Arrangement Highlights of 2022

[Latios212]

Past topics
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017

Time for that topic again! Now that 2022 is over, what sheets that you made during the year are you the most proud of?

(If you're not an arranger, you can list your favorite new sheets by other arrangers instead!)

[Tobbeh99]

I havent posted it. But I made an orchestral arrangement of Wild Arms - Alone in the World. Which I'm very proud of.

I also like my arrangement contest arrangement which was a relaxification of One Winged Angel. Which also went well!

[BlackDragonSlayer]

2022, the year of my first sheet on the site

[Atcero]

The year of replacements for me, lets goooooo (shout out to the updaters on the harder CV sheets :kekdog:)

 Numbah 5

The Next Pyramid - King's Valley II: The Seal of El Giza
The first arrangement I ever attempted as a kiddo, finally complete after a long time.

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 4

Demon Castle Study - Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
Classical sounding CV song :hot:

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 3rd

Aquarius - Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse & Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Double trouble. I wanted to replace CotM's version but thought might as well do the original while im at it, so did both in the same sub period and that was a mistake for names.

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 No. 2

STOOOOOOORRRMM EAGLE - Mega Man X
How could it not be.

Rockin song.

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 Ones

Demon Castle Pinnacle - Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
Easily a doozy to arrange and replace, but hella fun to do so

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Learned a lot this year and can't wait to learn more next year so I can flood the site with more CV sheets

[LeviR.star]

I feel like I've accomplished a lot more this past year than in 2021; having re-written nearly 30 of my own sheets, my PA is in a much better shape now.

Here's a rundown of my Arrangement Highlights of 2022:

Number Five

5. [NES] Mega Man 2 - "Dr. Wily Stage 1" (Replacement)

[SHEET]

Don't forget, this is the one I did with Latios!! Many thanks to him for making this "impossible sheet" possible

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Number Four

4. [NES] Bomberman - "Music from Bomberman"

[SHEET]

Putting this comprehensive sheet together took forever, but it was worth it for one of the NES library's most iconic titles

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Number Three

3. [SNES] Kirby Super Star - "Flying Through Outer Space"

[SHEET]

I can't think of many sheets that took longer to transcribe as this one. Curse you, Kirby Super Star, with your tricky sheets!

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Number Two

2. [PSX] Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - "Wood Carving Partita"

[SHEET]

You can bet your bottom dollar I'll be submitting this one eventually. It makes sense that my first Igavania sheet would also be my hardest one from the franchise so far

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Number One

1. [SNES] Mega Man & Bass - "Cold Man Stage" (Re-Write)

[SHEET]

It took half a semester's worth of Jazz Theory to turn one of my worst sheets into the best one I've made all year. I'm so happy I finished it!

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In addition to re-writing a decent number of my most outdated arrangements, I've also managed to finish arranging the entire soundtracks for Mappy (4 sheets), The Tower of Druaga (6 sheets), Kirby's Pinball Land (9 sheets), and Mega Man II (18 sheets), the latter two of which I had been working on since I joined this site around six years ago. I didn't get to polish up those hundreds of other sheets of mine (I'll admit I was thinking a bit too ambitiously), but I'm still satisfied with my progress and hope to accomplish even more for 2023.

[BlackDragonSlayer]

The year of replacements for me, lets goooooo

having re-written nearly 30 of my own sheets

Replacements are a noble effort deserving of praise :sun:

[Kricketune54]

Honestly, this was tough to come up with for 2022. I felt like while I was mostly pleased with stuff I arranged, but as my total of arrangements has increased, it's all become such a blur. Some stuff I put out in 2022 was stuff I had files of for a year or more, or were revisions of arrangements from 2021.

No. 5

Meteo - Star Fox 64

My first effort of the replacement initiative, while I enjoy SF 64's music a lot, I hadn't explored this particular track much. It was pretty tough, and was listed as so in the initiative, but I think I got there after some initial difficulties.

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No. 4

World of Miracles - Planet Popstar - Kirby Star Allies

Special thanks to Static for putting this one over the edge imo with some chord choices. I like this spacey map rendition of the game's theme and it did pretty okay on piano

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No. 3

Colosseum Battle Round Intros - Pokémon Colosseum

This was a pretty easy arrangement compilation for me, but one I had been looking forward to making for quite a while. It's got a very regal sound, and I find the rolls quite enjoyable.

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No. 2

Antenna Cradle - GoldenEye 007

Another replacement initiative, and another song I really wouldn't have arranged otherwise. This is the theme from the final level of Goldeneye, and I think it goes pretty hard on piano.

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No. 1

Relic Forest - Pokémon Colosseum

I started this back in 2021, right when I switched over from MuseScore to Finale. It took a while to come around to it because while it is a short piece, I wanted to nail it as good as I could. With a little bit of work in submissions, I think I produced the most faithful version of this theme theme that you can currently find online, so much so I'm fairly certain the composer quoted it in his most recent performance video (starting at 1:07)

Honestly, I find the first few chords are just fun and easy to play on the piano

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Outside of my own arranging, I'd like to give some performance/playing shoutouts.  I enjoyed the variety of Forgotten Land sheets that have been done so far, Latios' "Chat with the Professor" sheet from Arceus, and many others from throughout the year. The Space Travel project was very cool, and NineLives has done a great job highlighting the various updates on YouTube. And I can't forget to shout out Cacabish and his running and holding down the fort of the performance events!

[Fantastic Ike]

2022 is where I really began to get into the arrangement groove, and I've never looked back since. Lots of difficult stuff I'm proud I got through.

No. 5

Final Fantasy XIII - Sazh's Theme

This is one of those pieces where I'm less proud about accuracy (this is gonna be a killer if it ever makes it to submissions) than the fact I got it done in the first place. Condensing a Brubeck-style jazz piece into a single piano sheet was honestly pretty brutal, and this might have been the longest I've ever spent on an arrangement, ever.

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No. 4

Hades - God of the Dead

The most recent arrangement on here I've finished, this was a celebration of 100 sheets finished. Yes, this is an incredibly long track (over 9 minutes long with no repeats in sight) but it was just so freaking fun to arrange. Hades is one of my favorite soundtracks ever, and I can't tell you how many times I've blasted this track besides arrangement purposes. If I'm crazy enough I might attempt the EXTREME version of this track as a piano duet in 2023...

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No. 3

Marvel's Spider-Man - Anything for a Story

This was one of my first "challenge pieces:" arranging and submitting a difficult sheet to the site just because I could. It's a very textured piece with no discernible melody so I had to push my skills to the limit to get this site-ready. The final sheet has a couple compromises I'm still a bit disappointed by, but that was also a very important lesson.

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No. 2

Final Fantasy XI - Battle Theme

This was a legacy sheet of mine, and while I don't hold as much nostalgia for it as number one I still loved cleaning this one up. This track showed me how much a single sheet can transform over the submission process, and though it took a long while from start to finish I'm proud of how it came out.

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No. 1

Street Fighter Alpha: Warrior's Dreams - Charlie Stage

Nothing special about this sheet in theory but this was my first ever sheet submitted back to NSM, back when I knew a lot less about arranging. Sat on this for about five years before resubmitting. I'm so proud to have come all this way, and looking at this sheet on-site always makes me smile.

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[Olimar12345]

This year I revisited a lot of music from some of my favorite Pokémon games. These were my favirote picks for this year:

Honorable Mention

[SNES] - Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island
Big Boss BGM

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No. 5

[NDS] - Pokémon Diamond Version & Pokémon Pearl Version
Pokémon League (Day)

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No. 4

[GB] - Pokémon Gold Version & Pokémon Silver Version
Route 29

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No. 3

[GB] - Pokémon Gold Version & Pokémon Silver Version
Ecruteak City

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No. 2

[NDS] - Pokémon HeartGold Version & Pokémon SoulSilver Version
Route 29

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No. 1

[NDS] - Pokémon HeartGold Version & Pokémon SoulSilver Version
National Park

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[Latios212]

I only have half a year's worth of stuff since I got really busy the second half of last year... but still enough to form a solid list!

Honorable Mention (Pokémon Legends: Arceus)

"Chat with the Professor"
Sheet
Original

There isn't anything particularly special about my sheet of this since it was very straightforward to write out, but it's a nice piece nonetheless!

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#5 (The Great Ace Attorney 2: Resolve)

"Partners - The game is afoot!"
Sheet
Original

This is one of the really climactic tracks from The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles duo of games which I finally got around to playing, and I'm pretty happy with how this sheet came out! (I've still yet to learn it though...)

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#4 (Rhythm Heaven Fever)

"Dreams of Our Generation (Night Walk)"
Sheet
Original

One of my favorite Rhythm Heaven songs! It's a very uplifting piece that I was really happy to have written out after I was able to write down a reasonable bassline with the help of an instrumental version of the original.

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#3 (Atelier Ryza: Ever Darkness & the Secret Hideout)

"Ordinary Days"
Sheet
Original

I also played (well, haven't finished...) this game towards the beginning of the year and really enjoyed the overall cozy and light atmosphere, of which music like this was a big part. I helped my buddy Sayshi iron out an arrangement of this for him to perform and it came out really well!

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#2 (Xenoblade Chronicles)

"Alcamoth, Imperial Capital"
Sheet
Original

I'm not quite sure what it is about this one, but I really liked how this one turned out. Maybe it's that I don't tend to experiment with such heavy textures very often.

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#1 (Octopath Traveler)

"A Sea Breeze Blows"
Sheet
Original

This is one of my (admittedly many) favorite tracks from Octopath that I had occasionally thought about how to write out. It was difficult to come up with something nice on piano since the original has such lush harmonies and a texture highly dependent on strings. But after playing around with it I ended up with something I'm super proud of, in terms of aesthetic presentation, how fun it is to play, and how nice it sounds. I hope to get a decent recording of this sometime since the playback doesn't do this piece justice.

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[The Deku Trombonist]

I only made one arrangement last year, a medley from Kirby Air Ride for concert band. It was something I'd wanted to do for a long time and it was nice to finally have an opportunity to do it and have it performed. I haven't posted it anywhere yet because I still need to redo the formatting of the parts, but when I find time to do that I'll post it.

[Code_Name_Geek]

Super late to reply to this, but here goes. I only did 8 arrangements last year, so I'm going to do a top 3 instead of a top 5.

#3

Climb the Sky - Fire Emblem Heroes
Sheet | Original

This was my "challenge" arrangement for the year. It was a bit out of my comfort zone, but I wouldn't even have known where to start with it just a few years ago so I'm proud that I was able to actually finish it. (Special thanks to Libera, who helped a lot during the submission phase, and anyone else who gave feedback on it since it was a big one.)

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#2

Obsidian Mansion - Rune Factory 4S (Collaboration with Samusthedude)
Sheet | Original

I find collaboration arrangements to be particularly memorable, and this one is no exception. Working with someone lets me tackle things that would be a challenge on my own, like hearing more complicated chords and inner parts. I'm especially happy with how the waltz section in this one turned out.

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#1

Letter - Tomodachi Life
Submission thread | Original

This is kind of a surprise hit since I did it on a whim after seeing it on the requests board, but I really enjoyed it. Transcribing the arpeggios in the guitar went a lot more smoothly than similar parts have gone in the past, so it's also partly a marker of progress. But mostly I find this one is the most fun to actually play, so that's why I've chosen it for my favourite.

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That's it! Hope everyone is enjoying a productive start to 2023, and looking forward to seeing what everyone makes in the future!