SVWC-7351~4: FINAL FANTASY XII Original Soundtrack

[Mika]

Just wanted to add a note that the front scans of the inside box are a bit blurry because of the plastic on top of the pictures and the text. Might get better quality if I took pictures with a digicam, could manually focus through the plastic.

And the booklet scans, the booklet is quite a bit more sturdier than your regular booklet, so the some of the pages are a bit crooked.

[seanne]

Originally Posted by Mika

And the booklet scans, the booklet is quite a bit more sturdier than your regular booklet, so the some of the pages are a bit crooked.

No worries. Wouldn't want you to mess up the booklet just on account of getting slightly better scans =)

[Dag]

Here is some liner notes of sorts from FF12 Ultimania Omega guide, with Sakimoto's top 20:

http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/1778/26416110.jpg

[Guitarist500]

... ... ... ... ... ... .. .. .. .. .. . . . .

[Despatche]

Putting down Arrangement because at least Ozmone Plains is different, unless it was changed for the US release. Lots of songs here sound different to me, though. It's like Gran Turismo 3.

edit: I just realized there are missing tracks. psf's got them.

[_if]

"Ozmone Plains" is one half-step down on the soundtrack compared to the game. Not sure if that's enough to call it an arrangement, or if the fact that the whole album uses different synth throughout than what is in the game should qualify it for that status.

[Zanasea]

The music on this soundtrack is the original music composed by Hitoshi Sakimoto for the game. Originally, it was supposed to be streamed by the PS2, but due to technical limitations, they had to recreate the entire soundtrack using the console sound chip. This was done by Keiji Kawamori.

[_if]

I just had a look and we've got Final Fantasy Tactics Advance classified as Original Soundtrack and Arrangement because of the inclusion of the GBA synth version and the "Full Sound Version". Tactics A2 Grimoire of the Rift, however, is currently classified only as Original Soundtrack though it too actually is a "Full Sound Version" without being marked as such because it doesn't include the DS synth. And so it goes with this album. Seems like an inconsistency, but should it be changed on A2 and kept here or this reverted and we consider both plainly Original Soundtracks?

[Secret Squirrel]

Would the classification "Remaster" work for something like this? The half-step shift is a very strange situation.

[_if]

I don't think I'd call it that, because remaster implies a new issue of something with an added aesthetic modification compared to a previous issue. An album's sound could be changed (hopefully for the better, but not always) from a previous release or a movie's picture restored and that would be a remaster. One could say this is a remaster of a previous release, i.e. the game, but that would mean virtually every album in the database is a remaster since they almost always are not straight game rips without any processing. For example, there are lots of soundtracks that have added reverb or use different reverb than the console the game was on did. And if we found a soundtrack with something at a different pitch than what was in the game, but is otherwise the same, that could still be the kind of processing that happens in normal mastering, or more likely mixing, as with the reverb. So it wouldn't be remastered, it'd just be mastered, and so within the range of normal for an "Original Soundtrack."

But considering the way Tactics Advance and other things like the Ogre Battle series soundtracks, which include the game synth and upgraded synth versions, are classified as Original Soundtrack and Arrangement, I'd say this fits too. We could probably all agree that the upgraded synth versions are grounds for saying those albums have arranged tracks, even if the only thing really different is the sound quality, so why should we not say the same here when the same thing was done, just without the game synth versions included?

If you accept this reasoning, I know some other albums that should also have Arrangement added, like Dark Chronicle. Since cases like this aren't what usually comes to mind when someone uses the term "arranged album," a note should probably be made about the differing synth to avoid confusion.

This soundtrack does include a handful of tracks from the game in unaltered form though (well, minus the sound effects and voices in the movies), so it should still keep its Original Soundtrack classification as well.

[Dag]

There has been discussion in the past about this, in the lines of what you say, but never goes anywhere (pg 2 mainly):
http://vgmdb.net/forums/showthread.php?t=4570
So there is still some inconsistency in various albums.

For using "arrangement", IMO some kind of "features source music (as oppossed to plain game synth)" flag would be easier to understand.
When I see "arrangement" I think of arranged tracks produced for the album, but this is not the case here really.

There was a "revamp" classification for a while but... http://vgmdb.net/forums/showthread.php?t=4797

[Jormungand]

Finally going HD. PS4, 2017.

It appears that the BGM is getting the Tactics Ogre treatment. The strings from that preview video sound live while the rest remains synth (but higher quality synth).

[Jimby]

Oh man that is amazing news - great game, great soundtrack.

If they wanted to go all the way and serve up a fully live version of 'The Phon Coast' I'd be sold instantly.

[Dag]

http://www.finalfantasyxii.com/audio/bgm_036_160509.mp3

[Jormungand]

Originally Posted by Dag

http://www.finalfantasyxii.com/audio/bgm_036_160509.mp3

Messy recording. Strings are definitely live, and there's synth in there. There's some other live stuff, but it's hard to pinpoint.

[Joao524]

Kinda an old thread but It seems that TEHO (Takumi Matsumoto) co-arranged Taro Hakase's "Symphonic Poem" according to this site:
https://www.maccorp.co.jp/japanese/teiho.html

In the site there is the following paragraph:
「ザ・サクソフォーン」シリーズ(アルソ出版)の他、全音、ヤマハ・ミュージック・メディアから独自のアレ ンジを施したピアソラ曲集を出版。近年は葉加瀬太郎曲集の出版(ファイナル・ファンタジーXII他)にあた っての編曲も手掛ける。その他出版された曲集が音楽大学の教材として使用されるなど教育現場へ数多くの貢献 を果たしている。

Chat GPT translates as

"In addition to "The Saxophone" series (published by Aruso), arrangements of Piazzolla's music have been published by Zen-On and Yamaha Music Media. In recent years, I've also arranged music for the publication of Taro Hakase's song collections (including "Final Fantasy XII" and others). Other published song collections have made significant contributions to the educational field, being used as teaching materials in music universities."

It would make sense since there are orchestra parts in the track and the credited arranger is a guitarist and doesn't seem to be an orchestra arranger guy. Anyway, that is a rough translation, somebody with a better understanding of Japanese could clarify that.