ReMix:Final Fantasy X "Yuna at Zanarkand, Her Mind on Lost Friends" 3:56

Newcomer sui (Alex) wasn't deterred by his initial FFVI submission not making past the judges panel, and we're happy to say he's back, making an emotive debut via this nicely personalized classical trio rendition of an Uematsu instant classic from FFX:

"On to my second submission, again with Final Fantasy.

In my quest to improve my counterpoint writing, an original piano trio arrangement of Final Fantasy 10's "To Zanarkand", titled "Yuna at Zanarkand, Her Mind on Lost Friends". I tried my hand at a classical piano trio setup, i.e. piano, violin, and cello. All in all the piece took around 30 hours to finish. There were several challenges during the writing process:

• No one wants to listen to the original songs just with an added cello base note and the violin playing the melody. This is supposed to be an exercise in counterpoint writing, so all instruments should be interesting to listen to.
• There are only 3 instruments to work with, so you better make every note count.
• Give every instrument and every instrument combination their time to lead and shine.
• Make the two iterations of song sufficiently different. Copypaste is not allowed.
• Keep everything humanly playable, especially the violin's multiple stops. In mean, the 4 octave jump in the piano's left hand at 3:07 should still work at that speed, right?"

I actually had a quick discussion last week with a great performer about their reservations on submitting to OCR, because many musicians mistakenly assume that the most liberal, genre-bending ReMixes are the only arrangement approaches we accept. The catalog indeed has several recent tracks that prove otherwise, and Alex's debut is another great example of successful submissions not needing to be about drastic melodic or genre changes. Besides the compositional experiment, sui also steered into (and jumped over) some production-based hurdles, opting for modeled instruments over samples. sui gave a tools rundown and shared both the technical challenges and the exciting outcomes of his new approach:

"VST instruments used:

• Modartt Pianotec
• Audio Modelling SWAM Violin
• Audio Modelling SWAM Cello

Main VST effects used:

• Vienna Suite
• Valhalla Room
• Gullfoss
• soothe2

All instruments are entirely modeled, i.e. synthesized on the fly at runtime and not recorded samples, and I don't think I can ever go back to sample libraries. This was my first time handling this kind of instrument, so getting to understand their behavior and reworking MIDI CC automations accordingly actually took up most of the production time. And, even then, I feel that at some points getting out of the uncanny valley required too difficult of a climb for me. The advantage of modeled instruments is that they do exactly what you tell them to do, so you are never held back by the recorded samples from creating the sound you want. It's amazing not having to fight them to get them to do what I want or wrestle with sampling limitations and inconsistencies. However, the flip side of that advantage is that they only do what you tell them to do, so you better know how to exactly draw in those CC curves to play the vibrato like a human would. You have to explicitely tell them what to do in excruciating detail.

The piano I'm using is Pianotec from Modartt. The strings are Audio Modeling SWAM and I don't think I will ever buy sampled strings again. Modeled instruments are just so much more enjoyable to use.

I've played the violin myself many years ago, and sampled solo strings just make me want to pull my hair out. If you know what the instrument is capable of, the limitations and one-off sampling issues just drive you nuts. The SWAM solo strings are the first I've actually enjoyed using.

It was a lot of fun and a great exercise to bounce the melodies between the different instruments to give them all their spotlights. Spinning counterpoints from previous melody snippets is such a great cheat.

In the end, I think I still got it into a presentable state. If you can imagine Yuna breaking into sobbing at 2:57 and screaming her heart out in tears at 3:05, then I believe I've done an OK job."

Before this was submitted, several ReMixers gave feedback and praised the work-in-progress piece in our Workshop forums, and the good vibes continued on the judges panel, with MindWanderer strongly putting over sui's modeled instrument experimentation:

"Absolutely stunning synthesized instrumentation. There are times you can tell the violin is fake, but a lot of the time, it can pass for real, and even when it sounds fake, it's not that obvious unless you're listening for it. This might be my gold standard for exposed virtual instruments going forward. [...] The structure is conservative, but the part writing and emotion put this well over the bar as far as interpretation go. [...] Superb skill on display on every level here."

prophetik music was full of praise for the techniques of the more interpretive second half, and eloquently described how an approach like this fits our standards:

"2:05 surprised me since it's essentially the first time that the arrangement strays from the original. the richer tone gained by using the lower range here is great. the doublestops in the violin are probably not super attainable by one player, but still a neat idea. adding the initial melodic lick in the cello under the C theme in the violin at 2:55 is superb work. 3:10's harmonic is a great idea and sounds great. i didn't think it was too loud, it's idiomatic and handled well.

this is indeed a conservative arrangement overall, from the perspective of what the original has and what's included here. i'd argue however that the contrapunctal additions and especially the performance nuances added via space, timing, and tempi changes are very much transformative. i am absolutely shattered that we're not getting a live version of this by three players in the same room (or maybe four, all told), which i think would be just incredible, but as it is this is excellent and well above my bar throughout."

We've always said (by way of our Submission Standards) that there's more than one way to interpretively arrange and personalize a game music composition, so we're proud to post this careful and beautiful first OC ReMix from sui that stretched his talents, added more skills to his repetoire, and clearly sounds touching and heartfelt. Did you cry? Hey now, don't despair over there, dear friend! We hope you've enjoyed our February spotlight on debuting ReMixers. We're not done yet(!), as we've got one at least more FF-inspired piece on deck as well as a LONG overdue PC game debut!