[DELETED] [SW] Fire Emblem: Three Houses - "Shambhala (Area 17 Redux) (Rain)" by Zeila

[Zeta]

Submission Information:
Series: Fire Emblem
Game: Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Console: Nintendo Switch
Title: Shambhala (Area 17 Redux) (Rain)
Instrumentation Solo Piano
Arranger: Zeila

[Zeila]

The repeat isn't quite the same as the original, but it's only different because of the percussion/effects so I omitted the last four measures and had it repeat to the very beginning instead of measure 5

[mastersuperfan]

oh no why

[Latios212]

oh no

[Zeila]

oh

what do you mean "no" or "why" when this is clearly the best song from the OST

[Radiak488417]

it begins

[Kricketune54]

Haven't played 3 Houses is this for the House of Skrillex???

Love the tempo note lol (I know enough to know the reference)

-RH melody starting at m1 and continues throughout the piece- have you considered notating the top layer quarter notes as either staccatos or staccatissimos?  The violin part in the original sounds like that's how the rhythm is being played
-m5 move the mp and cresc. a bit higher
-m9 move the mf and cresc. just a little bit higher
-m10 increase the distance between the staffs, as the forte later in this message is scrunched
-m11 LH beat 4 I hear this as the two sixteenths dotted eighth rhythm also seen in m9 and 10.
-m12 beat 4 I think these notes sound even, and could be written as triplets
-pg 2 seems quite high margin-wise, but considering how all the measures and systems are currently set up I can understand and it's probably fine
-m13 beat 2 I think would sound better going to C# rather than Bn.  I did pitch it up as well to confirm, but that is what that "part" sounds like it is doing in the original and in my opinion fits the structure of the key/chord a bit better. 
-m13 feedback is kinda subjective because I can understand progression that's going on in the LH here in this arrangement.  Otherwise the pitches would just be C# varying octaves.
-m13 beat 3.25 given how wide the space is, I think you could manually move some stuff so that the roll isn't so scrunched against beat 3 and the #.

-What is the purpose of doing the big numbers for some of the measures?  I've never seen before/known the reasoning
-m17 beat 1 these notes are certainly much more standard than the last time there was as a similar rhythm.  Was this done to lead into beat 2 better for the melody?
-m20 manually move the "x" accidental up so it's not colliding with the gliss
-m21 move the p slightly to the right to center on beat 1 in the RH
-m45 widen this system just enough to center the p between staffs and to give the bottom RH layer a little more breathing room

Feedback def skewed on the aesthetic side but hope this helps!  Very cool arrangement

[Zeila]

Haven't played 3 Houses is this for the House of Skrillex???

Love the tempo note lol (I know enough to know the reference)

Haha this map is played on two routes actually. It was pretty surprising to hear that this was a track in the game

-RH melody starting at m1 and continues throughout the piece- have you considered notating the top layer quarter notes as either staccatos or staccatissimos?  The violin part in the original sounds like that's how the rhythm is being played

I wasn't sure if it was just a particularly strong attack that's still held or actual staccato'd notes. I switched it to staccato quarter notes (and it's also closer to what would actually be playable too). I left m21-24, m29-32, and m45-end as half/quarter notes though since those seem different, and then I noticed that the additional voice in 25-28 is actually held so I changed that

-m5 move the mp and cresc. a bit higher

I wanted to keep this on the same line as the cresc. hairpin, so I just increased the space between staves a bit more

-m11 LH beat 4 I hear this as the two sixteenths dotted eighth rhythm also seen in m9 and 10.

I think I got confused by one of the percussive instruments, fixed

-m12 beat 4 I think these notes sound even, and could be written as triplets

It's hard to tell so I changed it, but then I'm also wondering if beat 1 of measure 17 should be changed too. I left that one as is for now

-pg 2 seems quite high margin-wise, but considering how all the measures and systems are currently set up I can understand and it's probably fine

Yeah, I'll keep it for now but if someone else also thinks it could be changed then I'll do it

-m13 beat 2 I think would sound better going to C# rather than Bn.  I did pitch it up as well to confirm, but that is what that "part" sounds like it is doing in the original and in my opinion fits the structure of the key/chord a bit better.

This also fits the rest of it anyways because I stopped including Bn's/A#'s later, so it's been changed

-m13 feedback is kinda subjective because I can understand progression that's going on in the LH here in this arrangement.  Otherwise the pitches would just be C# varying octaves.

If you have any other suggestions then I'll consider them :3

-What is the purpose of doing the big numbers for some of the measures?  I've never seen before/known the reasoning

In ensemble pieces, there are either numbers or letters (if there are more symbols then I am unaware) for rehearsal markings placed at different sections to make it easier to follow along and start from x section. I just like doing it in piano sheets even when they're solo because those stick out more than double barlines. They're not actually necessary (and probably aren't worth it for smaller pieces anyways, mainly just larger ones). I think some have claimed that it is uncustomary but there's no hard rule on NSM

-m17 beat 1 these notes are certainly much more standard than the last time there was as a similar rhythm.  Was this done to lead into beat 2 better for the melody?

I felt that the melody sticks out more in this half, so I wanted it to be different. I'm open to making changes though!

-m20 manually move the "x" accidental up so it's not colliding with the gliss

I just lowered both glissandos and moved the accidentals to the left so that they're still on the same line

-m9 move the mf and cresc. just a little bit higher
-m10 increase the distance between the staffs, as the forte later in this message is scrunched
-m13 beat 3.25 given how wide the space is, I think you could manually move some stuff so that the roll isn't so scrunched against beat 3 and the #.
-m21 move the p slightly to the right to center on beat 1 in the RH
-m45 widen this system just enough to center the p between staffs and to give the bottom RH layer a little more breathing room

Feedback def skewed on the aesthetic side but hope this helps!  Very cool arrangement

Thank you! These changes were made, and I also adjusted the length of the glisses in m16/17 and m20/21. In addition to that, I made some changes with the dubstep parts to try and emphasize the kick and snare more, it is slightly more consistent (e.g. beat 2 of m14 and 18 are the same now, although I kept beat 3 different), and I changed the G#'s on beats 2.5/2.75 of measures 15/19 to B's

[Kricketune54]

If you have any other suggestions then I'll consider them :3

Okay had some time this afternoon to revisit this...

m.15 how about B# on beat 1 just like m.13?  Sounds like that is the pitch in the original here as well.  Played around with it myself on beat 2 as well, I like B# as beat 2.0 and maybe  Dn on 2.5 and 2.75, or B# again...  Also as a note, m.19 this line of thinking would also apply as well.

That's about all I think I was thinking of though.  I went through the song and your arrangement again and didn't really find anything else to recommend.  I think this is a really cool arrangement that does a lot with a song that is a bit wild and hard to translate

[Zeila]

In m15/19, I changed beat 1 to include a B# instead of C#, but I left beat 2 the same since I personally think it resolves better on beat 2 rather than 3. Thanks once again!

[Libera]

Hey Zeila, sorry about the wait on this.  I've been looking at this sheet on and off for the past few months but haven't been able to write up anything concrete, so I'm just going to post some of my thoughts on this arrangement.

It may come as somewhat as a surprise to people here (given what I tend to arrange) but I actually listen to a lot of EDM and am pretty familiar with the umbrella genre (so definitely don't think that the following comments are from a place of prejudice).  I've also seen a fair few attempts to translate hardcore/dubstep etc. onto piano but I have never seen it go very well.  Functionally, I just don't think the piano is an instrument that can get across the sound correctly, or even approximate it that well; it always ends up sounding extremely awkward and out of place (as I think is what happens in this sheet), or underwhelming.

So I guess my question is: what is the purpose of the arrangement?  I can see that it was probably fun to write out and I don't deny that it's interesting trying to do these things, but as an end product I'm not sure bars 13-20 and 37-44 actually sound very much like the original at all.  Will people actually want to play this on piano, and be happy with the result?  From my point of view, I think the answer is probably no.  I can offer more concrete feedback on the other sections and I can probably suggest some changes to the 'hard' sections to get it a little closer, but I don't think I can fix/help with the fundamental issues with these places. 

Of course, it sometimes happens in arrangements that there is a bit of the original that fails to be captured by the piano (percussion etc.) but usually these things are minor and the piano arrangement still captures the whole piece at these points and effectively resembles it.  Here, however, in the above-mentioned sections, the growls are the entire focus of the piece and the piano simply cannot capture their sound.  It doesn't help that the rest of the piece effectively serves to build up to these sections, so leaving them out would be extremely underwhelming.

I apologise that you've had to wait a long time for this sort of post, but I kept coming back to the sheet in vain trying to work out if I give some feedback that would fix these issues.  I should have said something sooner.  The main point is that I'd like to get your thoughts on the sheet and what I've said in this post.  I'm definitely happy to have more of a conversation about it, but these are my thoughts at the moment.

[Fantastic Ike]

Yeah...I've kind of come to this conclusion myself. I'd tried to arrange dubstep songs myself before, and it didn't work: I thought it was just my inexperience at first, but I think there's just an inherent lack of compatibility between the two styles of dubstep/hardcore and solo piano. I could see an argument being made for this sheet going on the site for simply archival purposes--and there are sections of this song that people would want to play--but I just don't know if anyone could make this arrangement work without drastically changing the content of the sheet. Like, I think it might actually be impossible to have this A) be an accurate transcription B) capture the spirit of the original and C) sound good, no matter the arranger. That's just my two cents though.

[Zeila]

No it's definitely understandable that you'd both feel that way. Any attempt at converting dubstep to piano would have to be pretty stylized since any kind of pitch bend or microtone present in those growls would be impossible to play normally. I suppose catering more to the piano's strengths with utilizing pedals and perhaps more arpeggios/scales instead of random block chunks would be more natural to play (and listen to), but at the cost of changing the entire mood.

This was more of an experiment if anything, and I personally would have no interest in performing this myself. That being said, I feel like there is still value for archival purposes as Ike mentioned, and there's probably someone somewhere out there who would test it out. I think there is no great harm in posting it if there are more benefits than drawbacks, but I guess it would still go against the spirit of the site where accuracy is one of the biggest concerns (and many would probably argue that there are more drawbacks anyways, especially if you include the time it would take to check and polish this sheet by staff/community members)

I've thought about copying over some of this work over to a sheet for "Those Who Sow Darkness" in case this was the consensus since it's nearly the same thing except more calm and foreboding, but I'm not particularly interested in doing that at this point in time. Still, that is an option for the future, provided that it's not too repetitive or heavily reliant on the ambience noises.

I apologise that you've had to wait a long time for this sort of post, but I kept coming back to the sheet in vain trying to work out if I give some feedback that would fix these issues.  I should have said something sooner.  The main point is that I'd like to get your thoughts on the sheet and what I've said in this post.  I'm definitely happy to have more of a conversation about it, but these are my thoughts at the moment.

That's okay, thank you for trying anyways!

it begins

And so it ends, it was worth a shot lol. I'll leave this open to see if anyone has any last comments regarding the merit of this sheet as a concept (or if someone can magically make it more representative and it could turn into a collab)

[Libera]

Ah sorry, I forgot to respond to you here because we seemed to have reached an agreement without my input again.  Like you mention in one of your points, I don't think getting this site-ready is going to be worth the payoff of the sheet (for the reasons stated above).

I just wanted to remind you that you might want to archive this so that you can free up a sub slot.  It was worth a shot leaving it open for a bit (and arranging it in the first place!), but it may be more productive to move onto other things now.  The sheet is always available for archive anyway in your PA thread.

[Latios212]

It's been a little while, so I'll archive this~