Well, good news - it looks like they're really digging deep for the material on this album...

http://www.square-enix.co.jp/music/sem/page/cd/cd_060/

Unfortunately, no LOM or PE... but at least it's not just one big KH/FFXIII arrange album.

Legend of Mana is there, open your eyes.

Kinda sucks there's no Parasite Eve, but overall I'm pretty satisfied with the game selection and I'm shocked Live A Live actually made it on here.  *eagerly awaits a tracklist*

-Mike

Ah, boy. I should know better than to try to make informative forum posts this early in the morning after a late karaoke night.

PS: Miker, Sam Winter says hello (not this one).

Here's one:

http://page5.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/e77432577

Have fun paying 113 bucks for it though.

-Mike

There's probably idiotic "rights issues" with Mario RPG at least...

No PE really sucks though.

There's still nothing about if it's a true arranged album or just a compilation with a single arranged bonus track, is there?

-Joshua

Nothing concrete that I've seen, but PV was the one that put the GMR entry in, which means it's trustworthy. It says "Contains rearranged music for full orchestra.  Includes music from Final Fantasy Versus XIII."

Crazy awesome that LiveaLive and Front Mission are on there.

I'd guesstimate that this is why there's no Parasite Eve on the disc, since the music had a strong electronic component that'd be really hard to arrange for live orchestral performance.

I was hoping for a Mario & Luigi series track or two, but I suppose there are "rights issues" with that as well...

The Mario & Luigi games weren't made by Square....SM Rpg was. Otherwise people might be talking about wanting a Street Fighter II track or whatnot...

-Joshua

If they had swapped out Kingdom Hearts for Parasite Eve I would have been much happier with the selection.

Oh? I thought they had some involvement, given that Geno was in the games and at least one song was directly lifted from SMRPG. But looking at the production credits, it looks like they just licensed them after all.

Still looking forward to the album, though. Shimomura's easily one of my favorite composers.

Super Mario RPG and the Mario & Luigi RPGs are made by essentially the same team. The difference is that the team used to be part of Square and are now the Nintendo second-party developer AlphaDream. Interestingly, one of the major forces there is Chihiro Fujioka, previously the composer of SaGa 3 and some other titles.

Anyway, I'm definitely inclined to agree that there are rights issues with Super Mario RPG music especially given it was published by Nintendo. That's probably why the soundtrack has never been reprinted and now sells for a bomb on eBay as well.

Not to be a troll, but am I the only one not really excited about this being an orchestral album? Sometimes I feel people think having something orchestrated or performed by an orchestra automatically makes it "good" or better than what it's based on.

Not trying to kill anyone's buzz or pass judgment before hearing but I can't say I'm really excited.

Edit:

Sorry, I can't really get excited about anything - I'm in a real musical rut right now.

Sounds like you need something funky. I'll have to send a few dubs your way.

That's one thing that rules about VGM.  Even when you think you're in a listening rut, there's ALWAYS something new out there that you've never heard that will put you right back in the game.  Even if you can't find anything new to listen to, try re-discovering something you already have.  Always works for me.

Either that or get Zane to send you some hot Masafumi Takada dubs.

And just to keep this post on topic..

I couldn't agree more.  I'll go one step further and say if KH was taken out and PE put in it's place, it would be a perfect selection, well, aside from the missing Mario RPG.

-Mike

Well if you have a synth OST that's mostly trying to mimic an orchestra, and then a true orchestral performance of that OST - even with the arrangement being identical - I would say that as a rule the true orchestral version is indeed better.  Provided it's an even marginally competent performance there's an added subtlety that comes with live instrumentation that improves on mock-orchestral synth.

If the original synth material isn't orchestral in nature and/or the performance sucks ("Bombing Mission" from FF Dear Friends comes to mind) then sometimes the OST comes out on top.

What he said.

AND, considering there are plenty of orchestra-ish tracks from the two Mana games, Front Mission, Kingdom Hearts, and even a few from Live A Live, there's no reason why this album can't be RIDICULOUSLY good.

Whether or not it *will* be good? Only time will tell.

Agreed with Ramza. My only worry is if Yoko Shimomura orchestrates herself rather than someone like Kaoru Wada being used. I've found her orchestrations emotional in the past but not particularly professional or original technically. Then again, I found Heroes of Mana to feature her most convincing orchestrations to date so she may have refined since Parasite Eve (as much as I love it). She's already confirmed for 'arrangement', which may or may not include orchestration.

Well I for one love orchestral music, and have since well before I ever got into game music.

Sure other arrange formats are fine, but it's not like we're getting "Shimomura Orchestra Arrange #3" or anything, this is only the second time she's gotten an arrange album at ALL -- with the first being PE Remixes and we all know how that turned out. I'm sure a wonderful piano CD could be made of her music, or a jazz one, or rock one or WHATEVER, but a lot of her music really lends itself well to full orchestral treatment.

I'll grant, most arrangers aren't Leopold Stokowski...

-Joshua

With the site stating "composed & arranged by Yoko Shimomura" I'd actually be highly disappointed when she's actually not doing the arrangements. Imo way too many composers rely on other people for arrangements anyway.

Orchestration is distinct from arrangement. A case in point is Symphonic Suite from ActRaiser; Yuzo Koshiro arranged it offering all sorts of inspiring ideas and good relation to the original score while Kaoru Wada orchestrated it, ensuring it was technically refined and suitable for a real orchestra to perform. I'd absolutely love Yoko Shimomura to have an active role in this album as she is promised to do so; however, the use of an orchestrator as well could take it to the next level beyond the realms of emotional and functional but somewhat amateurish and hackneyed orchestrations.

Orchestration is only distinct from arrangement insofar that it requires familiarity of the tonal ranges of the instruments used as well as some experience in combining them to get the orchestral timbre desired. I can't say I've much respect for composers incapable of such rather basic requirements. If this CD is orchestrated by Kaoru Wada it's more of a Kaoru Wada CD to me, not something I'd credit Shimomura for or want to listen to when I want to hear music by Shimomura.

I guess the Orchestral Game Concert series was pretty nice in showcasing who dared to do orchestrations of their own compositions (and who didn't) as well as the results.

Getting instrument pitches correct and a balanced timbre is orchestration in the most functional form. I've always considered desirable orchestration to be representative of a demanding art form, not a basic requirement. Given many game composers lack thorough training (Shimomura herself is only a piano performance scholar), I feel there is a lack of really exquisite orchestration in game music. I've only heard especially wonderful orchestrations from Where orchestration those who are extensive educated (e.g. Hayato Matsuo on Final Fantasy XII, Yoshihisa Hirano on Dirge of Cerberus to name a couple of well-known examples). There are some self-taught orchestrators like Hitoshi Sakimoto and Motoi Sakuraba that produce some wonderfully emotional orchestrations, but I don't feel they produce such technically refined work. Yoko Shimomura is better than most, but I still find powerful stuff like Parasite Eve's opera or main theme to be quite amateurish technically.

I'd also note her brief involvement in Dark Chronicle Premium Arrange. She did tracks 4 and 7 on that album. Both turned out GREAT, and 4 ("Sun") was ESPECIALLY awesome. I think Shimomura knows how to make a good arrangement. I think receiving some help from someone like Kaoru Wada or Shiro Hamaguchi on orchestration would help (I enjoyed reading people's debate on the differences of these two words, orchestration vs arrangement!)

Ramza

There is a big difference between simulating an orchestra through synth and actually writing for a real one. The knowledge needed is actually pretty staggering. You have to go into that recording studio really knowing your stuff as there isn't any room for trial and error when you have several dozen musicians who are all being paid by the hour.

I was especially impressed with Hirano's work on DoC (although a good chunk of credit goes to Hamauzu for his detailed compositions).

(It's a shame that all the French Impressionists are dead. Now THEY knew how to orchestrate...)

So you all want this CD to not be done by Shimomura? o.O

I don't!  That said, I apparently am some sort of musical idiot because I totally can't tell why her previous orchestrations haven't been technical masterpieces or whatever.

I agree. If she provides us with orchestrations as beautiful as those from Legend of Mana (if she handled them herself), then I am extremely happy.

As I said, I want the arrangements to be done by Shimomura, the orchestrations to be done by someone else who really understands her music. If there were a quasi-orchestral arranged album (like her contributions on Dark Chronicle), I'd say Shimomura could handle it alone and produce a really great work. However, I completely agree with Wanderer (<3 Ravel!) that really knowing your stuff is necessary when a real orchestra is used.

All 15 tracks, selected by her, are rearranged with an orchestra.

Actually it states "Music Composed by Yoko Shimomura" in another page, though I know none of us trust the site in the slightest degree, to begin with.

That's not much of an indication considering they list the SO OST right below it the same way (while it was also rearranged/extended by the composer and contains unrelated jpop stuff). So your latter statement is pretty much spot on...

In Shimomura's blog it SOUNDS like it's all orchestra tracks, but I could just be reading the Japanese wrong.

(also her post about how she plays Brawl is pretty amusing)

Just finding out that there may be Live A Live arranged tracks was enough for me to put in a pre-order.

I didn't intend to make someone think she merely composed the album just because another page indicated it. All I wanted to reaffirm was how incomplete and inaccurate the Square Enix music site usually has been, or they have to omit unrepresentative persons because of workload (besides the new SO album we still can pick up some arranged albums that don’t have proper credits, such as Potion).

Incidentally, their only modification I saw is an addition of Iwata name on the FFT soundtrack which happened, accidentally or otherwise, after I sent a complaint =P

At first, they were also saying that drammatica had a bonus DVD... So they simply copy and paste the last entry to add a new album, and eventually forget to change some details.