Magic Mole's Arrangements

[Magic Mole]

I welcome any and all forms of criticism, so feel free to give me advice regarding any of the arrangements below:

[Wii] The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword - "Flooded Faron Woods"
[MID] [MUS] [PDF]

[GBC] Pokémon Gold, Silver, & Crystal - "S.S. Aqua"
[MID] [MUS] [PDF]

[GBC] Pokémon Crystal - "Eusine's Theme"
[MID] [MUS] [PDF]

[GBC] Pokémon Crystal - "Mobile Adapter 1"
[MUS]

[Maelstrom]

I'll take a look at this for you.
But first of all, you should probably know thing like this should go in the personal arrangements thread.
Don't worry about it though,
I'm sure a mod will be around to move it there.

[Magic Mole]

Rats! I'm really sorry about that, it won't happen again.

[Maelstrom]

You got the text formatting right. O.o No one ever gets that on their first try.....
You probably know it looks messy, but you don't know how to fix it. Yet....
First of all, you can flip the note stems by pressing L. You will sometimes need to press it twice (or once for every note bared together). Just keep pressing it and they will flip. The second problem is the out of place rests. If you select a note, you can move left and right by pressing the left and right buttons, and move the note or rest up or down with the up or down arrows. I recently found out you can move between notes vertically by holding ctrl when pressing up or down. And holding shift while pressing up or down will move it up or down an octave. It might clean things up and make them more accurate by turning the halves into quarters. You also need to keep playability in mind. On this site, you should never be telling the player to play notes more than a 10th apart, btw. There are ways around this, like arpeggiating, or playing on two different beats while using the pedal, but I don't feel that either would be appropriate here. Finally, you must minimize the number of layers. If you have two different layers playing at the same beat, combine them into one (eg 2nd to last measure on the first page). You can use R to hide rests if a layer drops out at the beginning of a measure, but use that sparingly. You will need to have someone with Finale add measure numbers, working repeats, and remove the Pno. mark, but that is whay this thread is for. I'd help, but I have Finale '11, which can't open files saved by anything newer. 

[Magic Mole]

Thanks for the feedback, those shortcuts are really handy! I went back and changed the halves to quarters and cleaned up the rests and note stems for the most part, although by no means am I saying it's perfect. As for playability, when I arranged this my OCD kicked in and I just wanted to write the music exactly as it was on the soundtrack, so I included every little note that I heard. I realize it needs to be trimmed down with the player in mind, so do you(or anybody) have some suggestions on what I should do next to improve the playability? Should I lower the octaves of some of the high notes, remove some of them entirely, move some parts to the left hand, etc? By the way, thanks for mentioning that Finale thread thing, I'll run this through that once this arrangement is satisfactory. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fdaasonssrx51dx/Faron%20Floods.mus?dl=0

[Maelstrom]

--You still can cut down on the layers in quite a few places. (eg measure 11, 15-18)

--Second, it's pointless to play the same note twice in two layers. (eg second to last measure on pg 1)

--If you find that your layers are not aligning properly, (m 14) delete the second layer and re-insert it (del deletes selected notes)

--As for playability, moving certain 3rds to the other hand/removing high harmonies would work quite well.

After you make these changes, I'll check it one last time before you ask for formatting.

[Magic Mole]

Yeah, I had wayyyy to many layers before...it was hi-layer-ious, really. Anyways, I consolidated most of the layers and only removed one high harmony (measure 44). That alone cleaned up a TON of rests and clutter. I also moved a lot of thirds to the left hand, which also helped quite a bit. Please let me know if there's anything else you would change. Other than that, thanks a bunch for bearing with me and my inexperience. You've been a huge help! 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fdaasonssrx51dx/Faron%20Floods.mus?dl=0

[mikey]

Why is it that one of the first things people do is get a profile picture

[Maelstrom]

On the contrary, you seem quite experienced. And yes, just playing piano counts. 
Three little things
-- 4th measure, line 5 pg 1 -- The second layer is not aligned properly
-- 4th measure, line 4 pg 2 -- The note stems cross the tie.
-- Some notes are running into the page headings. 
It's just simple things, but they go a long way towards making a sheet look professional. 
I'd recommend asking the person who formats your sheet to add some 8va s. They would reduce the number of ledger line considerably, but you can't properly add them in notepad.

[mikey]

I'd recommend asking the person who formats your sheet to add some 8va s. They would reduce the number of ledger line considerably, but you can't properly add them in notepad.

there is an 8va tool

[Magic Mole]

Why is it that one of the first things people do is get a profile picture

I dunno...I guess it's like how people take the time to customize their avatar for a game before playing it rather than just playing immediately with the default avatar.

[Magic Mole]

there is an 8va tool

In Finale Notepad you can add 8va lines via the text tool, but that's all they are--text. They don't create the 8va effect during playback. 

[Magic Mole]

Fixed, fixed, and fixed. Thanks once again for all your help, I've learned a lot from this thread alone. I'll be taking my semi-final arrangement to that other thread to hopefully finish the formatting process. It's been a pleasure to work with you. 

[Magic Mole]

So I've been working a little bit on an arrangement of S.S. Aqua from Pokémon G/S/C. I've been trying to keep as many of the cool 16th note parts as I can, but I realize some of them are gonna have to go for the sake of playability. It's not finished and I'm aware of most of the formatting issues(I use Notepad), but if anybody would like to leave any thoughts/feedback that'd be great! 

p.s. I mainly play the violin so I'm not always the best at figuring out what pianists would consider playable. 

[Maelstrom]

There is no way a person as new as you should be making arrangements this good.
I seriously wish I was this good when I started.
Another shortcut-- Press / to break/form bars between notes. And don't have bars going over rests.
And what are the Gs doing?
That is literally all I can find wrong with it right away. You have some serious talent. Keep at it!

Regarding page #s: You can move the number slightly if you want.....
And it's playable if Bespinben calls his playable.