (I didn't even know what a bass was!) and I think it's about the most frustrating thing in the world to try to glean out a bass line that's buried in the mix. It doesn't matter that I'm familiar with the instrument, or like the bass register in general, or anything. Bass is just really hard to pick out of a recording, and then it can do some kind of unexpected things, and...yup. It's just frustrating. But it remains the coolest register. And I pray I never have to transcribe any Stravinsky.

Oh, speaking of Stravinsky, I went to Barnes and Noble recently and tried to pick up a copy of the Symphony of Psalms, and they didn't have it! They've really downgraded their classical section recently, I guess. It was a bit of a bummer. They used to have a pretty nice selection. I'm tempted to just Youtube it, but with something like Stravinsky I like to get the real experience (he's one of the few composers whose works I've actively sought out in concert. I still need to see a lot more of them, though).