[SWITCH] Fire Emblem: Three Houses - "Fire Emblem: Three Houses Main Theme" by Latios212

[Zeta]

Submission Information:
Series: Fire Emblem
Game: Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Console: Nintendo Switch
Title: Fire Emblem: Three Houses Main Theme
Instrumentation Solo Piano
Arranger: Latios212

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[Latios212]

[Libera]

Sorry for the wait, but better late than never I guess.  This piece is pretty strange in that it's a mix of extremely standard stuff alongside some ... much weirder things.

-The ostinato Ds through the first 17 bars have the rests in the wrong places.  Both vocalists take their breaths at beat 4.5 every two bars without fail.  I understand the need to mess around with it when you have the low octaves to get in in bars 10, 12, 14, 16 but otherwise I don't see any reason to change it.
-Is the pedal sign supposed to indicate that the performer should hold down the pedal for the entirety of bars 10-17?  If that's the intention then that seems awfully muddy and trying it out on the piano it doesn't sound particularly convincing as an idea.
-Missing Gs in the chord on beat 1 in bars 13 and 17?
-Any reason you've messed with the rhythms at the start of each bar in the left hand in the section 10-17?  It kind of makes the first half of each bar sound a bit weird as the ostinato disappears.
-The rhythm in the melody for bar 24 should be:

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-I'm hearing some extra bass notes in bar 33:

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-I think I'd keep the ostinato going as is for bars 26-32 rather than changing from double hits to singles.  Are you worried about it being too strenuous on the left hand? Because it's not actually that bad to keep it up, at least for me anyway.
-There's the potential for the courtesy accidental in 36 to be confusing, but I guess the parenthesis help with that.  It's probably best how you have it but I thought I'd say anyway.
-Because of the shear number of notes in the left hand of bars 38-41 it does get pretty cramped there.  Though spreading it out to two bars a system forces you to go onto four pages which I guess you don't want to do.  I don't really know what the best thing to do is there, but it does look kind of awkward at the moment.
-I really don't think the way the final bar is written out is the best way to present that information.  The opening string of quavers is way faster than anything in the rest of the piece which, although I realise you've indicated no tempo) isn't how a reader is going to interpret it at all as they're likely going to guess that the quavers are at least roughly equivalent to the previous ones.  Also even accounting for the rit the quavers at the end of the bar are so vastly slower than the opening ones that it's pretty confusing really.  I'd definitely consider making that opening ascending pattern as small notehead semiquavers, which I think would convey the execution much more clearly, and also changing the some of the note lengths at the end instead of using a rit (if you think about it, a rit doesn't really make that much sense considering that you've just said 'without tempo', so how can the tempo slow down?).
-Also regarding the final bar, I think there's an E just before the very first F in that quaver series.  Furthermore, I'm not really hearing this A Bn A at the end?  I certainly can't hear the piano doing anything like that and the background instrument (whatever it is) seems to be alternating between Es and Fs.

Nice job though.

[Latios212]

Thanks for checking! I have very little time tonight so I'll make edits tomorrow but just want to clarify a few things:

-The ostinato Ds through the first 17 bars have the rests in the wrong places.  Both vocalists take their breaths at beat 4.5 every two bars without fail.  I understand the need to mess around with it when you have the low octaves to get in in bars 10, 12, 14, 16 but otherwise I don't see any reason to change it.

What I have right now is a constant drone with rests either when it's unreachable (when the LH plays a low octave) or the RH overlaps it. If I missed the rests on those beat 4.5s as you mentioned I'll look at that

-Is the pedal sign supposed to indicate that the performer should hold down the pedal for the entirety of bars 10-17?  If that's the intention then that seems awfully muddy and trying it out on the piano it doesn't sound particularly convincing as an idea.

No, I just meant to direct the performer to continue using the pedal after the explicit lift point in the previous measure. Maybe a "con pedale" would be better here

-Any reason you've messed with the rhythms at the start of each bar in the left hand in the section 10-17?  It kind of makes the first half of each bar sound a bit weird as the ostinato disappears.

Maybe I just wrote it wrong? What do you hear instead?

-I think I'd keep the ostinato going as is for bars 26-32 rather than changing from double hits to singles.  Are you worried about it being too strenuous on the left hand? Because it's not actually that bad to keep it up, at least for me anyway.

Thought about this a bit while arranging, for 26+ I think I wrote in the bass hits instead of the rhythm. Given the context in the piece though it makes sense to keep the momentum going so I can change that

Furthermore, I'm not really hearing this A Bn A at the end?  I certainly can't hear the piano doing anything like that and the background instrument (whatever it is) seems to be alternating between Es and Fs.

Not the piano, I think I wrote out what I heard prominently in another layer

The rest I'll look at / fix tomorrow!

[Libera]

What I have right now is a constant drone with rests either when it's unreachable (when the LH plays a low octave) or the RH overlaps it. If I missed the rests on those beat 4.5s as you mentioned I'll look at that

Ah I see.  Well I'd consider writing them in anyway with parenthesis just to keep the lines clear, even if it doesn't affect the actual sound.  Also I just had another listen and there is exactly one place where they don't take a breath on beat 4.5 which is bar 8, so that bar is fine.

No, I just meant to direct the performer to continue using the pedal after the explicit lift point in the previous measure. Maybe a "con pedale" would be better here

Yeah,  I think what threw me off was the con pedale at 18 which is probably unnecessary if the pedal usage is still up to the performer there.

Maybe I just wrote it wrong? What do you hear instead?

Exactly the same ostinato pattern as everywhere else from then until 33.

Not the piano, I think I wrote out what I heard prominently in another layer

Ah I can hear the part you're talking about now, although it sounds more like A -> G -> A to me than A -> Bn -> A.

[Latios212]

-The ostinato Ds through the first 17 bars have the rests in the wrong places.  Both vocalists take their breaths at beat 4.5 every two bars without fail.  I understand the need to mess around with it when you have the low octaves to get in in bars 10, 12, 14, 16 but otherwise I don't see any reason to change it.

What I have right now is a constant drone with rests either when it's unreachable (when the LH plays a low octave) or the RH overlaps it. If I missed the rests on those beat 4.5s as you mentioned I'll look at that

Ah I see.  Well I'd consider writing them in anyway with parenthesis just to keep the lines clear, even if it doesn't affect the actual sound.  Also I just had another listen and there is exactly one place where they don't take a breath on beat 4.5 which is bar 8, so that bar is fine.

Sure I can write them in parenthesized when they're within reach of the left hand part. I've added in those rests too.

-Is the pedal sign supposed to indicate that the performer should hold down the pedal for the entirety of bars 10-17?  If that's the intention then that seems awfully muddy and trying it out on the piano it doesn't sound particularly convincing as an idea.

No, I just meant to direct the performer to continue using the pedal after the explicit lift point in the previous measure. Maybe a "con pedale" would be better here

Yeah,  I think what threw me off was the con pedale at 18 which is probably unnecessary if the pedal usage is still up to the performer there.

Gotcha. I'll use "con pedale" at m. 9 and remove the one at m. 18 (my intention there was to explicitly tell the performer to continue using pedal there despite the staccatos in the bass, but I guess it's not so necessary)

-Missing Gs in the chord on beat 1 in bars 13 and 17?

Yep

-Any reason you've messed with the rhythms at the start of each bar in the left hand in the section 10-17?  It kind of makes the first half of each bar sound a bit weird as the ostinato disappears.

Maybe I just wrote it wrong? What do you hear instead?

Exactly the same ostinato pattern as everywhere else from then until 33.

Ah okay. The other two layers distracted me while writing the second layer. Added back in.

-The rhythm in the melody for bar 24 should be:

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Whoops

-I'm hearing some extra bass notes in bar 33:

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sounds good

-I think I'd keep the ostinato going as is for bars 26-32 rather than changing from double hits to singles.  Are you worried about it being too strenuous on the left hand? Because it's not actually that bad to keep it up, at least for me anyway.

you got it

-There's the potential for the courtesy accidental in 36 to be confusing, but I guess the parenthesis help with that.  It's probably best how you have it but I thought I'd say anyway.

I wanted to be explicit about the natural because of the C# on bottom. It would look a bit neater without the parentheses, but I didn't want the performer to get the idea that the Cn is different from the C preceding it. Hence, this

-Because of the shear number of notes in the left hand of bars 38-41 it does get pretty cramped there.  Though spreading it out to two bars a system forces you to go onto four pages which I guess you don't want to do.  I don't really know what the best thing to do is there, but it does look kind of awkward at the moment.

What I can do is shift EVERYTHING back one bar since the very first system can easily take it. I was a bit hesitant to have a two-bar system there but I think it works better than three. Let me know if any dynamics or staff/lyric spacings are off now since I shifted all the measures...

-I really don't think the way the final bar is written out is the best way to present that information.  The opening string of quavers is way faster than anything in the rest of the piece which, although I realise you've indicated no tempo) isn't how a reader is going to interpret it at all as they're likely going to guess that the quavers are at least roughly equivalent to the previous ones.  Also even accounting for the rit the quavers at the end of the bar are so vastly slower than the opening ones that it's pretty confusing really.  I'd definitely consider making that opening ascending pattern as small notehead semiquavers, which I think would convey the execution much more clearly, and also changing the some of the note lengths at the end instead of using a rit (if you think about it, a rit doesn't really make that much sense considering that you've just said 'without tempo', so how can the tempo slow down?).

Makes sense to me. I've shortened the durations and played around with the groupings a bit. I still would like to keep the rit. though, since the performer obviously has to play at some speed which should be slowed at the end.

-Also regarding the final bar, I think there's an E just before the very first F in that quaver series.  Furthermore, I'm not really hearing this A Bn A at the end?  I certainly can't hear the piano doing anything like that and the background instrument (whatever it is) seems to be alternating between Es and Fs.

Got the E. Looking at it again I think after the G in the piano it would be good to replace the last couple notes with a rolled chord E-F-A-Bn-C to try and capture the dissonant ambience at the end instead of trying to follow a specific line.

Thanks for all the feedback! I've uploaded the new (and much improved) files

[Libera]

Sweet, everything looks great to me.  This turned out pretty well I think.

Thanks for all the feedback! I've uploaded the new (and much improved) files :)

No worries, you've helped me out with plenty of sheets in the past. :)

[Static]

Looks good, I'd just make the last system 3 measures instead of 2 so it spaces out the notes more evenly. I'd also change the held quarter note in m29 to a layer 2 dotted half to be more consistent with other parts of the sheet.

Edit: Upon closer inspection, this is not the right sheet that I intended this feedback for...

[Static]

OK, time for the actual feedback:

- Slur on grace note in m41.
- The 16th note in m33 RH beat 1  should not be tied.

Other than that, looks great!

[Latios212]

DANGIT how did I miss that slur lol

Good catch on breaking that tie, I think it actually does rearticulate there contrary to the main melody (e.g. m. 40).

Files updated!

[Static]

nice

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