[GB] Final Fantasy Adventure - "Legend Forever" by Echo

[Zeta]

Submission Information:
Series: Final Fantasy
Game: Final Fantasy Adventure
Console: Game Boy
Title: Legend Forever
Instrumentation Solo Piano
Arranger: Echo

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[Echo]

Original:

[FireArrow]

niceeeee brahhhhh

[Bespinben]

Truly beautiful.
(The piano collections version even more so)

Your transcription is spot-on. The notation needs some work though.

1.) Usage of layers
~ The style of this piece indicates some elements of hymnody. As such, you will want to combine the alto voice into the 1st layer when it and the melody and in rhythmic unison.

Example
(notice how in m. 2 & 4 the 2nd layer comes out beat only for beats 1-2, and then converges into the 1st layer on beat 3)


Places you can implement this principle include m. 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 17, 18, & 34.

2.) Beaming
~ There's a bit of a quarrel around NSM about whether to let Finale do its "beam four 8ths together" in 4/4 time or to beam each beat separately. I see beaming as another way to implicitly imply pedaling and/or phrasing.

Example
(compare the beaming of the 1st measure vs the 2nd measure -- notice in the first measure how the top layer of the LH is split at beat 3 because of the chord change, whereas the top layer of the second measure is beamed all the way through, because there is no chord change)


There are a couples places in this sheet where you should manually "split" the beaming based on this principle. Places include m. 8 & 25.

3.) Proper usage of slur markings
~ While it's arguable that there really is no right or wrong way to do these, I do believe there are places where they are particularly fitting. Certain nonharmonic tones (esp. Passing Tones, Neighboring Tones, and Suspensions) are very often connected by slur markings to their respective resolutions.

Examples
Neighbor tone


Suspension--> Resolution


Places you can implement this principle include m. 1, 3, 9, 16, & 24.

Btw, if you bothered to read all the way to the bottom here, congratulations -- I did it all for you already:
[MIDI] [MUS] [PDF] [MUSX]

[Echo]

niceeeee brahhhhh

thaaaankssss duuuude

we'll have this ost done one day >_>

Truly beautiful.

Thanks! So are you!

(The piano collections version even more so)

Oh, right. The song. I really like this rendition as well.

Btw, if you bothered to read all the way to the bottom here, congratulations -- I did it all for you already

have i ever told you how much i love you?

1.) Usage of layers
~ The style of this piece indicates some elements of hymnody. As such, you will want to combine the alto voice into the 1st layer when it and the melody and in rhythmic unison.

For future reference, how is this done on NotePad? Also, is this only appropriate for hymns, or would it be acceptable to do this for other styles of music? It just looks so much neater this way.

Your other two points also gave me a lot to think about when writing out music, so thanks for those too.


Also, I'm really glad you understood what I was trying to do with the left hand in measure 10. I didn't even know you could use breath marks for piano sheets. (or I guess you'd call it a "luftpause," after looking it up)

There were some changes I wanted to make in your edited version, although most of them were aesthetic.
[MUS] [MIDI] [PDF]
- Fixed the copyright (you wrote "Sqaure" instead of "Square"), and changed "composed/arranged" to "Composition by/Arrangement by" out of personal preference.
- Changed the instrument to Piano (not sure if you meant to upload it on the site with the organ as playback, haha, but it did sound nice)
- Measure 1: Moved the dynamic marking to be between the notes instead of the time signature (never knew that was a thing). Also capitalized the l.h. indicator. Just a personal preference kinda thing.
- Measure 19: Wasn't sure if this is proper or not, but I put an "a tempo" here to account for the rit. at the repeat. Sorry if that's unnecessary, though.
- Measure 38: The last half sounds like two slurred quarter notes instead of a half note to me, so I split it up and added tenuto markings.
- Measure 40: There was a second layer with a rest, but I thought it was unnecessary so I just deleted it. Flipped the markings at measures 39-40 to go above instead of below too.
- Measure 42: Thought that was cute! I italicized it and moved it below the measures though, just because that's how I'm used to seeing personalized directions and such.

Let me know if there are some changes you don't agree with, but I'm fine with it being uploaded as it is if you don't have any complaints. And again, I really appreciate all that advice you gave me (somehow I feel like you put more time into fixing my sheet and explaining concepts to me than I did in arranging it, haha). Thanks!

[Bespinben]

Oh my gosh. You actually did read all of that. Thank you.
(Faith in NSM -- restored)

For future reference, how is this done on NotePad? Also, is this only appropriate for hymns, or would it be acceptable to do this for other styles of music? It just looks so much neater this way.

Notepad is able to do this the same way it's done on full Finale. You can manually hide rests with "h", and you can flip stem direction with "l".

- Changed the instrument to Piano (not sure if you meant to upload it on the site with the organ as playback, haha, but it did sound nice)

Dang, you caught me lol. I even made the MIDI as piano to increase my chances of sneaking In conjunction with the "hymnody" vibe, I had the thought "Man would I love to hear this in a liturgical setting", resulting in the MUS organ.

- Measure 38: The last half sounds like two slurred quarter notes instead of a half note to me, so I split it up and added tenuto markings.

There's definitely a slight "pulse" on the E, so I can see where you're coming from, but I made it a half note since technically it is sustained all the way through without any break. We're both right in a way (transcription is ultimately a matter of interpretation), so use yours.

- Measure 40: There was a second layer with a rest, but I thought it was unnecessary so I just deleted it. Flipped the markings at measures 39-40 to go above instead of below too.
- Measure 42: Thought that was cute! I italicized it and moved it below the measures though, just because that's how I'm used to seeing personalized directions and such.

These things (the whole rest and the blank measure) may have no impact on the performance of the piece, but they do serve a specific purpose for the notation. Since this is a 3-voice composition, it's important to always show the 3 voices, even if as a rest.
(Example [notice how the bass part of this 4-voice composition is retained as a whole rest])


As for the blank measure, the first purpose I had for creating it was actually to preserve the 4-measure hypermeter. Three measures would make the notes very stretched out too in terms of appearance. The "let ring" might have some performance value though

So yeah, I think you did a great job with the final edits. Much approval (^o^)=b

(somehow I feel like you put more time into fixing my sheet and explaining concepts to me than I did in arranging it, haha).

Finally, someone understands my pain... bless your soul.

[Echo]

Oops, forgot to actually upload the changes to the first post.

Since this is a 3-voice composition, it's important to always show the 3 voices, even if as a rest.
(Example [notice how the bass part of this 4-voice composition is retained as a whole rest])

I can see why this is important in your example since it's a vocal piece, with multiple people following along the different voices, but why would this matter for a sheet where it's just one person performing all the voices? I included the rest in that measure anyway, though, just in case it does help the performer somehow.

[Zeta]

This submission has been accepted by Bespinben.

~Zeta, your friendly NSM-Bot