LogFAQs > #953780499

The First Thing
National Park
Collapsed Expressway

---The First Thing vs Nefertiti (Ver.MMXI)---

-(the first match makes me really wish i did not have so much toxic orange juice in my left ear because i can not hear the stereo separation in cool NEW AGE 199x synth pads that i love so much that i would normally be able to hear. usually when i listen to this type of music from this period i get caught up in my obsessions with recognizing synth presets from old synths and excitedly naming synth companies and random strings of numbers every time i recognize a sound. something about this pauses that in me as if i've never heard these sounds before, even though i've heard so much 90s music that has synths in it that i have definitely heard these sounds before. It feels so "first", so new, every time i listen to this song it is the first time i have heard this song, or any song. I have never heard music before except for this song
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I see a lot of commentary that the entire appeal of The First THing is so much about the the way the lyrics enhance the other layers rather than actual composition having any intrigue, even from fans of the song! but i actually find this the most intriguing track to me compositionally of any song in the contest today. 1:56 - 2:03 is PERFECT WHOLE STEP MODULATION DOWNWARD EVERY CHORD CHANGE MOMENT that makes me fall out of my CHAIR. 3:11 - 3:22 does the same chord movement. it's so EMOTIONAL innately to me, whether or not there was a voice man telling me cool philosophical things. i feel so much from that exact chord movement; and any other layers are just sprinkles on top of those delightful pads
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see my favorite thing in music is moments like that. what I live for is unexpected or powerful tonal center changes, and this track is full of it. basically every chord change is one! it's almost all parallel stuff! though it is limiting itself to chord movements that still keep the same diatonic scale until those big moments like 1:56, where everything changes at once, fairly rapidly! If you play this track sped up like 8x, it sounds like someone is playing random notes on a chord sample, rather than a "chord progression" like you might normally be able to hear when playing a song sped up. I think that itself represents why the COMPOSITION of this song emotionally resonates with me so much. the whole song is just modulations entirely, and that's what i want. often i might seek other layers intersecting in creative ways or something, but for me, all this song needs to do is what it does, expressive noodly soloing over cool chords? yeah. i like that : )
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i do still think the lyrics are cool cool; i love the theme of this song really; "being sad is good and you shouldn't be afraid to confront emotions just because they are scary ones because otherwise the problems all just get worse" is an underrated philosophy and not enough people have played klonoa 2 i like being sad that's why i like the color black so much and always keep my gamefaqs set to red on black. but what i'm really here for is "90s synth pad chords transposing around" this reminds me so much of "Robert Miles - Children" intro)-

-[Nefertiti is like when i'm in the jungle gym so loud you redundant fuckers "daisukje achiwa arr daisuke achiway " WHO DO THAT MAN THiNK He is? arranging his own guitar panel. what the hell. I have strong memories of hearing this song on day 1 of vgmc5 and it has been cemented into my brain as "should be on day 1 of vgmc" ever since then so that is why i made it in day 1. not long after vgmc5 i got into atelier music pretty in depth by looking up what other games besides ar tonelico stuff Ken Nakagawa worked on, kinda forgetting it was ever even a thing in vgmc and thinking i was a genius that discovered a new series of vgm on my own that board 8 had never heard of. but i didn't know that mana khemia was part of the atelier series because it has a TRICKY NAME./ well at least ican say that my favorite part of the song is the "fantasia"-like synth bells that sound like eric. no one has a clue how much influence eric had over the sound of the music they hear, especially gamers who remember the classics. power metal is so much better when eric persing has at least one sound in it, his sounds are the only sounds that cut through the anger like a bronze fan]-

-{easy match but i don't hate nefertiti anymore like i did in 2020. i feel more similar to how i felt in 2011 about it which was when my significant other liked saying the words "Yngwie malsteen" a lot}-

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---National Park vs Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke---

-(National Park is pretty : ) everyone remembers this as the nostalgia song that makes them happy. even if they didn't play this game. i started with gen 3 because i forced myself to HATE pokemon until gen 3 for arbitrary external reasons. but i remember seeing all this gen 2 stuff during gen 3 and thinking it had this distinct mystical aura to it. all these things gen 3 /didnt/ do, nor did gen 1. so i knew i had to go back in time to try out pokemon GOLD (because i really really liked "dark yellow", as a color at the time, for some reason, and my brother's favorite pokemon was lugia, it just worked out). One of the most distinct things gen 2 did that wasn't in "hoenn" was the day/night cycle. and I got to National Park first at night, and thIS SONG PLAYED and it felt like i was in a park in the evening. that was so cool. I can be very very hard on PSG chiptunes in recent times, but as of about this year i've cooled off on my frustration with even the plainest of them as long as the composition is cool. i can be really hard on gen1-2's music partly for that reason, but I've come around to gen 2 music very specifically because of go ichinose's contributions, he's just always very CAREFUL with his chord progressions and weaving lines and knows how to make them feel like you heard them 10 years ago even though you didn't. so many little chromatic things that feel like a "real song" or lullaby)-

-[Reach for the Moon, Immortal Smoke (14.5) is the reason all those political men want to make it so we can't say words like "tonal center" or "character" anymore censorship harpsichord. I Think this is TOO fun and goofy for me to appreciate it. and it spends too long on the same chords for it to have the impact the original does. I think when i was younger i'd have preferred this over the original simply for its jazziness, but in 2021, i definitely prefer the original. The flute is so ENTHUSIASTIC and the blues (ha ha) scale soloistic stuff involves lotsa stuff i might find unbearably cheesy typically but i actually like it in this context because it is so playful in its presentation.]-

-{this match is not that hard but i thought it would be harder}-

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