Latios212's Colo(u)rs Project Sheets

[Latios212]

Here are the pieces I'm arranging for the project. Files are uploaded directly to the shared Dropbox folder.

Pokémon HeartGold Version & Pokémon SoulSilver Version - "Pewter City" (Four Hands)

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Doki Doki Literature Club Plus! - "Lavender Mist"

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[Bloop]

About Lavender Mist:
-m. 8 R.H.: You could add the high F that the piano plays in the original, if you want.
-m. 12 and m. 16 and every fourth measure until m. 32: The chords that the electric piano plays here are F and Fm (or Fm6), but since you left that part out, there's no Ab anywhere. You could add a second voice to the R.H. that plays A and Ab in half notes. There should be enough place for that everywhere.
-m. 15, 23 and 31 L.H.: The pizzicato strings jump up a few inversions in the original. You took some liberty with these chords, but you could consider moving the lower G up an octave in this measure specifically.
-m. 33-36 R.H.: I'd add staccato (and maybe even accents) markings to the octaves here, because of the strings in the original. There's a glockenspiel that does fill up the notes, but I feel like that's more like a reverb-y addon to the strings.

Aside from these things, everything looks fine! If you want, you could also add some slurs to most R.H. melodies. I'm not sure if you left them out consciously or not, but I'm a big fan, so I thought I'd mention it :p Here's a little comparison of m. 17-24 with and without slurs:

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About Pewter City (not all that much actually):
-m. 12 and 28, Pri. R.H.: wow octatonic scale getting used. You could renotate the first four accidentals in m. 12 as A# B# C# D# and the first two in m. 28 as D# and E#, if you like having a stepwise motion in notenames, but either way works.
-m. 22 and 30, Pri. R.H.: There's a Cn grace note missing before the last B.
-m. 32, Sec. R.H.: There's an eighth rest missing at the end of the bar.

Looks good otherwise! Again, there are some slur-possibilities here like in Lavender Mist, but that's up to you ^^

[Latios212]

Lavender Mist
All good suggestions and adjusted! I especially like the suggestion for including the A->Ab voice in those measures, that actually fits really nicely. For the last few bars, I went with staccatos but not accents as I don't think these notes are that heavily accented (or should be on piano).

For the slurs, I tend to use them sparingly unless I feel like I need to. The staccatos already sort of outline where to end phrases at least in m. 18-19. That said, I think in these couple of systems they do help highlight how m. 21-24 is played differently than 17-20 so I've added them in! (I haven't added them anywhere else though.)

Pewter City
-m. 12 and 28, Pri. R.H.: wow octatonic scale getting used. You could renotate the first four accidentals in m. 12 as A# B# C# D# and the first two in m. 28 as D# and E#, if you like having a stepwise motion in notenames, but either way works.
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Haha yeah I wasn't too sure how to spell these! I do think they look kinda funny either way. That said, I tried to contextualize it with what the lower parts were doing - in m. 12 having Bb/Db above an Eb bass and in m. Eb/F# above a D bass. (That said, looking at it again, I'm not sure if writing F# on top of the chord in m. 12 is correct...?)

Got the other two things! Thanks for checking!

[Bloop]

Nice! I'll abloopve of Lavender Mist then!

A bit more about Pewter City though:
-m.5 Secondo L.H.: The last D should be a F# I believe, same in m. 13

(That said, looking at it again, I'm not sure if writing F# on top of the chord in m. 12 is correct...?)

Good point, I didn't notice that at first lol. I prefer looking at that kind of chord as a 7b10 chord (rather than the more common 7#9), so having it as Gb will probably be a bit more natural.
-m.22 Primo L.H.: The F# on beat 1.5 should be a G (which makes it possible for the secondo to play the F# again)
-m.24 Secondo L.H.: The F# on beat 3 should be an octave lower.
-m.25 Secondo L.H.: The G on beat 1 should be an E above (the G that shows up in audiostretch is the bass drum, but it kinda overshadows the bass at first. You can hear the E later in the beat though.)

[Latios212]

Yep, all of those sound right, though I'm not 100% sure about the F# in secondo LH m. 24 beat 3. I've changed that anyway.

(Also for the chord in m. 12, I added a natural on the lower G since the upper one is now flat)

Thanks again!

[Bloop]

Awesome, then I'll abloopve this too!

[Libera]

Lavender Mist

-In the opening six bars, I'm not sure I can hear the tonic in these chords on beat 1.5.  It sounds like it should just be the third and the fifth.  I'm not sure it really needs beefing up either since the original is pretty quiet and calm here; it helps the contrast to add more harmony later in 8+.  The tonic is there in the background pads but they're pretty quiet compared to the piano.
-Related to the pads and my last point: I think the F triad in the left hand in bar 8 has the opposite effect to what happens in the original.  In the original, the piano drops out to leave just the pads and so the texture loosens up hugely in bar 8, whereas the LH F triad makes it sound just as strong as before - business as usual.  Have you considered raising that chord up an octave (or maybe even two?) and dropping the C to loosen it up a little?  I think that might help to get the same effect across on piano.  At least, it sounded good when I tried it out.
-Did you want to get the D->C / F->E resolutions in for bars 20/24 like you did in bar 28?  You could just put it an octave down to put it under the melody, and it'd help to differentiate those two bars.  At the moment the only difference is in the articulations.
-You could potentially try to add in some harmony in the RH of bars 25-27/29-31 to try and get the 'etherealness' across a little better.  It feels like those eight bars have a slightly different feel to the preceding 16 bars.
-I wouldn't mention it unless it was to go along with this other stuff, but the first and last 8va markings seem a bit further to the right than all of the others.  It may be worth adjusting them for consistency.

[Latios212]

-In the opening six bars, I'm not sure I can hear the tonic in these chords on beat 1.5.  It sounds like it should just be the third and the fifth.  I'm not sure it really needs beefing up either since the original is pretty quiet and calm here; it helps the contrast to add more harmony later in 8+.  The tonic is there in the background pads but they're pretty quiet compared to the piano.

Ah yeah good idea. I like those chords without the tonics; I've removed them. (Probably just the original imprinting on me when I was writing)

-Related to the pads and my last point: I think the F triad in the left hand in bar 8 has the opposite effect to what happens in the original.  In the original, the piano drops out to leave just the pads and so the texture loosens up hugely in bar 8, whereas the LH F triad makes it sound just as strong as before - business as usual.  Have you considered raising that chord up an octave (or maybe even two?) and dropping the C to loosen it up a little?  I think that might help to get the same effect across on piano.  At least, it sounded good when I tried it out.

Yeah that works for me too!

-Did you want to get the D->C / F->E resolutions in for bars 20/24 like you did in bar 28?  You could just put it an octave down to put it under the melody, and it'd help to differentiate those two bars.  At the moment the only difference is in the articulations.

A bit on the fence about this to try to avoid distracting from the main melody too much especially with the half notes in layer 2, but it probably won't hurt and it sounds alright. Added!

-You could potentially try to add in some harmony in the RH of bars 25-27/29-31 to try and get the 'etherealness' across a little better.  It feels like those eight bars have a slightly different feel to the preceding 16 bars.

Hmm, I think I'd rather not add anything here. There is a bit more going on in the way of background ambient harmonies but that's sort of present throughout the song and I think just focusing on the single note melody for these few measures is what I want to do. It's already a bit different stylistically from the 16th note runs in the previous section, anyway.

-I wouldn't mention it unless it was to go along with this other stuff, but the first and last 8va markings seem a bit further to the right than all of the others.  It may be worth adjusting them for consistency.

Yep, poked them a bit

Thanks for the thoughtful feedback! I've updated the file in the Dropbox folder. I'm currently away and only have v27 on this laptop I'm using right now, so I do apologize if anything funny happens with the articulations, feel free to fix anything necessary upon file conversion.

[Libera]

Looks great, accepted!

[Static]

Pewter City

• Pri. RH m7/15 beat 4.5: I hear a D under the E.
• Pri. RH m22/28 beat 1: These half notes sound like they should be quarter notes.
• Pri. RH m26 beat 4: The grace note slur looks a little weird.
• Pri. RH m30 beat 1: This quarter note sounds like an 8th note to me.
• Pri. RH m32 beats 1.5/3.5: The quarter notes are also shorter, probably would be better as 8th notes.
• Pri. RH m35 beat 3.5: Same as above.
• Pri. LH m8 beat 1.5: Consider removing the top D since it goes over the melody, but it sounds fine either way.
• Sec. RH: I'm pretty sure most of the chords are 3 notes for the entire track, like at the beginning (m1/3) I'm not hearing the A's and there's no Bb playing in m12, for example. But the added notes are correct, they fit with the chord, so it's fine to leave them too.
• Sec. RH/LH m12: This is a tritone sub in D, aka a dominant chord but with the root a tritone away from the normal dominant (A-Eb). Often in jazz pieces, the upper notes would still be spelled with "normal" D major accidentals (C# and F# instead of Db and Gb), so I sometimes think of it more like an A13b5(b9) with no root in terms of spelling. (A)-C#-Eb-G-Bb-F#. Conveniently this also helps you avoid having both Gb and Gn in the same chord. Hope that kinda makes sense... jazz theory is fun. This also applies to the chords in m26/34. The Db in the Pri. RH m12 can probably stay the same since it's part of a Bbm scale there.
• Sec. LH m2 beat 3.5: This C is played short, probably better written as an 8th.
• Sec. LH m5/13 beat 4.5: Should be D instead of F#.
• Sec. LH m7/15 beat 4.5: Should be A instead of E.

For your convenience, here's a copy of the file with all the changes except the ones I thought were optional/unimportant (bullet points 7-8).

[Latios212]

Thanks Static for the check and especially the explanation on the chord in m. 12 and places. I'm good with the adjustments you've made.

Regarding the two untouched points:

Pewter City

• Pri. LH m8 beat 1.5: Consider removing the top D since it goes over the melody, but it sounds fine either way.
• Sec. RH: I'm pretty sure most of the chords are 3 notes for the entire track, like at the beginning (m1/3) I'm not hearing the A's and there's no Bb playing in m12, for example. But the added notes are correct, they fit with the chord, so it's fine to leave them too.

- I think I'd prefer to keep it there, since I view that line (that previously appears on the first page) as the main melody, with the new eighth note line in Pri RH as secondary.
- Hmm, I think I'll probably keep it as is - I went through the original pretty closely before submitting it (based on what I wrote back a few years ago). It doesn't make a huge difference either way though, as you said.

[Static]

Sweet, I'll accept this one now