[NDS] Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - "Dick Gumshoe ~ It's Detective Gumshoe, Pal!" by jb3ck15

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Submission Information:
Series: Ace Attorney
Game: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Console: Nintendo DS
Title: Dick Gumshoe ~ It's Detective Gumshoe, Pal!
Instrumentation Solo Piano
Arranger: jb3ck15

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[jb3ck15]

This is my first time submitting an arrangement so constructive criticism is definitely welcome! I imported from Musescore to Notepad, but was having issues erasing the "Pno." markings on the left, even with the guide posted and after looking on the internet, so help with that would be appreciated.

[Maelstrom]

Welcome to the site!

A few things before I get into the nitty-gritty of feedback.

-First, check this thread out. It's got some tools to make transitioning to notepad from musescore much more painless.
-Second, I think I hear some harmonies in the right hand of this piece. Consider adding in that 2nd RH voice when nothing is being played. It would make the song sound less empty.
-Third, you should fix the note beamings. The goal here is to show the beat in a way that is easy to parse. The main issue with this sheet is the dotted 8th-dotted 8th-dotted 8th rhythm. If you look at it in, say, a 2/4 measure, notice how hard it is to tell where beat 2 is. But if we change it to dotted 8th-16th tied to an 8th-8th, it becomes much more clear.
Take a look at these two ways of notating it, put side by side.

In the second one, it's much easier to see where beat 2 is and thus is much easier to parse the rhythm. Aside from that, the beaming looks reasonably solid, with the exception of a tied 16th in measure 8's LH. which could just be an 8th note instead.
-Note-wise, it sounds pretty solid at a cursory glance, with a few LH LH rhythms that sound slightly off.
-Oh, and I'd recommend writing the 4/4 measures followed bya 2/4 measure as a single 6/4 measure.

[jb3ck15]

Thanks for the feedback! I'll check out the link you mentioned and see if that cleans up my Notepad score at all and I'll try implementing all of those as soon as I can.

[jb3ck15]

Okay, so I made some changes, but am still having some weird issues.

I used the Musescore template you provided, but it looks like it's for an old version of Musescore, so I still had to move some stuff around manually (no biggie, just wanted to keep you aware). When I used the XML editor, it wouldn't work at all, it appeared to just crash on startup, although my file options were .mxl and .musicxml, so I'm not sure if there's no longer a compatible file type.

Once I imported the Musescore file to Finale, I noticed that there were some weird bugs when listening to it (e.g. measure 4 LH rhythm seems different in the mus and midi files, and measure 11 RH the constant 8th notes aren't played straight), and I was unable to edit the notes. I'm not sure if this is a bug from importing from Musescore into Finale Notepad, and for the future I will likely try to write in Notepad in the first place to avoid these issues.

On the plus side, I did make improvements using your suggestions. I changed up my beaming to line up with what you suggested and I think it looks a lot easier to read. I also added the other line in the RH to make it sound a little less empty.

Formatting-wise, I know it's not ready yet and I'm still having some issues that I will try to figure out, but if anyone has experienced any of the same issues as me imported from Musescore 3 (I'm using version 3.4.2 if that helps), please let me know.

Thanks guys!!

[Maelstrom]

Whoops, I made a mistake. 6/4 implies that the time signiture is compound and not a simple 4/4+2/4. Either change it back or make it 3/2, but the former is probably easier. My apologies.

Sorry about the importer not working. I can give this a go and try to format it properly if you want.

[jb3ck15]

It's all good! I can work on changing that back over the course of tonight. If you wouldn't mind helping me with my formatting, I would appreciate it!

[Maelstrom]

No problem, I'll take care of it now.

[Maelstrom]

Lemme walk you through the changes I make.
First, stuff like this is a bit of a mess and likely why the import went wrong:

Not sure if this is how you had it in musescore, but there are far too many layers here and it's messing everything up.
Looks like they were messed up further my my copy+pasting, but it looks a lot cleaner like this:


-I also changed the first measure from a 1/8 to a pickup measure, which I'm sure is something that got messed up in the transfer.
-I moved the 2nd voice in m3 to the 2nd layer - voices should be kept to the same layer. As it was, the beaming made it look like beat 2 onward was actually the same voice as beat 1 1st layer.
-There's some places where the bassline is held, but in some of the short repeated notes, like m3's LH, 2 16ths would be better. I took the liberty of changing them. I also added a few staccatos to the LH in the 2nd part.

Some things I'm leaving it up to you to change:
-m15's LH starts with 3 16th notes. I hear it other places, but it did make sense to leave them out for playability reasons. I'm not sure what makes this measure different.
-m11 LH - I'ts not humanly possible to play both layers here. Either pick one, or have the right hand take that higher note. 
-The background voice. I'm a bit mixed on how you implemented it. My original idea was that it could play when nothing else was going on in the right hand to give it something to do. Having it everywhere leads to impossible jumps like m1 and a sudden increase in difficulty
-The harmony for the main melody. I wrote out what I heard for the first system; see if you can use that as a starting point to hear the harmony for the rest of it.
-One more thing about the background voice - It changes up in m12
-Measure spacing. Either tweak it so that everything is on one page (more difficult) or so that there are more systems on page 2 (harder, but I think you can do it with notepad. The reason I'm not doing it now is I think that adding/removing the 2nd layer will change the spacing of the first page somewhat.
Here's the file I fixed. As I said, there is still work to do that can help you be a better arranger by working through it yourself. It's always nice to see new arrangers around here, and this is a pretty solid first sheet, nice job.

[jb3ck15]

Thank you so much for putting your time into this!

The layers thing you described wasn't nearly that bad in Musescore, there were only ever one or two per clef at a time, generally only one for the bass clef. I think for the most part, they were transfer issues, although it's entirely possible it was worse than I realized originally.

I like all of the changes you made, and the ones you suggested also make sense and I will do my best to implement them. I struggled with the background voice because I wanted to find a blend of including it to make it sound less empty but not make it too difficult, but at some points it seemed odd to have it just disappear. That's probably a sacrifice that has to be made for playability.

I'll keep working at it, thanks again for all your feedback and help, it's been really helpful and encouraging!

[jb3ck15]

Okay, I think I got all the changes you mentioned. I wasn't able to pick out any harmony in the second section (starting at m17), but it's possible there is some there.

Other than that, the only thing that I see for sure needs to be changed is the spacing. I don't think Notepad allows me to mess with the spacing; the whole utilities bar doesn't exist, and a quick Google search says that's the way to go about changing it.

[Maelstrom]

Right, forgot about notepad. In case you haven't noticed already, it's an intentionally hamstrung piece of software meant to frustrate you into paying for finale. This can be incredibly expensive to obtain legally, although the price can be as low as $100 if you are a college/university student.

Back to the sheet; I'll be giving it a full check now. I ended up making all these changes.
-I'm going to do a bit of cross staff notation with the harmony line. This will make it clearer what is that voice instead of just having it make octaves in the same layer as the LH.
-m11 RH - the harmony here is actually a g.
-I fixed a misaligned layer in m12. Finale has a bad habit of not realigning colliding layers when you remove the collision.
-added a half note harmony in m15, even if it is just replayed the next measure
-realigned 2nd layer in m16, and added harmony to the melody for beat 1.
-Also, the 2nd note in the 2nd layer chord is an F, not a G.
-I added harmony for all the parts in the 2nd section. I also added in the 2nd voice that comes in at the end of m18 and m22.
-Fixed harmony in m25 RH - should be a G, not an A.
-changed the final beat in the final melody in the RH.
-Adjusted 8th note beaming in m8, m11, and m15. If you want to know the why of what I did, just ask.
-Slurred the grace notes.
-Added a double barline at the end of m16 to indicate the section change.
Alright, I made 2 edits of the formatting, and I want you to the one to choose which one you want. You can either have the 1 page version that is smaller and slightly more squished, or the 2 page version that has more space but takes up two pages. If you're not sure, maybe print them out and see how easy they are to play on piano.

[jb3ck15]

Yeah, I see the limitations. I am a university student, but I'm not sure if I can justify the price at this point in time (maybe if arranging becomes a more frequent activity of mine).

The changes you made all sound good, and I like the changed beaming. I see why you did it; I'm not sure how to do that in Notepad or even if that's something I can do.

I think the 2 page version is definitely easier to read. Thanks again for your help, Maelstrom!

[Maelstrom]

I took the liberty of updating the files for you.

I will leave my mark of approval here. It will be accepted once a 2nd updater looks over it.

Glad I could help; I hope to see more of you in the future.

[mastersuperfan]

This is really good! I always thought this would be a tricky one to arrange but this is great.

I've already revised the files with all of the following changes/suggestions. The link to the files is here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0b3r43j1myo2rqk/AAB2dInYI17ZcIBYgpXITfIua?dl=0

(NOTE: Finale v26 messes up articulations if you import it into an older version, so you're probably going to have to delete and re-enter all the staccatos yourself if you import the MUS or MUSX into Finale.)

A few small things:
- Tempo should be q=110, not q=120. The left side of the tempo marking should also be vertically aligned with the time signature.
- Masakazu Sugimori composed the soundtrack for the original GBA release, and Naoto Tanaka (former alias Akemi Kimura) remastered it for the DS re-releases that were brought to the West. Accordingly, "Nintendo DS arrangement by Naoto Tanaka" should be added to the composer information, and 2005 should be added as a copyright year (see here: https://www.ninsheetmusic.org/download/pdf/476). (Admittedly, not all of the sheets correctly have all this information, but I will go back and fix them sometime).
- The staff size is very small, and the four-measure systems are somewhat cramped. You have a lot of extra space on page 2, so I would increase the staff size and change it to 3 measures per system (if you can't make this change, then I or someone else can get it for you).
- In m7 RH, the C on beat 2.5 (the C in the C-Eb dyad) should still be tied to a half note. Even though the C is re-articulated in Layer 2 on beat 3, having a half note at the same time in Layer 1 indicates it should be held after being re-articulated. You can see what I mean in the updated files.
- The second note in m8 LH (C on beat 2) is a quarter note, rather than an eighth note.
- The very last note in the LH (m27) is two sixteenth notes instead of one eighth note.

I also made some changes to m17-18 and m21-22:
- In both m18 and m22, I added an Eb to another layer to represent the ongoing main melody underneath the piano line. In m22, I also added a D to this layer on beat 4 as a pickup to m23 (I omitted this D in m19 since it clashed with the piano's eighth notes).
- The piano rhythm in the second half of m18 should be quarter(G)-eighth(C)-eighth(D), not eighth-eighth-quarter.
- The piano line in the second half of m22 is different from m18 (quarter(G)-quarter(Bb)).
- I moved the piano pickup at the end of m17 into a different layer to indicate it belongs to a different voice.
- At the end of m21, the piano line has two sixteenth notes as a pickup instead of one eighth note. (I also moved this to another layer.)

Let me know what you think of these revisions, and if you have anything else you'd like to add or change. If you're happy with the files now, then I'm happy to approve and accept, although I'll also ask Maelstrom to take another look and confirm all of these changes.