Eminence Radical Dreamers Arrangement - Splitted Discussion

The original being long-winded and repetitive doesn't justify the arrangement being the same. The arrangement could have fixed the problems with the original instead of copying what was, in my opinion, a flawed piece both length-wise and in terms of harmonic material.

I don't find the performances of Yura and Mitose comparable, given the violin and the voice are entirely different forces. That's partly the reason I didn't feel the straightforward 'swap vocal part for violin' 'arrangement' didn't work.

Though they were clearly not looking for a major 'remix', I find it peculiar that they charge for it and Yura seems to consider it the finest representation of Eminence arrangements available. Is this format what the concert featuring Shimomura, Mitsuda, and Sakimoto was like?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

How many times... must I tell you it is not an Eminence arrangement?

Mr Mitsuda himself made the arrangement!
Mitsuda san = Arranger for Radical Dreamers arrangement for Violin and Guitar, performed by Eminence Artists Hiroaki Yura and Zane Banks.

Anyway, I have never said it was the finest representation of arrangements available... I appreciate it if you not mentioning things which are untrue.

Additional Spam:

Originally Posted by Mr. Maul

Is this format what the concert featuring Shimomura, Mitsuda, and Sakimoto was like?

No, it wasn't. FYI Shimomura did not attend the Passion concert.
Also, over half of the music we played for the composers were music arranged especially by them for Passion.

The Passion CD is a 'best of' collection featuring music that was played from Passion. IIt's not supposed to be like Chrono Trigger's arrange album.

A Night in Fantasia 2007: Symphonic Games Edition's arrangements do not vary greatly from the original scores. Many are worked from originals like Mr Ohtani's SotC (many percussions here are synthed) and actual original scores itself of works by Mr Mitsuda, Mr Sakimoto Mr Shiina and Mr Nakatsuru.
We have stringent checks we process if we do the arrangements, we send the music back and forth to make sure the music is ok.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

It doesn't matter whether it's an Eminence or Yasunori Mitsuda arrangement; I still dislike it. As for 'the finest representation of arrangements available', I was exaggerating, but you have charged for it, embraced positive comments about it, and fiercely defended negative comments against it.

Thanks for the info on your other concert.

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Mr Maul, that's not the point.
Please don't exaggerate things and don't give out false information.

Thanks heaps mate.

PiccoloNamek:

Thanks heaps for your comments!
We'll work harder!

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Mr. Maul is there ANY reason that you seem to have alot negative comments regarding Eminence other than an initial bad first impression on what Seraph posted monthes ago? I mean, ok, so you didn't like it, but there's no need to imply that the concert was bad quality, cause from your tone it sounds like it is. Passion was suppose to have smaller ensembles playing pieces from various games, either arranged by Eminence or the original composers etc. Mitsuda decided not to change too much from his original work, and there's nothing wrong with that. If you didn't like the original to begin with, then why did you listen to it? They re arranging it so it can be peformed live with avaliable instruments, not making a dance remix, its natural to believe that it will NOT be far off from the original.

Seraph informed you that Mitsuda san did the arrangement cause the tone of your post implied that you found it inferior, when it wasn't even their arrangement to begin with.

And why wouldn't they charge for their own concert or CD? They obvously have gotten the licence and rights to do so. If you think the arrangement is not worth your money, then its your opinion. But knocking them for charging something they have every right to do is insulting to them and the composers.You're still treating Eminence like its some Amatuer group when they have achieved beyond that.

Now please take whatever first impression bitterness you had on Eminence or Seraph and let it out elsewhere. Its one thing to have an opinion on a mix or arrangement, but that implied scoffing "Is this format what the concert featuring Shimomura, Mitsuda, and Sakimoto was like?" rhetorical question you had was very insulting. If you meant no offense at that, then I suggest you learn to rephrase how you feel better, cause I am getting bad vibes from your posts alone, I hate to see what vibes I get if this was voice chat or something.

Eminence doesn't cater to everyone's taste, neither do composers like Mitsuda. Radical Dreamers was offered for free (technically) to show what their performance was like, and they did a damn better job than concerts like Play!. Seraph played extremly well, he was even more harmonised than the original vocalist, the mixing was professional and it was overall a well performed and mixed piece. Anything negative that you said are all personal tastes and it has no say in whether or not it was professional enough to charge people to hear it.

I mean, god, have you BEEN to any movie concerts? Do you hear any major changes in say, a piece from E.T by John Williams in those concerts? No, they simply re arrange it to suit the right orchestra, (some orchestras are smaller, some bigger etc) and they rehearse to perform the way it was composed for the film. If the peformers did a great job, then its their right to charge the audience for it.

Seraph and his colleages are working very hard to make more concerts like Passion or Night in Fantasia to be the best night possible for gamers in Australia and international guests who came just to see them. If you feel that you have to critque than no ones stopping you, but that rhetorical question was uncalled for and crossed the line. Seraph was not reffering to your ignorance or the chance that telling you it was Mitsuda that arranged it might change your mind or opinion, it was your constant implication that they're not good enough for your "professional" standards that is causing all these arguments! You keep missing the point.

Many people here respect your website Mr. Maul, why can't you do the same to performers like Seraph? If he wasn't professional or was to amatuer, do you think Sakimoto san would have asked him to perform a piece for his latest soundtrack? Do you think Mitsuda san would have invited him to his studio in Japan to record Radical Dreamers? Next time give people a benefit of a doubt, courtesy and respect they deserve. People respect you, in return you should respect them. Just cause Emininece has no big coporate like Square to back them up doesn't mean they are not professional enough.

Maybe next time before you intend to critisize their proffessionalism, how about flying over here and ATTEND a concert first?

Originally Posted by Elorin

Oh, I'd have to disagree on the point about Mitose not injecting any emotion into the song. :P One winning point for Radical Dreamers, in my opinion, was the wonderfully bitter-sweet quality Mitose infused in the song. Her innocent child-like stylings also added much tot he song as well. These are qualities I feel that any instrument, aside from another human voice, would find hard to replicate. That said, the violin in the arrangement under discussion does bring out something slightly different (in a positive way) from what the vocal version did.

I will say her voice had the advantage in having the right TONE. However, tone and emote are two seperate things. A really good vocalist would give the song the right tone AND emotions. Mitose, by comparision to Hiro's playing, lacked emotion. Shes not DEVIOD of emotion cause that would make her a robot, but there wasn't enough PRESENCE of it.

And the violin is the closest instrument to the human voice. They are different of course, and different people will either love it or hate or are ok with it. But they both share a SIMILAR QUALITY, and that they both emote im similar ways. I thought however that Hiro displayed more emotion in his playing, even if the violin lacked the childlike tone. And I personally loved the violin replacing the vocals, though I still enjoy the vocalised version as well.

How ya doing, buddy?

At the very least, its at least good to know that there is a goodly amount of passion in musical taste being exhibited. We all know what we like to hear...

Still, I don't think this continual arguing is going to solve anything, especially when opinions are involved, with no clear way as to solve the matter.
Speaking on behalf of Chris, I know him well enought to understand that some of his comments can come off as more blunt than they were intended. He always means well. In short, Chris has explained that he doesn't like the arrangement, and I can respect that opinion. I initially felt the same. However, despite this, he has also expressed a willingness to help Eminence achieve a wider following through promotion at SquareEnixMusic.com. Perhaps I am missing something, but just because Chris doesn't appreciate one song, doesn't necessarily mean that he wishes the worst of Eminence and everything it stands for.

Speaking on behalf of Hiro, it is clear that he is a fine, passionate musician who understandably wants the music to be well received because of the large amount of work that goes into creating something of lasting beauty. As a composer, I know how difficult it can be to deal with criticism, especially when it feels like it was unwarranted. However, I think that opinions are like assholes...yes. Everyone has them and they are, for the most part, equal in value. However, criticism can also be very helpful in finding out flaws in any given work, be it music, painting, sculpture...etc.
I find that the mixing for the Radical Dreamers track, was subpar given the sparcity of instrumentation. The violin, while beautifully played, was far too jarring in treble levels, which made for an uncomfortable listening experience and likely may be hindering the piece more than any aspect of applied instrumentation in regards to the arrangment. This in the end, cannot be attributed to Eminence, or to Mitsuda, but to the sound engineer who made the track. Compositionally speaking, and as far as I'm concerned, the piece is quite beautiful for what it is.

Lastly, I will add when we lose the ability to look at something with a critical ear and mind and express individual judgment, we essentially lose the ability to make better our deficits. However, I do agree that constructive criticism is of primary importance in this matter.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

You did kinda miss something, his rhetorical question is what fueled my previous post.

"Is this format what the concert featuring Shimomura, Mitsuda, and Sakimoto was like?" sounded very much like scoffing to me, and expresses his disbelief that this is anything resembling a professional concert or performace. Its like saying "God is this the best these guys can do?!"

His constant belitting or patronising tone in his posts is what irritates me, I mean let's just ignore what he thought of Radical Dreamers. His previous posts on this page had shown that belittling tone, and when I replied to his intial opinion, he responded with a comment that shows he STILL thinks Eminence is amaturish when they are not, and his tone still seems to regard Seraph as an amatuer who's making fan concerts instead of a pro musician who created a great pro concert series and also worked directly with the composers themselves.

I don't care that he hated or disliked this Chrono Cross arrangement, I care about how he belittles Seraph and his hard work on Eminence. I argued his opinions on the arrangment cause I thought some reasons were silly, like the fact that he probably didn't like the original in the first place, so why judge an arrangement for a live performace so seriously like he expected some RADICAL change? (No pun intended). But afterwards his comments seem to imply that he was not at all impress by what Eminence has done, like he's expecting some huge thing like the next Mozart.

Further more he critisized the arrangement by blaming it on Eminence when it was Mitsuda himself who arranged it, then he just brushed it aside when Seraph informed him. I don't expect him to change what he thought of it, but I don't like the fact he ASSUME that Hiro chose that track to show the 'best they have to offer', and then assume that they arranged it. Implying because he didn't like it, it must be arranged by Eminence and it MUST be the best they have to offer. Hiro probably chose it cause people are familiar to it as oppose to "this is the best out of the bunch". Passion included various anime and game music, and people are more familiar to Chrono Cross. You know what pros do? They make sure EVERY track is their best! Not pick the best fruit out of the bunch and parade it.

It was a track arranged by the composer, and it was performed by professionals, if you didn't like it, tough. There's no need any further comments regarding how you feel about Eminence's professionalism when A: You haven't seen any of their concerts, and B:You have no idea half of what you're talking about cause you didn't ask Hiro for more info or try to find out on their website.

Im sorry if the rant is getting old, but god, I hate people who seem to have elitist attitudes, along people who are ignorant and don't take the time to find out more. Mr. Maul, with all due respect, had shown both attitudes in this topic and previous ones regarding Eminence. Hiro is a busy guy, yet he takes time to answer my inane fan girl questions. I'm sure that Mr. Maul is capable of email, pm or MSN any questions regarding Eminence.

If he truly wants to help promote Eminence, he would have done so by now. All the game fansites I emailed to immediatly posted and link to Eminence, like kh-2.net . It takes very little time to post some info, link an image and linking people to the official site for more info on tickets etc. What makes his site so different or special that he needs to rate their professionalism before he considers helping them promote?

Their sound engineer from what Hiro told me, is volunteer rather than a hired one. Meaning he or she is probably a graduate engineer helping out, knows what he's doing but lacks experience.

Then again, mixing also has different perspectives.

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For what's worth I'd also prefer that Chris at least keeps his unconstructive rants on his own site.

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

Me too, or that at least they don't derail poor little threads. Splitted.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Sorry for derailing the thread. I just wanted to make one post to say that I didn't see what the fuss was about; I didn't like the arrangement and don't see why I need to restrain myself from giving feedback just because Eminence's oversensitive leader is a member here. However, I needlessly continued the argument, have indeed blatantly patronised, and don't feel inclined to respond constructively, so I'll just back away.

I'll make one thing clear, though. I support the concept of Eminence, have offered the concert promotion on my site, and am impressed by Yura's virtuosity and how he's crafted Eminence to be so successful. That doesn't mean that I like Yura, condone his lack of professionalism, or like this particular arrangement. That's all.

Kairi - The promotion was in the form of an interview. Yura never replied.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by Mr. Maul

Sorry for derailing the thread. I just wanted to make one post to say that I didn't see what the fuss was about; I didn't like the arrangement and don't see why I need to restrain myself from giving feedback just because Eminence's oversensitive leader is a member here. However, I needlessly continued the argument, have indeed blatantly patronised, and don't feel inclined to respond constructively, so I'll just back away.

The fuss is about what you say yourself in the second part of the post quoted above. There was nothing wrong with your first post in the thread.

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

I agree the comment 'Yura seems to consider it the finest representation of Eminence arrangements available' was unnecessary and exaggerated. The question 'Is this format what the concert featuring Shimomura, Mitsuda, and Sakimoto was like?' wasn't intended to be be worded in a belittling way; I had forgotten what Passion was called and lacked the motivation to look it up. However, based on patronising posts I've written towards Eminence in the past, I can see how it would be misinterpreted.

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

Mr. Maul's last post quite settles the argument. Deleted a couple posts after it and closing the thread.

How ya doing, buddy?