LogFAQs > #955024159

Passion in Blue
Danger
444

-(the accordion makes this for me. i feel like it's the kinda song composition-wise that has to have this exact instrumentation (edm on top of this exact set of "real" instruments) for me to like it, but it DOES so it is perfect...! the ranking is a bit low at the moment but i find this hard to place for a bunch of reasons, mainly that the "way" i enjoy this song is much different than most of the rest of the stuff in the contest. a lot more focused on some broad delicate concept of "takes me to a perfect recreation of fictional european country in mexico that i am making up" that i can't evaluate on the same plane of reality as everything else, so this feels like it'll move way up when i figure that out. anyways GOOD AND FUn music yes i like this)-

-[i really like jerry martin from what i can tell...based on the music i've heard credited to him in the sim games. I like this instrumentally (marimba and plucked strings and piano are all instruments i like hearing in this style!) but this particular song comes off a lot more goofy and rigid to me than i'd like from this style (which is a style i usually like)]-

-{easy vote for mrd but this would be a harder match if things were just slightly different about either song: if mrd was less perfectly produced/arranged to my liking or if broadway was just a bit less fake/stilted/"cheesy" in its presentation of its composition}-

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-(hahaha and i complained about "fake sounding" above on a song that has actual live jazzy solos. here we have one of the most bluntly artificial "video game music" sounding songs in the contest. in a way, the artifice is a perfect tribute to Kikuta's own arrangement style despite this arrangement not even being him. secret of mana (both remake and original) is full of music i'm a huge fan of very consistently throughout. I fluctuate on how much i like danger...i have no aversion to dissonance in general and this is "proggy" but i actually find myself exhausted by it's level of grating aggressive chaos sometimes, really need to be in the right mood to intake it all properly. surprisingly not even close to my favorite song in the original secret of mana even though i also get annoyed at people who are loud about disliking it. What makes this arrangement so fun is all the style cycling, in the same vein as sky of twilight in some ways....goes from that super artificial start to eurobeat to girl choir enchanted forest to crazy guitar wailing to "video gajme computer notes" to GUST MOMENT when it has lyrics. this arrangement wildly changes what my favorite parts are; in this version i lean way more toward the prettier melodic sections (especially any section with vocals or choir i really love here), while in the original i lean more toward the bluntly dissonant and garbly sections (1:48-2:04 is probably my fav section in the original, which in this version i often don't even think about))-

-[5 has some nice dramatic anime melodies in the strings i probably would not have called them "anime" if i didn't see the youtube thumbnail though so that may just be an ILLUSION just like the ones generated going inside of a suikoden song. what the heck i am noticing so many extra cool things about this after listening a 2nd time. like the synth background layers are really cool and boost this a lot and i didn't even notice them until now?! wtf. i like the style of this song but i find it pretty unmemorable, i often say that isn't important to me, but i think it's a factor in what holds this back for me]-

-{really hard to place danger because my response to it is super variable, and it's hard to compare my opinion on the original to this arrangement, which i'm not even sure i like more than the original now that i think about it (and i'm typically more positive than most about the som remake music). well either way i definitely like it more than 5, but how much more is up for question. also i wish i could say i was voting for the song called "5" so i could put "5" in my vote panel at the top because that is "funny"}-

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-(444 is like everything i like about music in a song music song. it starts off with AMBIGUOUS DOWNBEAT MINIMALISM (literally until :59 it's almost impossible to nail barlines or a timesig, while still retaining its pulse, and that's cool!) and cool spanish guitar that reminds me of "zero" that is almsot a bluesy note scale( like a "cowboy desert" and then it turns into "progressive rock and/or metal" and sounds like dream theater when it gets some big odd time parts and then it turns into fire emblem ?!?!?! It's just like uf8 said except i thought of dream theater instead of paper mario at the part that i at least think we're both talking about there which no one would compare unless you know how many jordan rudess songs sound like paper mario:
https://youtu.be/owkGKO_rsEI
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one thing i think is important to note is that compositionally, this song does a lot of things i'd be averse to in other songs because they are "cheesy" but in this song i like those same things because they are "Edgy" ? ? ?? ? why? ?? what makes these same traits be "cheesy" in one song but "cool and edgy" in another? i don't know, but the pattern seems to be that i'm far less averse to pentatonic blues-esque stuff when it feels like the context is "tough" rather than "the animated kids walking in the sidewalk while holding chalk", whatever abstract divider generates that difference. part of it's the prog metal adacency for sure. i didn't actually link a dream theater song above i just linked a song by their current keyboardist that sounds like paper mario but now iam going to actually link a real dream theater song with lots of blues licks in it that gives me the same "vibe" as 444 and is part of why i like it so much. This is one of my favorite dream theater songs and the adjacency 444 has to whatever this IS is why i like it so much:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9j-v9EbBBM
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i think beyond the shallow descriptor of "certain guitar things = tough", part of the reason i have tolerance for this composition in a rock/metal context, or even like "acoustic guitar with trippy synths" context, is because it feels /alive/, it feels like yyou are so angry and brooding but also uncareful but too skilled for carelessness to matter becauase you can jump on top of plateaus
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444 evolves gradually across disparate things i love, from trippy to gritty to manic to beautiful, all so seamlessly!!! it tells a "story". the cool moment devolves into chaos while you are in the SKY music. all elements present musically
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-[this is actually really well done and i want to like it more. it's good at being playful and there's some pretty cool explorative winding moments of its progression that feel cool to me, but so many parts that feel like there is a condescending finger pointing at me to make fun of me. this song would fit in mad rat dead lol, but not the portion of the ost that excites me. anyway my response to this is variable, i think it depends on how easily i am able to skim over the things in it i find difficult to take seriously. i would probably LOVE this if it was spm/ttyd-like instrumentation, i say that a lot on cartoony stuff but it's true...it makes all the difference on this kinda song to me]-

-{so many songs today where i have no idea where to place them jeez}-

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444 (21st/214)
Danger (82nd/214)
Passion in Blue (144th/214)
Five (149th/214)
Vs. 'Merican Yo-kai (178th/214)
Sim Broadway (204th/214)
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