Soundtrack Central The best classic game music and more

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manganzon81 Apr 2, 2011

First game music symphony concert I've been to and overall was great!  It was awesome to see Nobuo Uematsu in REAL life and could not believe he was in my home city of Brooklyn NY!

As soon as that harp started playing the prelude CHILLS ensued!  Magic!

They played a lot of stuff from the later FF games (FF VII - FFXIV).  Although nothing was played from I, II, III, IV, and IX.

Final Song was Terra's Theme with the Mechs walking through the snow on the HD screen while the concert had its own SNES text font End Credits!  Pretty Cool.

Final Encore was One Winged Angel which EVERYONE went nuts for.  And Nobuo actually ran up on stage and joined the choir in singing!  The audience was roaring!


There were some issue's I had a problem with!

1.  Programs -  There were NO programs whatsoever for the concert.  There's always a program for orchestra symphony concerts. 

2.  A bit TOO much talking - Since there were no programs.  Arnie Roth was turning around after every song or two and telling us the names of the songs they were about to play.  Every once in awhile its great to hear the conductor talk but I don't know... I felt it was a bit TOO much.  He also kept stressing at the fact there were all these FF XIV songs they were going to play that have "Never Been Performed in North America!".  It's really not that big of a deal.  Those XIV tracks were not that great and got moderate applause. 

3.  HD Video Screen - Now this was a bigger problem I had.  The screen kinda sucked IMO.  The footage they were playing looked like it was 2nd or 3rd generation quality.  You figured since the end credits said the footage was provided by Square/Enix that it would be a CLEAN sharp quality picture from all the games.  FFVIII was particularly a problem with a real DARK picture!  Also the lighting on the orchestra was reflecting on the screen creating a little bit of an annoying glare!  Finally, "Opening/Bombing Mission" was TOTALLY eff'd up sync wise with the video screen and pissed me off the MOST!  This is one of the most IMPORTANT FF tracks composed that REQUIRES sync with the intro to the game and it was TOTALLY OFF!  There was no ambient synth in the beginning when the camera is panning around the stars.  They started the main piece when the stars come up when it isn't supposed to start until we see Aerith looking at the materia!  And that huge CLASH of symbols and horns when the FF 7 title comes up after the camera zooms out of the city happened when we just START pulling out from Aerith walking in the street!  WTF!  It totally ruined it! 

On the plus side, the screen did work with the perfectly with the FF VIII battle song with a fantastic montage of battles from the game.  And it also worked great with an arrangement of the Chocobo song from FF XIV and Swing De Chocobo.  It was great how they started with the Chocobos running around the overworld in FFIV and seeing the progression all the way through FF XIV!  Nicely done.


Finally

4.  The Sound Mix/Volume -  This I had the biggest problem with.  If anyone went to this concert last night tell me if I'm crazy or not but the overall volume of the mix on the sound monitors seemed to be LOW!  I don't know if it was the arrangements themselves or the sound mix guy in the back just needed to boost the volume but for some of the pieces it was very annoying!  The biggest problem being with "Blinded by Light".  I love this battle song and it was totally ruined!  The song has so much energy and the main part when the violins kick in were so LOW you could barely hear them!  Even when you play the game and the sfx from the battle are on full volume those violins charge through with that amazing melody!  My girlfriend was with me and is not an avid FF fan and even she agreed the volume was too low on that song and overall!
JENOVA was also another energy driven song where I felt the volume was too low!  Too bad!  BTW, I think this song works a million times better as the Black Mages arrangement than a symphony IMO.


Other than that, it was great to see this music peformed live and be watching it in the same audience as the master Nobuo Uematsu!

jb Apr 2, 2011

Of the previous 3 I've attended to this was easily the worst performance.  I'm pretty sure the orchestra flat out made notable mistakes on Opening ~ Bombing Mission and Blinded by Light, and for me to notice means it's pretty apparent.  The size of the orchestra is also a bit smaller than the first one in LA and the two in Chicago that I went to so it definitely sounded smaller.

My biggest tripe with all of these concerts are the video displays.  I despise them because they induce bouts of inappropriate clapping during the performance.  I came to listen to the performance I didn't come to hear the Chocobo, Terra's Theme and One-Winged Angel arrangements be drowned out by clapping and the roaring of the crowd.  In the Japanese release, assuming it was recorded live, there is none of that bullshit.  I'm not sure if they had a monitor or not but I know during the Joe Hisaishi Ghibli concert that DID have a monitor, there was no outbursts of cheering and clapping during the pieces, only after the pieces.

I was also disappointed at the lack of a program, the glossy ones from the previous 3 concerts were really well done.  I asked Arnie during the autograph session why there were no programs this time around and he didn't give me a reason but said that new programs with new tracklists are being printed and would be available on the ffdistantworlds site in May sometime.

SQU/\REHE/\D Apr 4, 2011

Good review.  I wish I'd gone when it came to Seattle.  sad

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