[MUL] Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team & Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team - "Great

[Zeta]

Submission Information:
Series: Pokémon Mystery Dungeon
Game: Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team & Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team
Console: Multiplatform
Title: Great Canyon
Instrumentation Solo Piano
Arranger: Bespinben


Replacement Information:
Links to Existing Sheet: MUS | MIDI | PDF
Replacement Type: Edit (existing arranger remains)

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[Bespinben]

Live performance demo:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/a4mp8y88p415nk0/PMD1%20-%20Great%20Canyon.mp3?dl=0

Arrangement notes:

• The left hand's accompaniment pattern in m.5-29 is derived from the omitted marimba ostinato (m.5-12), and the rhythm of the drum kit (m.13-28).
• The organ countermelody needed to be omitted for playability at m.14, 18, 22, & 26, so I replicated the motion of these lines with the creation of moving bass lines (highlighted with tenuto markings).

[Latios212]

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Gr is my favorite song from Rescue Team! Your arrangement of this piece is gr

Thanks again for the arrangement notes, they're really helpful This looks great from a readability/playability/sound perspective, and I just have a few remaining small comments.
- I hear the grace notes in m. 4 as actual melody notes in the original instead of an ornament. Thoughts about writing them as 16ths instead?
- A little oddity I noticed - I find it weird that m. 4 has an outgoing bass clef when... there is no clef change between m. 4-5 because of the ossia. Maybe it would be best just to remove it?
- I think it might be nice in the to clarify where and how the crescendo climaxes at the end through the addition of another dynamic placement in the last measure.

[mastersuperfan]

Wow, I never realized the loop was this short.

- I hear the grace notes in m. 4 as actual melody notes in the original instead of an ornament. Thoughts about writing them as 16ths instead?
- I think it might be nice in the to clarify where and how the crescendo climaxes at the end through the addition of another dynamic placement in the last measure.

I agree with these.

- A little oddity I noticed - I find it weird that m. 4 has an outgoing bass clef when... there is no clef change between m. 4-5 because of the ossia. Maybe it would be best just to remove it?

But it's just an ossia, right? The clef change makes sense to me since the primary way to play the phrase in this transcription has a bass clef.

Some other small things:
- The Layer 2 notes in m24 look very squished vertically. Is there a reason for that?
- You have nested slurs (i.e. a slur within a slur) on your grace notes in m16, m20, and m24, but not in m12. Intentional or unintentional omission?
- Why not have the "con Ped." from the beginning instead of starting at m4?

[Bespinben]

Gr is pretty Gr, I agree 

- I hear the grace notes in m. 4 as actual melody notes in the original instead of an ornament. Thoughts about writing them as 16ths instead?

Writing as 16ths would be too slow, and writing out as 32nds would be less easy to sight-read (as well as take up the limited horizontal space in an already fairly compressed system). I would prefer to keep the current notation, though I do understand your reasoning; I see it as trading-off a small amount of phrasal accuracy for a more streamlined user experience. One benefit of the current notation is that it allows for the notes to be played at the speed able to be executed by the performer, either around 16ths, 32nds (as I prefer), or somewhere in between.

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- I think it might be nice in the to clarify where and how the crescendo climaxes at the end through the addition of another dynamic placement in the last measure.

The endpoint of the "cresc." in m.27 is the "mf" at in m.5. If the player overshoots a little from not reading ahead, I feel that would be fine (I actually do that a little myself in the performance demo, crescendoing to forte and backing off slightly at the loop).

A little oddity I noticed - I find it weird that m. 4 has an outgoing bass clef when... there is no clef change between m. 4-5 because of the ossia. Maybe it would be best just to remove it?

But it's just an ossia, right? The clef change makes sense to me since the primary way to play the phrase in this transcription has a bass clef.

One of the problems is that I'm not using ossia in the technically correct way (i.e. as a clarifier of ornamental markings), but rather as a way to write an alternate start to a repeat passage in a register outside the main clef. So, while the ossia notation would seem to imply that it is optional, my intention is for that to be primary execution. I could avoid this ambiguity by not using repeats, but that would increase the page count. I think I'll opt to keep the cautionary clef, if only because eliminating it can only be achieved by disabling cautionary clefs globally in Finale's document options.

- The Layer 2 notes in m24 look very squished vertically. Is there a reason for that?

Finale's default stem lengths and beam angles are very long compared to most publication-quality works. I use the Patterson Beams plug-in to correct this. The flag of the 16th note intersecting with the notehead is actually very common in many fonts outside of Maestro.

- You have nested slurs (i.e. a slur within a slur) on your grace notes in m16, m20, and m24, but not in m12. Intentional or unintentional omission?

Mostly, I couldn't find a good place to put it at m.12. Below, and it would disrupt the readability of the ledger lines; above, and it would be uncomfortably close to the phrase marking. Gould does permit omitting individual grace slurs if they're combined within a standard slur (pg. 130), so that's what I ended up doing:

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- Why not have the "con Ped." from the beginning instead of starting at m4?

I assume pedaling by default, and only explicitly write "con ped." if I feel the notation might lead the player to believe otherwise. The way m.1-4 is written, the only way to play it would be with pedal. On second thought, I think I'll omit the "con ped." at m.5-12. I had worried the accompaniment looked "staccato-y" since it was derived from the marimba line. On the plus side, this would help clear up any implication that m.1-4 is "senza pedale" when it's not.

[Latios212]

Explanations for m. 4 and the dynamics sound good

About the clef change and ossia though:

- A little oddity I noticed - I find it weird that m. 4 has an outgoing bass clef when... there is no clef change between m. 4-5 because of the ossia. Maybe it would be best just to remove it?

But it's just an ossia, right? The clef change makes sense to me since the primary way to play the phrase in this transcription has a bass clef.

One of the problems is that I'm not using ossia in the technically correct way (i.e. as a clarifier of ornamental markings), but rather as a way to write an alternate start to a repeat passage in a register outside the main clef. So, while the ossia notation would seem to imply that it is optional, my intention is for that to be primary execution. I could avoid this ambiguity by not using repeats, but that would increase the page count. I think I'll opt to keep the cautionary clef, if only because eliminating it can only be achieved by disabling cautionary clefs globally in Finale's document options.

Technical workarounds aside (why doesn't Finale allow you to cancel courtesy clefs like keysigs lol) I think this exchange actually demonstrates what I see as confusing here. As I understood (from the original song, and as per your comment) the treble clef part is mandatory on the first pass through, but it's not clear that way on the sheet - see MSF's understanding of the section. I think calling it an "ossia" in the performance direction is misleading because it tells the performer that it's optional. Editing that text to say something more explicit along the lines of "play this after m. 4" and removing the clef change (as there is no clef change in the performance between m. 4-5) would make this most apparent to the user.

(Also while I'm looking at courtesy clefs, one would be helpful in the last measure because there actually is a change between m. 28 and m. 5.)

[Bespinben]

Files updated: removed "con ped.", edited the m.5 text, removed courtesy clef at m.4 via graphical workaround, and added courtesy clef change at end m.28.

[mastersuperfan]

It took me a solid 5 minutes to understand what you meant by "After m.4 only." I don't know if that's proper notation that I haven't seen before, but I feel like "On first pass only" or something to that effect would be more intuitive. After all, even on your second pass, you are still technically *after* m4 (m29 does come after m4, after all).

That notwithstanding, I shall approve.

[Latios212]

Neat!

It took me a solid 5 minutes to understand what you meant by "After m.4 only." I don't know if that's proper notation that I haven't seen before, but I feel like "On first pass only" or something to that effect would be more intuitive. After all, even on your second pass, you are still technically *after* m4 (m29 does come after m4, after all).

One thing I've done in my sheets is write "first pass only". Anyway, I also approve and will accept when you confirm the performance direction is as you want it ^^

[Bespinben]

Changed m.5 text to "Play 1st-time only".

(I agreed with the idea, but since "pass" is Finale-specific lingo, I opted to use the more widely understood term used in relation to repeats. A similar example would be the term "layers", which those working outside of Finale usually would refer to as "voices").

[Latios212]

Okay, sounds good to me

[Zeta]

This submission has been accepted by Latios212.

~Zeta, your friendly NSM-Bot