[SW] Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - "The Tomorrow With You" by JZ

[Zeta]

Submission Information:
Series: Xeno
Game: Xenoblade Chronicles 2
Console: Nintendo Switch
Title: The Tomorrow With You
Instrumentation Solo Piano
Arranger: JZ

[MomoQca]

[XiaoMigros]

Nice sheet! I like your take on this, but there's some stuff to work through before it's ready for the site..

• The 'con pedale' marking is missing
• I think it's worth differentiating between when piano and flute play in the RH, and when only the piano plays. The latter sounds softer, so maybe you could put it in a separate layer?
• Although the strings sound smooth overall, I would accentuate the melody a little more, by restriking the notes instead of tieing at places such as m29-30, the first ties in m36, m51, and maybe some more that I overlooked. On the contrary, b3 in the RH of m35/m57 doesn't sound like a new note on b4.
• In m26, what do you think of including the piano's 16th note figure at the end of the measure?
• m42 b3 RH sounds like the top note is still E not F#
• From m27 onwards, I feel like a lot of what you have written doesn't accurately represent the original:
  • Up to m34, I feel like the RH sounds a little too heavy, maybe removing some of the harmony would help with that. From m49 onwards I think having a heavy RH would be good, to reflect the brass that comes in around then.
  • There's also no incorporation yet of the difference in movement from m35 onwards, when the drums kick in. I would recommend at least reflecting this in the dynamics, though you could also have the LH change its intensity too.
  • I don't hear what you have written for m42 in the original, I would stick with showing the strings there. After that, up to m48, maybe you can include the piano as well as the strings?
  • Same comment about the piano from m65 onwards, I would also recommend sticking to the piano/strings formula for the second half of m68.
  • For m71-end, I think writing this part closer to the original octaves it's in would be good.
  • While I like the LH pattern you're using, I'm not sure how well it will go down with the updating team since it's not really that well reflected in the original, but I'll leave that to their discretion.
• In general I think using more layers would help give this sheet a more insightful structure. You're including many different parts and that should be shown!

More to come from me once this has been worked through!

[XiaoMigros]

Hi, are you still around to make changes?

[MomoQca]

Hi! Thank you for your patience.

Mostly everything should be addressed. I didn't make any adjustments for the second to last bullet point.

Changes I made to the sheet, in particular to your final bullet point.
-m33: added second violin part in second layer
-m49-64: added brass section in second layer. As a result of adding ff to m35, I changed the ff in m49 to fff
-m76: changed from quarter to eighth note

[Bloop]

Heya, sorry for the long wait on this! Focus on this sheet must've drifted by different updaters planning to take a look, so I'll go into this a little bit more freshly.

-m3-13: I don't think you need to write the melody out in unisons: some notes you left out for the flute part are still there (albeit a bit harder to hear sometimes) in the original too, and it doesn't really convey much new info to the player. I think the only notes that definitely are not in the flute are the A and B in m6, and the second D in m9. Those sound like they're part of the L.H. arpeggios instead, so you could add them to the L.H. instead to keep them out of the way of the melody.
-m20: I hear an F# in the piano at beat 3.5 tpp
-m27: The staccatos in the L.H. in this section are clashing with the notes, is this a pdf export thing? If you need to reset their position in Finale, you can use the backspace when they're selected.
-m33: The two quarter notes at beat 1 look pretty weird as they are right now (almost like a note cluster). I think it'd look better if the top note pointed upwards and the bottom note downwards.
-m38: At beat 4 I hear a voice in the piano going E-F#, and the bass goes down B-A. Maybe you could change the L.H. to include these voices in some way?
-m42: The chords in this bar are F#sus4 and F# (starting on beat 1 and beat 3). Maybe you could include the B of the F#sus4 and the A# of the F# in the L.H.?
-m43: The B-D-D in the R.H. isn't playable, or only playable by people with very large hands. You could move the B up an octave, or add a roll marking if you don't wanna change the octaves. With the roll marking, you could even add the low octave of the B in the L.H., and have the roll extend from the G in the L.H. all the way to the top D in the R.H.
-m44 and other places: Make sure to leave a liiittle bit of space between two notes in two layers, if one of them is in-between a chord of the other layer. So in this measure that'd mean moving the quarter note of the top layer a little bit to the right.
-m48: Unmeasured tremolos in piano music should be written with the tremolo tool (check this manual if you haven't used it before: the tremolo you need is the one in the second picture). Also, the staccatos in beat 3 should be below the notes, in both the L.H. and R.H.
-m49 and on: There are some parts in this section that push the boundaries of what an intermediate player can easily play: make sure there are no large intervals (like m50 beat 3), quick double-layered runs (m52 beat 3-4) and quick leaps from one note to the next (m51 beat 1-2). You can also decide to leave out some voices if they don't add much and get in the way, both visually or with playing (like m63). Let me know if you can't really figure out what to do in certain places!
-m75: The tremolo between the B and Cn should be a trill marking, possible with a Cn grace note before to make sure the player won't trill with a C#.
-m76: The grace notes before the end chord should be B-Cn-Dn-E.

[MomoQca]

Heya, sorry for the long wait on this! Focus on this sheet must've drifted by different updaters planning to take a look, so I'll go into this a little bit more freshly.

No worries. It happens! Thanks for taking the time to review my sheet.

-m3-13: I don't think you need to write the melody out in unisons: some notes you left out for the flute part are still there (albeit a bit harder to hear sometimes) in the original too, and it doesn't really convey much new info to the player. I think the only notes that definitely are not in the flute are the A and B in m6, and the second D in m9. Those sound like they're part of the L.H. arpeggios instead, so you could add them to the L.H. instead to keep them out of the way of the melody.

Makes sense. The piano and flute parts have been separated to LH and RH respectively. Also, I added a couple cross-staff beamings in m12-13. I also put the arpeggiated chords in the RH in m10 & m14 for visual purposes.

-m20: I hear an F# in the piano at beat 3.5 tpp
-m27: The staccatos in the L.H. in this section are clashing with the notes, is this a pdf export thing? If you need to reset their position in Finale, you can use the backspace when they're selected.
-m33: The two quarter notes at beat 1 look pretty weird as they are right now (almost like a note cluster). I think it'd look better if the top note pointed upwards and the bottom note downwards.

Fixed.

-m38: At beat 4 I hear a voice in the piano going E-F#, and the bass goes down B-A. Maybe you could change the L.H. to include these voices in some way?

I'm unsure about this? :S

-m42: The chords in this bar are F#sus4 and F# (starting on beat 1 and beat 3). Maybe you could include the B of the F#sus4 and the A# of the F# in the L.H.?
-m43: The B-D-D in the R.H. isn't playable, or only playable by people with very large hands. You could move the B up an octave, or add a roll marking if you don't wanna change the octaves. With the roll marking, you could even add the low octave of the B in the L.H., and have the roll extend from the G in the L.H. all the way to the top D in the R.H.
-m44 and other places: Make sure to leave a liiittle bit of space between two notes in two layers, if one of them is in-between a chord of the other layer. So in this measure that'd mean moving the quarter note of the top layer a little bit to the right.

Fixed.

-m48: Unmeasured tremolos in piano music should be written with the tremolo tool (check this manual if you haven't used it before: the tremolo you need is the one in the second picture). Also, the staccatos in beat 3 should be below the notes, in both the L.H. and R.H.

Fixed. I also changed the tremolos in m70 & m75.

-m49 and on: There are some parts in this section that push the boundaries of what an intermediate player can easily play: make sure there are no large intervals (like m50 beat 3), quick double-layered runs (m52 beat 3-4) and quick leaps from one note to the next (m51 beat 1-2). You can also decide to leave out some voices if they don't add much and get in the way, both visually or with playing (like m63). Let me know if you can't really figure out what to do in certain places!

Done. I simplified this section, mainly to accentuate the melody.

-m75: The tremolo between the B and Cn should be a trill marking, possible with a Cn grace note before to make sure the player won't trill with a C#.
-m76: The grace notes before the end chord should be B-Cn-Dn-E.

Done.

[Bloop]

Sorry for the wait again! Busy life has been keeping me from updater stuff a bit..

Although it's hard to hear if the flute really rearticulates, I think it's save to move some accentuated piano notes in the L.H. back to the melody:
-m4: The E on beat 2.5
-m8: The D on beat 2.5
-m8 and 9: The E on beat 4.5 is already in the R.H., so it can be removed
-m12: The D on beat 2.5. It's probably best to just keep the A in beat 2 in the lower staff.

-m20: I think there's an 8th note F# missing between the A#'s in the L.H. between beat 3 and 3.5?
-m22: I don't hear the E in the L.H. here. Maybe you could remove it and possible add a G# in the R.H.?
-m33: The way the B's here look together with the slur and tie is a bit confusing. I know I suggested flipping the noteheads before, but maybe it's best to re-flip them and move the second layer to the right a bit like this:
You cannot view this attachment.
-m42: I wouldn't suggest putting the B and A# on the bottom of the L.H., it doesn't sound great :p A better place would be in the middle, but tbh I think I might have mistyped and actually meant putting them in the R.H.

From m49 one works a lot better from a playability point of view! Now there's just some formatting stuff left, of which there's still quite a few things left. These are the biggest points (all for the R.H.)
-If there's just one layer in a beat, make sure any stems and ties are flipped to their normal position. If you're not sure what the normal position is, try writing the notes in an empty measure and see how they look there. Rule of thumb is when the note furthest away from the middle line is above that line, the stem goes down, and if that note is below the middle line, the stem goes up.
Examples:
   -m52: The chord in beat 1 should be flipped downwards.
   -m55: Anything from beat 2 onwards should be flipped downwards (but the slur should still be above the notes!)
-If a layer is on its own in the middle of a bar, make sure to add some rests before so the exact position is clear.
Examples:
   -m53: There should be quarter rest on beat 1 in layer 2
   -m57: There should be a quarter rest on beat 3 in layer 2 (and maybe a half rest on beat 1, or you could just flip the chord in layer 1 (slur should stay above though))
-Some notes are a bit off-center, you can delete and re-enter them to get them on the right place.
Examples:
   -m56: The 16th note on beat 3.25
   -m60: The 8th note on beat 3

And some more general comments:
-m60: The D in the second layer on beat 4.25 in the R.H. should be an A
-m62: The melody in the trumpets in beat 3-4 overpowers the string line, but on piano the string line gets in the way too much. Maybe you could keep the melody here to the trumpet line?
-m63: Similarly here in beat 3-4, I'd arrange the trumpets instead of the strings (so D, E and C# in the same rhythm as in beat 1-2)
-m64: I think you can write everything in beats 1-2 here in one layer
-m70: The dotted quarter rest in beat 3 should be a quarter rest + an 8th rest: with rests, dotted rests are only allowed if they're smaller than the beat value (the beat value here is quarter notes). Also, maybe it's easier for the L.H. to take the F#-B dyad in beat 4.5 instead of the R.H.? The jump down for the L.H. is easier than the jump up for the R.H.
-m75: There should just be a B on beat 2 for the trill mark, the Cn grace note before is just to make sure the player trills B-Cn and not B-C#. You could also add a fermate on this B to be sure, btw.

[MomoQca]

Everything has been updated accordingly.

For other updaters: I received further clarification on the stem directions and rests from Bloop in a private message.

-m63: Similarly here in beat 3-4, I'd arrange the trumpets instead of the strings (so D, E and C# in the same rhythm as in beat 1-2)

I think I hear E, D, B.

[Bloop]

These are my last few (mostly small) things:
-m1: The con pedale mark is actually best placed underneath the bottom staff, instead of in the middle
-m4: You can remove the E in the L.H. in beat 2.5, now that it is in the R.H.
-m43 and 65: You can move the B half note in the R.H. back to its original place, it's not in the way of any other note.
-m54: The 16th rest in the R.H. on beat 4 should be one tick lower. It probably looks best to put the 8th rest on beat 3 at that same height too.
-m58: Since there's no rests underneath the R.H. beat 3-4, the slur should be below the notes and the lowest tie should be flipped.
-m61: Dotted half rest here should be half rest + quarter rest (of which you can hide the half rest and flip the stem on beat 1, if you want). Reason this can't be a dotted rest is the same as here:

-m70: The dotted quarter rest in beat 3 should be a quarter rest + an 8th rest: with rests, dotted rests are only allowed if they're smaller than the beat value (the beat value here is quarter notes)

-m62: 16th rest on beat 4 can be in its standard position (two ticks up), also the dot of the dotted 8th in beat 4.25 should be above the staff line (like in m63 beat 1)
-m71: Second-to-bottom tie in the R.H. should be flipped (so top 2 up, bottom 2 down).
-m72: The middle two ties in the R.H. should be flipped (also top 2 up, bottom 2 down).

I think I hear E, D, B.

huh yeah idk where i got my notes from lol, might have listened to the wrong bar, you're right!

[MomoQca]

^all done. Thanks for your help, Bloop!

[Bloop]

Great! I can approve now

[Latios212]

Let's keep moving this along! Apologies for taking so long, but thank you for doing this piece. Very powerful at the end of Xenoblade 2.

It looks great, a bunch of small things to say from me ^^

Visual polish
- The "con pedale" text at the beginning should be an expression text, instead of text box. That way the font size matches that of other expressions and if you move the staff, the expression will move along with it (text boxes are attached to the page).
- Besides page 1, there's a disproportionate amount of white space at the bottom vs. at the top. You could move everything down a bit away from the header by dragging the top staff down using the staff tool. Make sure the mini-title has adequate space underneath.
- The phrase marking in m. 7-10 would be better above the notes so it visually ends on the top F# in m. 10.
- In m. 13 beat 4 the eighth notes stems are too long. You can raise the beam a bit using the Beam Angle tool (drag the left point upwards a bit)
- You have a few systems where the dynamics are squished between staves. In m. 21 you can move the dynamic up a bit to not overlap with the left hand part and in m. 48 you can move it down a bit; in m. 26 you can widen the gap between staves. Either would work for m. 34.
- There are a few places where some notes are horizontally displaced, presumably due to some conflicting notes in other layers that were later cleaned up. You can reset the positioning on these by highlighting the notes using the Note Position Tool under Special Tools and pressing backspace (or right clicking and resetting manual adjustments).
  - m. 54 beat 3.5 (RH)
  - m. 60 beat 4.25 (RH)
  - m. 62 beat 3.75 (RH)
  - In m. 60, I think the D would be better to the left of the Bb octave.

Presentation
- Any particular reason the left hand is split into two layers there? It makes sense but it's a bit odd to see it like that just in the first two measures and then going back to one layer for the rest of the section.
- I'd suggest writing beat 4 of m. 6 in bass clef. You'd avoid the ledger lines and have the small drop to E in the next measure be more visually apparent that way. You could also put m. 10 in bass clef if you want, but you don't have to.
- You can remove the beat 4 C# in m. 4 since it's in the RH
- I think the mf in m. 22 would be better on beat 1 instead of at the end. That way the crescendo from m. 21 has something to end on.
- There should be a rit. near the end, probably starting in m. 73
- Generally best to avoid dotted quarter rests in 4/4. In the last measure you can just make the notes quarter notes since they don't need to be specifically eighth notes in duration.

I haven't taken a close look at the notes yet, though I did give it a quick skim and things sound good overall. You can start making updates based on the visual feedback above, or wait until I do the final note check. Up to you ^^

[MomoQca]

Thanks Latios212. I'm happy to spread joy... (er...sadness and hopefulness I guess haha) of this song. Mitsuda is an absolute legend.

Everything has been fixed.

Any particular reason the left hand is split into two layers there? It makes sense but it's a bit odd to see it like that just in the first two measures and then going back to one layer for the rest of the section.

Oh right. I believe I was playing around with the layers. My first version had the second layer in the RH, then I moved it over to the LH. I must have forgotten to revert it back.

[Latios212]

Wonderful! And I'm really sorry it took me another month to finish checking the notes. Here's my remaining feedback!

- m. 6 beat 4 is using the wrong clef (should be F# in bass clef)
- I think the left hand, top layer for the first half of m. 23 should look like m. 11?
- I don't think m. 3 really needs a double barline. On the contrary, I think the beginning of 27 could perhaps use one.
- The last LH note of m. 27 is an E which doesn't fit into the G major harmony you've written in. Was that supposed to be a D like in m. 31?
- Generally try to avoid staccato dotted eighth notes - m. 48 can be just eighth + 16th. Same for m. 70
- RH beat 1 of m. 49/50/51/57/62 is misaligned. Also m. 62 beat 3
- The RH lower layer beat 1 of m. 53 sounds like an F# instead of D
- Last RH note of m. 57 sounds like G instead of E
- The upper two ties in the chords in m. 66 should bend upwards. The slur should go over as well
- I think the D#s in m. 74 might look better as Ebs?

Not a lot, everything you have here is really solid! I mostly just have one last thing to comment on. It feels like the presence of harmonies in much of the right hand across pages 4-6 is inconsistent at times. You've already kicked into full gear at m. 49 and started including fuller harmonies in the right hand, but there are times where you have exposed octaves and single notes which feel a bit out of place when it feels like there should be a fuller texture everywhere throughout this section. Let me know if you want any specific suggestions, but what I'd recommend is generally just more harmony (that should be pretty easy to fit to the chords) on the places where you have the melody in octaves or single notes.