[GBA] Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town - "Summer" by Code_Name_Geek

[Zeta]

Submission Information:
Series: Harvest Moon
Game: Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town
Console: Game Boy Advance
Title: Summer
Instrumentation Solo Piano
Arranger: Code_Name_Geek

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[Code_Name_Geek]

Submission #3! The rhythms at the beginning are a little confusing to read, but I wanted to show that all the melody notes are supposed to be very short. If there's a way to clean it up I'm open to hearing it!

Edit: I also forgot to mention that the original composer wasn't credited in the game's credits, but this song comes from an earlier game in the series so I credited that composer and put the composer/sound designer from this game as arranger as I assume he was the one to re-arrange it for GBA.

[Latios212]

Great job! Pretty much everything I have to say is about the way it's written; notes look good.

- For measures 1-5 I think it would be best if the rests in both layers were raised. The upper layer ones dip a little low to the height of some lower layer notes and could be aligned vertically with the rest of the upper layer notes. The lower layer rests could fit comfortably on their normal positions on the staff in most places.
- The repeat section numbers should be pushed a little more to the left. (Not sure why they default to so far to the right)
- Bold the D.C. text.
- From looking at your PDF, looks like some articulations are horizontally offset. Might be that v26 conversion thing...
- Make sure to use capitals in the URL like https://www.ninsheetmusic.org/

Also, I think we could improve the layout/distribution a bit. The first system is the only one with three measures and it is indented as well, so it appears far more squished than the others in the song. My suggestion would be to move measure 3 to the next system to free up space in the first, and perhaps shrink the staves a bit so that notes aren't squashed so tightly together.

[Code_Name_Geek]

Great suggestions, done!

The articulations gave me a bit of trouble but it turns out that it was because "center over/under when stem side" was checked on in the articulation designer. I'm not sure if it's on by default or if it was because of the XML I imported but I'll keep an eye out for that in the future.

I shrunk the staff size a bit, how does it look now? (Is there standard sizes or is it just personal preference?)

Thanks as always!

Edit: I also slightly modified the wording in the credits because I thought "adapted" was a better description of what happened between the two systems than "arranged".

[Latios212]

Awesome, everything looks terrific! (There isn't a specific requirement for staff size but we try to avoid going too small (or larger than the default).

[Libera]

The notes look ok to me, but I do think that the general layout could be improved.  I find that using a 1st and 2nd time to save writing 2 or 3 bars is usually more confusing to the reader than it's worth saving the space for.  With that in mind, I got rid of all of the repeats with an even 2 bars per system for eight systems.  Naturally this means you have to go onto two pages, but I think it's easier on the eyes this way.

Other things:
-Although this didn't matter (since it was previously one page) there were missing page numbers and subtitles on the document so I put in some for the second page.
-I messed around with the alignment of the url (it was too low), the composer/arranger info and the subtitle (I brought it closer).
-I fixed all of the articulations, although I may have to do it again if you want to edit the file further/don't like these edits.
-I undid the 83% page resize and simply changed the staff size to 0.65cm.  This is what I (and a few other people) use on practically every sheet and I pretty much think it's the perfect size apart from some odd cases.
-The spacing between staves wasn't very uniform so I changed that to be 1 inch everywhere.

I think that's everything I did but if you have any questions about my edits, do ask.  Here's the file if you'd like to use it!

I also thought that maybe it would look cleaner if you put the 1st and 2nd layer rests together when they coincided, but I didn't edit this onto the file as I didn't consider it just part of the general formatting sprucing up I was doing.  Also Latios didn't suggest this, which makes me think there might be a reason for not doing so.  Let me know what you think anyway.

That about covers everything, I think.  It's nice seeing some more stuff from you; keep it up!

[Code_Name_Geek]

Thank you for doing all of that Libera, the edits look great to me! The one question I do have is how do you properly resize the staff in Finale (or where is the setting found)? I had trouble with it and I'm still not sure I did it the right way.

The 83% page resize seems to be a default that carries over from the XML files I use as my other files have this as well, in the future should I just get rid of this and fix the staff size from the beginning?

About the rests, I found that when they were together, the rhythm on beat 1 of the voice tended to look like eighth note/16th note instead of 8th note/16th rest/16th note. Looking at it again, perhaps it would be better to split the beams (and consolidate the rests) to avoid this confusion altogether? Or maybe it's not as confusing as I thought and I'm just overthinking it, I'm happy to go with whichever way you think is best!

Thanks again for the edits, I appreciate it! I'll update the files right away. (I think the articulations should be okay because when Finale asked whether I want to enable automatic placement I clicked no, hope it worked.)

[Latios212]

Will leave it to Libera to comment on the staff sizes, but regarding those rests, yes I do think it would be more confusing to read if you consolidated them in places for reasons like the one you mentioned. I tend to reserve rest consolidation for when both parts have the same rhythm or are resting for the same extended period of time - not brief overlaps like here.

Also you have a stray forward repeat bar in m. 9.

[Code_Name_Geek]

Also you have a stray forward repeat bar in m. 9.

Oops, fixed!

[Libera]

The one question I do have is how do you properly resize the staff in Finale (or where is the setting found)? I had trouble with it and I'm still not sure I did it the right way.

If you use the resize tool near the staff it should bring up a menu with staff size choices (in actual measurements as well as percentages.)  If you need more specific help with that just send me a PM and I can send some pictures.

The 83% page resize seems to be a default that carries over from the XML files I use as my other files have this as well, in the future should I just get rid of this and fix the staff size from the beginning?

People do different things, but I personally always fix 0.65cm staff sizes unless that doesn't work for some strange reason.  If you'd like to also do that, then yes I think it'd be best to just fix the staff size from the beginning, but it's up to you really.

About the rests, I found that when they were together, the rhythm on beat 1 of the voice tended to look like eighth note/16th note instead of 8th note/16th rest/16th note. Looking at it again, perhaps it would be better to split the beams (and consolidate the rests) to avoid this confusion altogether? Or maybe it's not as confusing as I thought and I'm just overthinking it, I'm happy to go with whichever way you think is best!

regarding those rests, yes I do think it would be more confusing to read if you consolidated them in places for reasons like the one you mentioned. I tend to reserve rest consolidation for when both parts have the same rhythm or are resting for the same extended period of time - not brief overlaps like here.

All good arguments; it probably would be more confusing with them consolidated now that I think about it more.  Certainly happy to leave it as it is anyway.

(I think the articulations should be okay because when Finale asked whether I want to enable automatic placement I clicked no, hope it worked.)

Sadly, this didn't seem to work for whatever reason.  Nevertheless, I've fixed the articulations again and updated the files for you.  We should be all good to go here!

[Zeta]

This submission has been accepted by Libera.

~Zeta, your friendly NSM-Bot