[News] Symphonic Fantasies Concert to Celebrate Music of Square Enix

vocal tracks.... boring?!?!

I don't believe what I'm reading here....
IMHO the tracks composed by Mitsuda and backed my Eri Kawai's vocals are by far the best thing you can get. These even surpase the vocal track by Noriko Mitose on the CC soundtrack. If you don't believe me get yourself a copy of the Dark Chronicle arrange album. Track 1 by Mitsuda, again backed by Kawai's vocals - it's just awesome.

Anyway, concerning the already anounced special guest.... I'm now in a big dilemma!
I just don't know which albums I should bring to Cologne. I think I'll take the CC, CT, CREID and Kirite album by Mitsuda and Drammatica, Legend of Mana and the KH Complete Box by Shimomura. Tough decisions to make...

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Oh yeah, almost forgot: count me in for some meeting either before or after the concert. I don't have any train tickets yet, so I can still decide when to arrive in Cologne.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Looks like I have to bring a full suitcase of albums to Cologne

EDIT: So far I'm very happy with the special guests. Kikuta is really a (good) surprise. I don't care so much for Uematsu - would rather like to see someone like Hamauzu showing up so I can sign my SaGa albums and the FFX piano collections.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Very good! Hopefully we'll also get a lossless stream -> high quality concert recording.

@Primeblue: You can leave your equipment at home

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Originally Posted by ZiggyGo

There will be a strong piano focus in this portion of the suite.

W0000000000000000000000000000000000T!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !111111111111111 *collapse*

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@Primeblue: In other words, they could make a whole concert just from SoM music

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Hmm, I was wondering what the four symbols could represent?

The tree... it's probably the mana tree -> SoM
But what about the heart, clock and diamond (??).

Heart -> Kingdom Hearts?
Diamond -> crystal -> Final Fantasy V -> FF series?

Or is it just some random design?!

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Yeah, silly me.... anything else doesn't really make sense

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by ZiggyGo

The Final Fantasy suite was revealed today and will of, course, also feature choir. The three pieces revealed were "Prelude," "Battle on the Big Bridge (or Battle with Gilgamesh)," and "Bombing Mission."

Originally Posted by Phatcorns

If they put battle with Gilgamesh in there, I might poop my pants.

Oh-oh......

@Phatcorns: Which seat do you have?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

The other one is even better:

Quote:

Das ultimative Spielemusikkonzert mit vielen Neueinspielungen vom Commodore Amiga und Meister Chris Hülsbeck persönlich.

These people don't even know what they're selling....

There's nowhere I can't reach.

A small question concerning the date of the Köln concert. The tickets indicate a (starting?) time of 20:00.

Well, they don't state if the concert starts then (in the sense that the orchestar begins playing) or if it's a date for the concert entrance. What do you guys think?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Thanks PB for the information, that clears up my doubts about the exact date!

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

I think I could take part both before and after the concert. We'll (me and my sister) be staying the night from Saturday to Sunday at one of my sister's friend's family's house (is this even correct grammar??). After that (on Sunday) I'm taking my train back to home

I dunno how long I can stay with you guys after the concert. Maybe I'll have to return just right away (I don't feel like ringing their bell at 2:00 in the morning...)

I was speaking idiomatically.

Epic!
I think this word describes the concert best ;-) (I'm joining Teioh here, as we already planned at the concert *g*)

First of all I want to say that I really liked all four suites, so it's a tough job to rate them. I also knew all the tracks which were used for the suites. I have never played Kingdom Hearts, so maybe I'm not that good for judging how the music works in the game (I usually appreciate a track a lot more if it works for the situation in the game). However I played both Chrono Trigger Chrono Cross (and even Radical Dreamers), and also parts 7, 8,9 and 10 of the Final Fantasy series (still playing part 10 at the moment). Seiken Densetsu 2 / Secret of Mana goes without saying, I could even say it started my journey into the VGM world. It was also my first homemade gamerip of a SNES game on tape. Sadly the tape got lost some time ago

Anyway, I would place Seiken Densetsu on first position, even if I "liked" the Chrono suite better (it's one of my favorite games). However the arranging work for this title was exceptionally good. I would never have imagined to use the choir to simulate the various weather effect / sounds they did. I also was very sceptical when I saw that they included "The Oracle" into the suite, but it really turned out very good. All in all the suite sounded very natural and organic, meaning that I did no hear any harsh or unnatural / unpleasant transitions between the different "segments". This organic feeling applies to all the suites, so from my perspective Jonne Valtonen did a wonderful job.

Next and therefore on the second place comes the Chrono Suite. I consider myself a big fan of the Chrono series. The combination of RPG, the time-travel setting, the awesome storyline (and of course storytelling) and how they connected the Chrono Cross storyline to the Chrono Trigger one, everything of this three games makes the series into a real gem for me.
I also consider Chrono Cross one of the best works by Yasunori Mitsuda, who is moreover one of my favorite composers. Therefore I was very eager to hear how the arranging turned out. Large parts of the Chrono Cross soundtrack are very acoustic, so I can imagine that the arranging was a tricky job.

I really liked it how they started with the "The Premonition" track from CT and quickly transitioned into "Scars of Time" from CC, one of my favorite tracks on the CC album. Speaking of "Scars of Time", I think I was a good decision to use this track as a "frame" for the suite (what I mean is that the suite begins with the mix of "The Premonition" and "Scars of Time" and also ends with "Scars of Time"). It's a very powerful track, but also has it's soft moments - a good choice for the suite's finale.

After a bit more of "Scars of Time" comes the "Chrono Trigger" segment. I don't think I have to say much here. We already know lots of orchestrated versions of the main theme, but hearing it live is just so different!

(more to come)

EDIT:
@Zergrinch: The ASF contains WMV3 encoded videa and WMA audio. I don't think you can mux the container into a Matroska one without reencoding the whole stream. Like Sorcerer88 already found out this usually breaks the AV-sync. I don't think there is much we can do here. I'm also not happy with a ASF rip, but the quality is acceptable and at least the AV-sync is correct

Additional Spam:

Originally Posted by Hamu-Sumo

Photos are up. Enjoy! Click me

They don't seem to be downloadable, or I'm simple too dumb to operate Picasa properly. I also tried to copy the album over to my Picasa account, but even this does not work.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I'd like to add that the moderator was an idiot. Seems like he tried to be funny, but totally failed in doing so.

Like Sorcerer88 said, his comments were not suited for a concert moderation. Especially his comment about the darbuka (Rony Barrak's goblet drum) was totally misplaced ("... he's bringing along his Darbuka this evening. And no, that's no 22year old russian model..."). That's not even misplaced, that's insulting. I have no idea why they let this jerk do the moderation.

Next time let Winfried Fechner do the moderation, he's 100 times better than this clown. Or let Arnie Roth do it. I mean, there was such a large amount of international guests who probably didn't understand anything from the MC (however that was a real advantage this time...).

Or let multiple persons do the moderation: Every composers introduces his own suite, even if he/she only says a few words. Nobody excepts absolutely perfect english here, but it surely would be 100 times more authentic and likable than what I saw and heard this time.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by Prime Blue

which was also the name in a faulty version of the WDR4 program on their site

Actually I wrote them a mail about this error. This was maybe a bit more than one week before the concert, but I didn't check if they really fixed it. However they replied rather quickly (<24h) that they had forwarded my mail to the responsible person.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?