Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
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Doma. I think this is a top 5 scene in a game that has the best scenes in the franchise. Which is funny because Kuja called it a Narm scene.
But for Doma specifically, I feel like this scene hits harder because it feels more...realistic? I mean, everyone dying immediately is magical, but this sort of thing wouldn't, and doesn't, take some sort of mastermind, or powerful enemy, or supervillain to do something like this. It just needs one guy with the opportunity to do so. Doma as a kingdom died, Doma's people were murdered, not because it was beaten by an empire in an overwhelming show of force, not because a sorcerer randomly picked it to suck into the void, not because of some magical curse or a guy casting Meteor...but because Kefka decided to murder everyone in the castle, including his subordinates, in a way that people have done in the real world.
Godwin's law and all that, but the heavily fascist coded Empire with no qualms about killing people for the crime of existing in the wrong place at the wrong time, reminds me a lot of the Nazis. Doma's poisoning happened in the real world, many times, sometimes with poison, sometimes with gas, and sometimes with the sword, and that makes this moment stand out in a franchise that before now hasn't really HAD someone go full war crimes in a way that real people did.
I also think that General Leo works a lot better as long as you did the Locke scenario first, because then the game makes it much clearer which one is the Good General. Leo is a good general in terms of combat, in terms of treating his enemy and his own troops well, but that doesn't change that he's a general of an empire who is both willing to and has already committed terrible actions. This archetype shows up often in media, the "my country, right or wrong" guy as said by TV Tropes, the guy who you wish would turn his back on a country who is awful, but he will not because of some code that he has. Leo is not a Good general. And the game, I think, recognizes that by putting another general in the spotlight as well, who does not merely say "stop, don't" to the atrocities and not commit any under their authority. Celes is the Good general, because in order to be a Good general as a member of a fascist army, you have to leave that army.
But for Doma specifically, I feel like this scene hits harder because it feels more...realistic? I mean, everyone dying immediately is magical, but this sort of thing wouldn't, and doesn't, take some sort of mastermind, or powerful enemy, or supervillain to do something like this. It just needs one guy with the opportunity to do so. Doma as a kingdom died, Doma's people were murdered, not because it was beaten by an empire in an overwhelming show of force, not because a sorcerer randomly picked it to suck into the void, not because of some magical curse or a guy casting Meteor...but because Kefka decided to murder everyone in the castle, including his subordinates, in a way that people have done in the real world.
Godwin's law and all that, but the heavily fascist coded Empire with no qualms about killing people for the crime of existing in the wrong place at the wrong time, reminds me a lot of the Nazis. Doma's poisoning happened in the real world, many times, sometimes with poison, sometimes with gas, and sometimes with the sword, and that makes this moment stand out in a franchise that before now hasn't really HAD someone go full war crimes in a way that real people did.
I also think that General Leo works a lot better as long as you did the Locke scenario first, because then the game makes it much clearer which one is the Good General. Leo is a good general in terms of combat, in terms of treating his enemy and his own troops well, but that doesn't change that he's a general of an empire who is both willing to and has already committed terrible actions. This archetype shows up often in media, the "my country, right or wrong" guy as said by TV Tropes, the guy who you wish would turn his back on a country who is awful, but he will not because of some code that he has. Leo is not a Good general. And the game, I think, recognizes that by putting another general in the spotlight as well, who does not merely say "stop, don't" to the atrocities and not commit any under their authority. Celes is the Good general, because in order to be a Good general as a member of a fascist army, you have to leave that army.
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Kadmus
Dragon's teeth are surprisingly hard to sow
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Oops, corrected.
FunkyEntropy
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French horns actually. Very standard choice for Hollywood-ifying a score. You can tell because the sound has both the characteristic brass brashness but at the same time is more mellow. Trumpet OTOH is stereotypically bright. This is due to the difference in instrument shapes: the former is conical, while the trumpet is cylindrical, which means different overtone content in their sounds. Generally, the more high overtones get emphasized the "brighter" an instrument sounds.
Man FFXIV loves their horns (intro), but it's interesting that they swap that out for low trumpet for the next part. (You can tell its low trumpet because it sounds like artistic nose blowing
) This is really competently arranged, really smart use of varied textures to keep things interesting.Oboe is a good guess and you're not far off the mark. I think it's an english horn, which is like the oboe except that it has a little bulb at the end of the instrument. Here's a quick explainer about the difference between the two. As you can hear, the english horn is a lot mellower in sound.
This is a definite improvement over the original. I do like the addition of the drum kit and guitars, it really emphasizes Exdeath and his WWE Heel personality. Oh, and a very hammy synth organ. Beautiful.
B section is actually tolerable now that the drum kit is giving the whole thing more rhythmic energy.
The medium as specifically presented in the game, because the sound design is intentional and it works.
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Well,
Omicron is French, so maybe having him go through it once in English and once in French could be interesting to see how he takes it, but it's been a struggle for him to talk about the music even this much so it might be a bit of a stretch if you're expecting anything more than a 'huh, neat' out of him. What's probably better, is waiting until he posts that update, and then suggesting he listen to the different language versions.
And you're right that the voice direction was an intentional choice (Celes isn't an opera floozy!). There was a pretty good interview with the soundtrack guys (i.e. more than just Uematsu) that I'm having trouble finding at the moment where they talk about how this version of the opera scene came about. I would guess that it's different in French and Italian and so on due to for some reason having less direct input from the Japanese devs.
I'll try and track down that interview in time for Omicron to get to that point in the story.
And you're right that the voice direction was an intentional choice (Celes isn't an opera floozy!). There was a pretty good interview with the soundtrack guys (i.e. more than just Uematsu) that I'm having trouble finding at the moment where they talk about how this version of the opera scene came about. I would guess that it's different in French and Italian and so on due to for some reason having less direct input from the Japanese devs.
I'll try and track down that interview in time for Omicron to get to that point in the story.
FunkyEntropy
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Time for another edition of The Music of Final Fantasy! I think going forward I'm going to limit myself to just a few pieces at a time because I really, really want to cover the whole soundtrack and doing it piece by piece will hopefully make it easier to actually get things done because I have a lot to say. Generally speaking I am going to be a bit more in depth and in particular be nitpicky about some of the sound decisions of the remake - I have...strong opinions regarding some of the choices made.
CONTENT WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS MUSIC THEORY
Headphones recommended
Omen. Original. PR.
This is the very first thing we hear when we start up the game, and wow what a way to tell players about the tone of the game. Gone is the bright and adventurous tone of FFV, instead Uematsu immediately throws a menacing and spicy chord at us. What kind of chord exactly? It's a quartal chord, meaning that it is a fat stack of perfect fourths. Perfect intervals such as fourths are highly consonant (listen to the first two notes as an example), but the fun thing about quartal chords is that immediately after the first interval suddenly you're getting dissonant intervals. Omen gives us 6 notes before transitioning, so lets map that out in order of appearance: EADGCF.
Here's what that looks like:
Top line. Notice all the space between each note on the page? That's what makes this different from a tone cluster. If we were to respell this chord to make the intervals as close as possible, instead of EADGCF we would instead have CDEFGA, meaning we'd have two whole steps, a half step, and another two whole steps. But it doesn't sound like you're just banging your forearm on a piano, right? Behold the power that distance gives to dissonant notes.
In both version of this tune we start off with organ for the quartal chord, and the next two spicy meatballs add synth choir. This is the first instance of me not liking what the Pixel Remaster does. So, as we compare the two versions, listen to how the synth voices in the original fit into the sound of the organ - they fit into the ongoing texture, they don't really change it. Contrast with the remaster: the voices pop out at you rather than sneaking in. Sorry, whoever arranged this, ya done goofed.
The next segment features what I lovingly refer to as, "tinkly bullshit" because, from a brass perspective, fast arpeggios are hard and also because it's a fun and very descriptive way of describing what's happening. Good for filling in as we transition to new segments.
The next proper segment is one of my favorites and a great example both of the strenghts of updating an old score as well as some of the tradeoffs that naturally occur during that process.
Let's start with the original, note the instrumentation: synth bass, strings, and chimes. The writing here is another good example of Uematsu playing around with dissonance and distance to create tension. Our synth bass is sustaining a low C, while the top of the strings in the first sequence plays a Bb, C, and Db with the unison serving as a transition between major and minor 2nds. After this we are treated to moving chords, and I would like to direct everyone's attention to what's happening in the bass: as the notes descend, and suddenly you hear a deep rumble? What you're hearing, if this were a tuba or organ playing, are called "pedal" notes. These are, generally speaking, the lowest note in the overtone series and are very, very low. These notes are so low that basically nobody writes them out as is and instead use 8vb to signify that it should be down the octave from what's written. These notes clock in at the low double digits in hertz, the pedal C when the trumpets enter the mix is 32hz. Can you hear how these very low frequencies give such a huge feeling of depth to the overall texture? This is one of those little details that I adore about Uematsu's original score.
Unfortunately this also serves as an example of the tradeoffs one has to make when updating soundtracks. The remaster decided to cut out the synth bass (with the exception of quick hits at the start of the chord for a little oomph. Really wish they'd sustained it) and instead use bowed string bass instead. String basses don't have access to the super low stuff unless they have a C attachment, which is pretty rare. So unfortunately we're missing out on pedals and the new version is missing that same depth.
On the other hand? God DAMN do those strings sound sexy. The dissonances in the chord progression create so much beatiful tension without being jarring, and that voice leading makes the Bb C F movement in the second three chord set just POP in a way that's just ::chef's kiss::
And then we get trumpet and horn fanfares which are just absolutely money in the bank. It's just..so good. Goddamn.
I think that's probably enough for now. Terra's Theme deserves its own post, but mostly wow did this one get away from me. As a final note: try to remember the motifs of Omen. This will not be the last time we hear them.
CONTENT WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS MUSIC THEORY
Headphones recommended
Omen. Original. PR.
This is the very first thing we hear when we start up the game, and wow what a way to tell players about the tone of the game. Gone is the bright and adventurous tone of FFV, instead Uematsu immediately throws a menacing and spicy chord at us. What kind of chord exactly? It's a quartal chord, meaning that it is a fat stack of perfect fourths. Perfect intervals such as fourths are highly consonant (listen to the first two notes as an example), but the fun thing about quartal chords is that immediately after the first interval suddenly you're getting dissonant intervals. Omen gives us 6 notes before transitioning, so lets map that out in order of appearance: EADGCF.
Here's what that looks like:
Top line. Notice all the space between each note on the page? That's what makes this different from a tone cluster. If we were to respell this chord to make the intervals as close as possible, instead of EADGCF we would instead have CDEFGA, meaning we'd have two whole steps, a half step, and another two whole steps. But it doesn't sound like you're just banging your forearm on a piano, right? Behold the power that distance gives to dissonant notes.
In both version of this tune we start off with organ for the quartal chord, and the next two spicy meatballs add synth choir. This is the first instance of me not liking what the Pixel Remaster does. So, as we compare the two versions, listen to how the synth voices in the original fit into the sound of the organ - they fit into the ongoing texture, they don't really change it. Contrast with the remaster: the voices pop out at you rather than sneaking in. Sorry, whoever arranged this, ya done goofed.
The next segment features what I lovingly refer to as, "tinkly bullshit"
because, from a brass perspective, fast arpeggios are hard and also because it's a fun and very descriptive way of describing what's happening. Good for filling in as we transition to new segments.The next proper segment is one of my favorites and a great example both of the strenghts of updating an old score as well as some of the tradeoffs that naturally occur during that process.
Let's start with the original, note the instrumentation: synth bass, strings, and chimes. The writing here is another good example of Uematsu playing around with dissonance and distance to create tension. Our synth bass is sustaining a low C, while the top of the strings in the first sequence plays a Bb, C, and Db with the unison serving as a transition between major and minor 2nds. After this we are treated to moving chords, and I would like to direct everyone's attention to what's happening in the bass: as the notes descend, and suddenly you hear a deep rumble? What you're hearing, if this were a tuba or organ playing, are called "pedal" notes. These are, generally speaking, the lowest note in the overtone series and are very, very low. These notes are so low that basically nobody writes them out as is and instead use 8vb to signify that it should be down the octave from what's written. These notes clock in at the low double digits in hertz, the pedal C when the trumpets enter the mix is 32hz. Can you hear how these very low frequencies give such a huge feeling of depth to the overall texture? This is one of those little details that I adore about Uematsu's original score.
Unfortunately this also serves as an example of the tradeoffs one has to make when updating soundtracks. The remaster decided to cut out the synth bass (with the exception of quick hits at the start of the chord for a little oomph. Really wish they'd sustained it) and instead use bowed string bass instead. String basses don't have access to the super low stuff unless they have a C attachment, which is pretty rare. So unfortunately we're missing out on pedals and the new version is missing that same depth.
On the other hand? God DAMN do those strings sound sexy. The dissonances in the chord progression create so much beatiful tension without being jarring, and that voice leading makes the Bb C F movement in the second three chord set just POP in a way that's just ::chef's kiss::
And then we get trumpet and horn fanfares which are just absolutely money in the bank. It's just..so good. Goddamn.
I think that's probably enough for now. Terra's Theme deserves its own post, but mostly wow did this one get away from me. As a final note: try to remember the motifs of Omen. This will not be the last time we hear them.
I was thinking of talking to you about trading off FFVI music posts, but I don't have a copy of the score so this's a hard act to follow. 🤗
I've been doing more percussion than anything else recently so my ear for chords has atrophied a bit, but with that caveat given the bass sounds like it's the same note to me. I'd attribute the lack of 'bass warble' to more obivous MIDI artifacts and SNES-era square wave sound generation that don't show up in modern recordings or samples (they do have live performers for certain parts that are listed in the credits, but I don't know them offhand).
Part 3 of Omen is almost as long as the first two parts combined and you just give it a "yadda yadda". Shame!
Teasing!
Omen makes a nice musical overture to the rest of the game, and one of my favorite things about this OST is trying to track down all the various recurring leitmotifs (small chunks of identifiable melody that serve as a musical theme, for those not knee-deep in this stuff).
🤗I've been doing more percussion than anything else recently so my ear for chords has atrophied a bit, but with that caveat given the bass sounds like it's the same note to me. I'd attribute the lack of 'bass warble' to more obivous MIDI artifacts and SNES-era square wave sound generation that don't show up in modern recordings or samples (they do have live performers for certain parts that are listed in the credits, but I don't know them offhand).
Part 3 of Omen is almost as long as the first two parts combined and you just give it a "yadda yadda". Shame!
Teasing!
Omen makes a nice musical overture to the rest of the game, and one of my favorite things about this OST is trying to track down all the various recurring leitmotifs (small chunks of identifiable melody that serve as a musical theme, for those not knee-deep in this stuff).
FunkyEntropy
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You can hear the pedal on the original if you crank up the volume a bit and have decent sound equipment. Pedal notes is, like, my thing so I'm super primed to pick it out when it pops up. It's not very prominent in the mix and Uematsu did a good job of stacking the chord so it's not something that's going to be immediately apparent for most people. Which is as it should be - a properly played pedal should add depth of a chord, not draw attention to itself.
In my defense, "Uematus developed the current theme" would have meant basically nothing to anyone aside from musicians and also I was really tired at that point
The orignal plan was to also talk about Terra's Theme in the same post because that way there'd be three motifs to explicitly call out for people to pay attention to, but, well, I
Er ... pretty sure we normally only count dissonance for the tritone and the minor second (which only occurs between the initial E and final F). The major second (here and often, as the major ninth) is considered consonant precisely because it has this 2:3 * 2:3 = 8:9 resonance, however imperfect. In particular, the very common dominant 7th (often as V⁷) is not dissonant because of the 7th, but because the 3rd + 7th forms a tritone.
Note that a good site for playing with this kind of thing is The Exciting Universe Of Music Theory but note that it squishes everything down to a single octave, for good or ill.
FunkyEntropy
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The fun thing about music is that consonance and dissonance are entirely reliant on context. For Counterpoint anything except unison, 3rds/6ths, and 5ths is considered dissonant. Yes, even P4ths, one of the perfect intervals. In...let's call it contemporary classical music theory the tritone is considered dissonant. However in the context of Just Intonation the 11th partial is (close enough to) a tritone but is actually consonant because you can tune that interval by ear so that there are no beats and I'm explaining this very badly JI is a rabbit hole with way too much math.
Anyway, my tl;dr working definition of dissonance is, "has beats" which I'm sure some traditional music theorists won't like but I ignore because they're slaves to a tuning system which instists that when every interval is out of tune none of them will be
. But for practical purposes of this thread I'm treating 2nds/7ths and tritones as dissonant since that's the shit that will rub people the wrong way most of the time when you play it on a piano (or hear it from computer generated samples because those also tend to use equal temperament, which is more likely to be the case in this thread).
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Oh yeah, I should have remembered French horns. I knew it wasn't quite a trumpet, since it's not as bright and high, but the only other instrument I could think of at the time was "trombone", and I was certain it's not that low.
And yeah, FFXIV loves... well, not horns specifically, but rather instrument groups keep getting repeated over and over in most of the songs in a given expansion. It sometimes feels like Soken (the composer and sound director) gets obsessed with one instrumental group at a time and puts it in everything, then flits over to the next group and puts that in the next expansion.
Ah, makes sense. I'd actually heard an english horn before, but essentially only once, and for some reason it was referred to as a "cor anglais", which I knew meant "english horn", but I have no idea why suddenly French. So I was second-guessing myself on whether it was an english horn, since the sound made me think of a lower, mellower oboe, but not as drastically low as a bassoon. If there was an alto oboe, I would not be surprised if that was it.
Tangential, but one of the comments I saw back in the early 2000s about "kids these days" compared to the early 90s was a gatekeeping-style complaint about how a generation of Final Fantasy players encountered FFVI and was introduced to the term "leitmotif", which then got applied to everything they (we) encountered.
While I obviously didn't agree with the gatekeeping aspects of that complaint, I do admit that I did get introduced to the idea of the musical theme and the leitmotif, in the sense of a musical phrase associated with a specific concept or character, via FFVI. And indeed once I learned the concept, it's hard not to end up seeing/hearing it in so many other musical works.
Zap Rowsdower
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Really? FFVI and not Star Wars? Huh.
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Yeah, in hindsight it's surprising too. As in, once I learned about the concept of the leitmotif and the musical theme, I could hear it everywhere in Star Wars music, and in plenty of other works that predate both.
I suspect, without any evidence, that FFVI just happened to be out in English at the time when the Internet, or at least the World Wide Web part of it, was really coming into the mainstream. And since discussion boards were still rudimentary (Usenet was too technical, "forums" were often based entirely around "guestbook" website apps), it was just a set amount of information being passed around fansites. And so it was very easy to stumble upon any one fansite and see their gushing "did you know" page about leitmotifs in FFVI.
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My blessed, oblivious ears have never perceived a leitmotif, and never will.
Zap Rowsdower
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Star Wars, more than anything else, is probably the EASIEST place to notice them, simply because Star Wars put the Opera in Space Opera and Opera's where leitmotifs come from in the first place (and its a lot easier to see Star Wars than the Ring Cycle or The Marriage of Figaro or whatever).
Imperial March for Vader (and Anakin Skywalker's darker moments in the prequels), most prominently, since its a leitmotif so iconic it occasionally gets used in political comedy to this day.
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There are 3 things to know about the English horn / cor anglais:
- It's not English (it was named after angels ... also invented in Poland but that's not important)
- It's not a horn (it's a woodwind, literally just an oboe with extra steps)
- It wasn't named in French (it was named in German, but English speakers think French sounds sexy)
I see we've found Toby Fox's sworn enemy.
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Toby Fox going to France to follow Omicron around with a kazoo repeating the start of Megalovania over and over
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I may or may not still be listening to Megalovania mashups and Battle Against A True Hero/Bergentrückung orchestral arrangements on the regular still, 8 years after the game came out, though.
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Never seen Jaws?
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Sadly not.
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It's got one of the simplest and most-recognisable examples of a leitmotif ever made, so much so you might not even think of it as a leitmotif and instead just 'the shark music' even without having seen the movie.
FunkyEntropy
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So, Jaws is one of the tunes in the music medley we use in my groups school concerts.
4th graders know this tune.
4th graders