How skillful is Yasunori Mitsuda?

Just to start off things, Mitsuda is one of my favourite composers in the vgm field.

Mitsuda's music doesn't work as basis for any symphonic material. That is only my opinion. There might be some tracks that possibly could work like that, but "world music" (bluntly put) is hard to arrange into something interesting for a huge orchestra. The arranger would have to actually compose new parts and passages for different instrument groups in the orchestra, to keep harmony and balance alive. Usually (for example almost everything Shiroo Hamaguchi has done) this is not done very well, and the result is just a silly sounding poofed-up version of the original. And I have no interest in hearing such.

Ultimately celtic stuff arranges painlessly into either something weirdly experimental (Brink of Time and SoM+ for example) or material for a smaller ensemble, celtic instruments, or for a piano. I'm biased, but what I'd like to see (or hear) is wind orchestra arrangements from video game music. Dragon Quest had that, three albums to be exact, and some of the stuff in them is even more powerful than in their symphonic orchestra counterparts.

Mitsuda's simpleness just cannot be (in my mind) transformed into something beautiful for a big symphonic orchestra. I just can't imagine how. Academic studies would be needed for that.


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I hope the upcoming Chrono Cross Arrange Album (yes, it's confirmed by Mitsuda) will be some non-string-harmony-instrumental, non-celtic-vocal-including simple acoustic stuff. Or totally derived-from-the-original crack jazz. The choice is Mitsuda's since he has them both totally under control. I hope for not another Creid, since that album flat out bores me, even with its few excellent tracks.

Those two I can hear in my mind's ear.

EDIT:

Originally Posted by eriol

Koji Kondo. These senior composers actually do most all their arrangement themselves, Though I bit questioned whether Kondo is really the arranger of Legend of Zelda Hyrule Symphony, since rpgfan & gmr write two different names.

Ryuuichi Katsumata arranged Hyrule Symphony.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by eriol

Oh yeah, I forgot that one. Btw I also heard that Hamauzu is arranging piano album features Mitsuda's compositions, no?

Yes, he already did. It's called Sailing to the World Piano Score.

How ya doing, buddy?