So, has anyone received the "Feeling Wind" album yet?  Opinions?

Waiting for mine in the mail (along with the AI2 arranged album). I'm anxiously awaiting this! The Chocobo arranged album was great, I'm feeling good vibes about this piano album...

Ramza

Same here, same two albums...Hopefully Monday...

Horribly bland and boring arrangements, just as I figured.  Monotone, no effort put into these whatsoever.  Just a direct translation of the music to piano, there's not even any attempt to make it sound more robust.  Really a shame what they've been doing to piano albums lately.

~jb

Actually, that works for me. 'Robust' piano play in an arrangement usually comes off as showmanship to me, personally.

It doesn't necessarily need to be SF2PP style robust, but it just seems like there's really no thought going into these piano albums lately.  To me, it seems like they're just running the original music through a midi reader to read the notes, and just playing those.  Even the early FF piano albums weren't that straight forward, even given the simplicity of the original songs.  Maybe I'm just jaded, or maybe I just have high expectations or something.

Hey jb, do you like classical music?

There's a LONG tradition of transribing other music (most orchestral, but chanber and even songs as well) to piano while keeping as much of the original music as possible.

Granted, some piano VGM CDs are not only simply transcribed, but also very simple in themseleves (DQ series especially comes to mind), but I don't see most of them as much different than than playing Beethoven's symphonies on piano -- those are much more complex and layered, though, granted.

So what are some examples of good ones?

And if you say Saga Frontier 2, that one actually is pretty much directly transcribed too...\

-Joshua

Direct transcription usually makes for a really boring listen, like in this Wild Arms piano album. It's on par with the horrible Dragon Quest piano recordings. I'll be more than happy to listen to the Wild Arms OSTs, which at least have some richness in them due to instruments other than piano used.

"Direct" transcription can be done well, too, though, as is the case in SF2PP, where the original happened to be mostly piano music too. Not much altered, but there was no need when the music worked.

Anyway, this Wild Arms piano album is a piece of worthless transcriptions that work much better as originals. No artistic ambitions from the arranger's side whatsoever.

Transcription can work fine sometimes, but Rhapsody on piano is transcribtive and boring to me. You know, the only vgm piano album I ever found to truelly alter the original compositions was FFX Piano. Oh, my secret wish is that Hamauzu would rearrange the Brandish piano album, or better yet the entire Brandish 2 score.

EDIT: also curious to see what has become of Ryo. My face did go down a bit upon hearing he has pursued a trance-direction. Same thing happened to Sota Fujimori which destroyed almost all my interest in him.

Wow. I must be crazy, because I just got my WA piano in the mail and I *really* like it.

Here's a quote I need to disagree with:

"It's on par with the horrible Dragon Quest piano recordings."

Yeah, that's just plain incorrect. Those DQ Piano albums are disgracefully bad. Even if you don't like the slow pace and "direct transcription" of these songs, at least the songs come out more complex and interesting than the DQ piano albums, which I believe were made for VERY LITTLE CHILDREN to play.

The thing I'm liking most about this album is that as a "piano" arranged album, it's in the same vein as the Suikoden piano albums, which included a couple of other instruments. For example, "Daughter of the Treasure Hunters" (from WATV) is piano and some light bongo-drum percussion. Other tracks have synthesizers, clarinet, and some other random stuff. These added touches go a long way.

Maybe it's because I had LOW expectations from the start, but I'm really enjoying the WA piano album. Surprisingly, I'm finding it a better listen than the AI2 arranged album...but I'm sure that's just cuz I'm in a "relaxed" mood today.

Ramza

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I've had this for a good while now and it pretty much falls right into my expectations, maybe surpassing them a bit...I tend to view solo piano-based arranges as something of a novelty, so I'm happy when a single instrument is able to provide at least as much enjoyment as the originals. And they pretty much did that here.

As Ramza said, the added instrument touches are HUGE (bongos FTW!), especially since they tend to show in the more playful tracks: "Abbey", "Town", "Daughter of Three Treasure Hunters" (which BTW, I have not heard the original for), "The One I Want to See Most" and "Totally Busy". All of these have gotten extensive playtime recently. The overall melody of "as time goes by ~ Never Forget Me" transfers surprisingly boldly to piano. And hearing "You'll Never Be Alone" transferred to piano is a real treat, given the fast paced nature of the original.

It's not perfect...The WA3 arranges are pretty much no-shows (a shame, since I still worship that OST), they could have done a lot more with "Into the Wilderness" and all in all, it can be a tad underwhelming. I would say buy it for the playful tracks, as they make the most of their new environment...Even a WA fanboy such as myself tends to skip the overly faithful attempts at being relaxing music.

All in all, a nice little warm-up before Rocking Heart, which I have much higher expectations for...Same way I expect more out of Ryo Yonemitsu than I do Michio Fujisawa.

http://www.gmronline.com/info.asp?CatNumber=KICA-1416

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Saxophone: Mitsuru Kanekuni, Masato Honda
Trumpet: Shin Kazuhara, Eric Miyashiro

That's an immediate red flag for me. When it comes to rock I like my stuff harder, sans brass. I'm definitely willing to give the album a listen, but between the facts that I'm not hot on the source material and there's a potential for a lot of horns I'm not excited.

Drat...Oh well, too much of a good thing is hazardous. I do find MASA's involvement interesting at least (MASA=main Dynasty Warriors composer/guitarist). And we're still getting Yonemitsu on "Battle with Lord Blazer". Yum! (but no Toka and Ge!)

I just wish I was a tad more familiar with everyone else. That said, expectations are still through the roof.

Samples of all the tracks are available here:

http://www.media-vision.co.jp/blackmark … ition.html

All of Yonemitsu's tracks sound great   On the other hand, transquillo's arrangements are not so hot.  The rest of the arrangements seem solid, but I think Yonemitsu's are the best.

You're a life saver. Many thanks!

Only sample I didn't like was the Zed one...Hopefully that's just a bad part of the arrangement in the sample. The Yonemitsu ones were awesome, as expected, but it sounds like an even effort all around. And I'm pretty sure I recognized MASA's guitar in track 5. "Fatebreaker" sounds like it might be something from old-school Kukeiha Club. My main question was answered: Instrumental arranges for the vocals.

25 days to go, give or take...

After hearing the samples I can say that maybe half of the album either isn't so hot for my tastes or just seems like generic synth-rock... but there are some awesome tunes. The samples for 2, 5, 7, and 16 have pretty much cemented this as a purchase for me. BUT... then there are songs like #12. Ugh. Less synth-horn, please.

Overall, color me pleasantly surprised. If you need me, I'll be over here eating my own words.

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