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I didn't say this before, but despite errors in formating, that's a great arrangement. When you arrange, you really arrange for the piano, which of course in the end is the entire point, but way too many don't realize this. The arrangement's got balance, and it requires skill to write such an arrangement! So good job!

I kinda tried my best to minimise format errors on this one - I know there's one missing minim-beat somewhere and one clash at the end after actually playing the thing out, but yeah, if there are other formatting errors, could you point them out for me ^^? Thanks~

But thank you so much for the encouragement <3. And it's true - I put a lot of focus on balance rather than accuracy, but I guess there's space for both, eh ? It's going to take me a long way though; thank you so much for it.

A note for something you could've done better though; you should've encouraged a more swing feel to the piece, after the song hits the double-time-mark. The song does get into swing after all.
When you performed it you weren't playing swing at all, you sticked to the way you notated, but that gives off an entirely different feel. If someone else is gonna play the arrangement as it is now, they'd do the same, and that's honestly not how the song goes.

"Swing" was one word that never came into my mind, actually. I was thinking "dotted rhythms in the atmosphere", because well, the original song doesn't really shout "i'm swing!" to me. I think it's because of the unplayable triplet counter-melodies in the top, and the fact that they actually used triplet rhythm instead of dotted rhythm. Either that, or I'm not sharp enough - I think that's probably the case xD.

But when I got down to recording, playing it right was already tough enough, playing it in time (because hey, four hands) was insanely tough, so I wasn't really bothered with the underlying rhythms too much. I could just say that I am too noob or something, but hey, be proactive ! I'll definitely watch out for that in future recordings (and there will be some; I invested in a mic sooo)!

Yes, it i very bouncy and light swing, but there is always something called too much.
On the arrangement this could be fixed by simply writing "swing" together with the "double speed" mark. That's enough really. It won't do anything special to the arrangement, it's just so whoever's gonna perform it knows that it's swing instead of "dotted eight + sixteenth".
Personally I'd assign "double-time - swing eights", and then go format all the "dotted eights + sixteenths" into just movements of eights and tuplet eights, but that a bit more timeconcuming, and there isn't that much wrong with having "dotted eights + sixteenths" as long as it's stated that it's swing - if it's not stated, it is most often interpreted as "not-swing", and this piece is swing alright, so that wouldn't be the best.
Where you are using "4 sixteenths in one tie"-runs you should go over and make it tuplet eights instead (even if you aren't changing the "dotted eights + sixteenths"-stuff) - for some reason, you are actually playing those segments as tuplets throughout the entire video, which is totally different from what it says on the arrangement.

Yup, I think you're right about the swing. Once again, the high counter-melodies confused me a lot when transcribing (because I didn't really refer to the source track too much), and the rhythms were interlocking so much that I was like, "bleh". But yes, there is swing, and I should totally have seen that. And yeah, writing that down would definitely help; maybe when I submit this I'll change that~

Also, yeah, I see your point on the tuplet eights, but they would be unplayable, or at least, very hard to play accurately at that speed. I mean...it's 186 BPM (not 200, but hey). Which is really fast.

~

In seriousness, to round up everything, your encouragement is appreciated just as much as your criticism is. I really really appreciate the fact that you're taking time off your precious life to listen to my stuff <3. I promise to return the favour in some way, but for now, I just wanna extend the greatest thank you that I can possibly extend to you. Thanks so much, man!~

Route 216/217 ^^! Tough piece~

[time signature]

Fierce Deity, I disagree.
If the time signature is 3/4+3/4+2/4 it's a given, because it's following the principle of showing every beat in the measure.Sorry to burst your joy, but you actually have this type of wrong-beamed notes in every single one of your songs except Az' Theme, Snowbelle City and Welcome to Kalos Region.

Sorry, but norwegians have pretty bad English too, so I really don't think I can explain better:I should've mentioned that it is fully acceptable to beam together 4 & 4 eights at a time in 4/4, because it is the most popular way of doing it (notation programs do it on default), though I don't like it too much.
It's also somewhat acceptable to put a fourth on a syncopation in 4/4 as long as it doesn't cross over to the second half of the measure. Though personally I hate that, and especially when that fourth is augmented, ugh..

I'd say your biggest, if not only, thing to fix up is to make sure that nothing crosses over the middle of the 4/4 measures.

Ohhh. I know what you're referring to now.

Hmm...somehow, it doesn't click within my brain. I'll go read up on rhythm and meter before I get back to you (because hey, you can't judge anyone without knowing the stuff yourself first, right?), but yeah, I'll go read up on this.

As of now, though, I'm pretty darn sure that it shouldn't be against the rules or anything. Bicycle was completely off, but that's a different story - I'm pretty sure that this 3-3-2 is rhythmically acceptable. But I'll go check up on it and get back to you

Criticism <3! Thank you so much for that, honestly ^^!

Yeah, it's the one thing I've actually been waiting for ever since I came onto this site - and yeah, thank you so much for this ^^!

So now, I'm not going to defend myself, because it's childish, and I'll just eat the criticisms like a man, but lemme just reply to them just so I can get these things stuck in my head and stuff.

(Just to be clear, I'm talking about the XY bike theme here)
First of all, dajwxp, "3-3-2" is not at all the feeling in the original. If it were, it'd actually be an acceptable rebeaming (according to some sources, anyways), but that rhythm is only kinda prevalent in the melody at times. In fact, it isn't the feeling in your arrangement, either. A lot of the time, your right hand is beamed in (or, at least, divided into quarter notes and dotted quarter notes along the lines of) "3-2-3" which, again, while part of the melody at times, is not at all the overriding rhythmic feel of the piece. You also never altered the left hand to go along with this alternate beaming, which adds to the whole "unnecessarily hard to read" part that Jompa was talking about.

I was actually waiting for someone to point that out. It was completely 3-2-3, and I had no idea about it until I heard it for myself when I played the game one day - that was only after I released the youtube video of me playing it, so...well, shit. I decided that it was too late to change it back, and it would lead to massive reformatting of the score, so I decided that i was going to turn a complete blind eye to it !

Erm...but I kinda need to defend myself a little here - I do have my background in classical music, but I was pretty much cultivated on modern stuff, so I don't exactly listen out for every note that goes on in the melody - I listen out for the drums. Yeah, it's freaky. To be pretty honest, I don't know I heard 3-2-3 as 3-3-2, but I think I made a fat assumption there that most modern music (go listen to them Lady Gaga/Beyonce albums!~) are based on the 3-3-2 generic pop meter. So yeah, that was completely my bad there.

Then again, if I remember correctly, the drums are just the simple kick-tom-snare-tom rock meter that is the clear sign of a 4/4 rhythm. Hmm. Maybe I was listening out for the snares too much :p

Also, idk if you're going for accurate transcription or not, but, er, it is not that XD I'm into creative liberties and all that, but just make sure you're making educated adjustments to the original, rather than an easy way out of transcription. For example, a lot of the left hand I can't seem to find in the original XD like, it seems you were trying to to achieve the 3-3-2 feel by adlibbing that part, but you ended up just creating a different syncopation from the offbeat one found in the original. A perfectly fine decision to make, just make sure you realize that you're doing it, and try to evaluate how it works within the context of the entire piece. Whenever we compose or arrange anything, each decision that we make has to have some purpose in light of the whole product; otherwise, we're just dicking around under the false guise of creative liberty.

I was trying to mimic the very light drum beat going on, because that's kinda that way i do arrangements. But as I said, I made an assumption so yeah :p. My bad.

Also, for the intro, I may not be able to listen to it for accuracy (you really need to put more than just PDFs up on your google drive, heh) but I know that's definitely not the same rhythm as the original. The rhythm in your second measure actually starts on the last eighth note of the first measure, and the eighth note on beat three is extended backwards by an eighth note, if that makes sense (probably not, but I'm tired, and my wording isn't quite up to par right now). It should be a syncopation where all of the hits are on the offbeats, until the melody kicks in and lands on that G in the next measure. Now, you may have done this intentionally, perhaps to allow the second measure to work as a potential starting measure, but it seems strange to me to eliminate syncopation in the introduction to a piece in which you allow so much other syncopation. It's kind of like you're trying to trick the listener to think that it's going to be simple 4/4, when it really isn't. Which, you know, has its places, but just make sure you do this knowingly, if you do.

Believe it or not, it was complete jack-shit notes ! I had no idea what I was typing down ! And yeah, it was a dick move there, but it was 1 in the morning and the drive looked really empty sooooo

As for the tied eighth notes in the melody on beat 2, I can see that this is where you're trying to beam it as 3-3-2. Which is interesting, because that's probably the rhythm most blatantly adhering to a traditional 4/4 feel XD but yeah, that is veeery confusing for the reader. I'd probably assume it means to play them legato before I'd think they were tied. And, while many things about notation are up to the composer's taste, keep in mind that somebody else is potentially going to be reading it.

Another listening of this tells me that it alternates between 3-2-3 and common 4/4 meter. In fact, the bass guitar beneath all of it accents on the first, fourth and sixth beat. So yeah, it actually is a hybrid of 4/4 and 3-2-3. But in any case, yeah, completely agreed.

Melody-wise, there's an accuracy issue (again, in case you're concerned with accuracy) that's bothering me in measures 19, 21, and 23. In each of those bars, in the original, the melody goes down to an Eb on beat 3. You may have chosen to leave this out, idk, but to me it seems strange to give the melody less contour/motion in a piano arrangement. If anything, I'd expect somebody to complicate it more. So, again, I want you to be aware of the difference with the original, if you weren't already, and to consider whether or not that's what you want to say in the piece.

Nope, I was completely unaware of it. To be really honest, this was the result of three listenings - it was pretty lazy, so yeah. My bad.

As for dynamics, it's common practice (at least, in my experience) to follow a subito forte with either a new dynamic, or a restatement of the old one, so that it's clear to the reader. While I think that the leap from mp to sf and back to mp may be a bit extreme, I'll leave that up to you; just make sure that what you want is clearly written.

Whether you're striving for accuracy or not, just make sure that you're aware of every decision you make, and that each one has a purpose. If you were striving for accuracy, I'd suggest that you look at Olimar12345's arrangement of this piece, but his dropbox link appears to have 404'd :/

I did see his arrangement after I uploaded mine, but I was a little too high at that time to realise how crappy mine was. But I did see that the first bar was actually really accurate. So yeah, I'll go check it up if I have the chance.

...speaking of which, it would be rather convenient for those of us looking at your sheets if you were to get a dropbox and use it for this stuff. And provide links to individual files on this page. And provide MIDI and MUS/musicxml files, too XD
...but that's just a suggestion

All this stuff was done on Sibelius, sooo...I'm not sure if MUS files are possible. And if you take the MusicXML, you need to re-key in the value of every expression marking and dynamic marking on Finale before it would sound correct. So I wasn't really willing to do that for multiple songs, but yeah, I should have.

~

But to round it all up, thank you so much for your honest criticism. It's not too late to change what I have now, but I don't think it's worth the time to, so I'll just keep it in mind for my future arrangements. In honesty, though, thank you so much for your honest feedback <3.

Actually, beaming the notes that way is not good. You do this in nearly all your songs, but it is totally illegal.
You should always beam the notes so that all the beats are visible, unless there's a note that appears on an emphasized part of the measure (2 & 4 in 4/4).
Not to mention it's just unnecessarily hard to read when you write like that.

(i only do this in one song btw~)
Buuuut I didn't really get the visible beats part. COuld you...you know, rephrase that ^^;? Sorry, asians have bad English :p

But I totally agree with you on the last one.

~

In fact, I think I should make some confessions about the entire thing :p.

The mashup took only three hours to put together, and I kinda only listened to each of the songs on an average of three times. And I think I should confess that I didn't really look at the score very much :p. I did spend quite a bit of time learning the piece (around 4-5 practice hours, I think?) but from then on, it was all memory work. So yep, after some point of time, the crappy beaming in the Bicycle THeme didn't really bother me anymore - I wasn't staring at it :p

So yeah. Really sloppy work from me, and I'm sorry for that ><. But I promise that I'm going to work much harder for future things ! The XY Mashup was somehow made under a quick rush of inspiration, so it was really really bad, but if you take a look at the Route 216 that I just did, everything is in place. Even the grace notes. Yeah, future works will definitely be at that standard.

CHeers, peeps, and thank you guys so much for the criticism <3

It's been a long period of stagnation, but I've finally finalised my Route 216 for Four Hands ! It's ridiculoudly difficult, but there's no weird clashes and stuff, so yay!~

My next task is to record it, so that's going to be pretty tough :p

I think I have to practice this mashup a bit more to play it that good. 
While practicing I noticed that some things are different to the original. When I arrange music I'm always very (perhaps to) thorough (don't know if this is the right word). So I "rearranged" your mash up. Sheets: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/t8agqf5fq6w49cy/Pok%C3%A9mon%20X%20and%20Y%20Mashup.pdf

Whatever, great arrangement and keep up the good work!

Hehe, I don't actually put as much effort into arranging as you :p. But in any case, I do like staying in key and keeping modulations smooth, which is why I did the Parfum in E-flat major (i mean, you can't modulate from E-flat to D unless you pivot two notes or something :p).

I also like putting the rhythm of the drum beat before the actual accompaniment - basically, that's what I was going for in the Lumiose ^^. The quavers keep the energy level up and the harmonic basis almost intact !

Also good luck for the scales and flourishes :p. And especially the semiquavers in the left hand for the first part xD. It's impossible on my piano because it's a little old and not that springy, but I saw a vid of yours and yeah, I think you'll be great . Cheers, man!

Hi, I was just looking for some notes from Pokémon X/Y and found your "X/Y Mashup".
Great work! It's fun to play and I like the thing with the "expression markings".
If you don't objekt, I would like to record your arrangement ("X/Y Mashup") and upload it at my youtube channel (link is in my signature).

PS: Merry Christmas!

EPIC DOUBLE POSSSTTT~

Anyway, I went ahead and got that song off my chest ^^! Here's my version of it here:

Just something you might wanna refer to when you make your vid! You can probably do much better than me, haha :p

Cheers, man!~

Hi, I was just looking for some notes from Pokémon X/Y and found your "X/Y Mashup".
Great work! It's fun to play and I like the thing with the "expression markings".
If you don't objekt, I would like to record your arrangement ("X/Y Mashup") and upload it at my youtube channel (link is in my signature).

PS: Merry Christmas!

A late Merry Christmas to you ^^!

Aaand yeah, sure! I've actually been trying to record it but I lack the equipment to, so sure ^^! I do have a yt channel with the same name though, sooooo do give credit to that; it's cool ^^!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4moruud7dheeE5zQ01HdWNaTWM/edit?usp=sharing

Up there ^^! It's the direct link to the sheet~

Fixed the Route 216 and the LumIOse ! Submitting the 216 if it's allowed, otherwise I'll just stick with one submission!~

Also the Route 216 sound horrible in digital form, aaaaand I tried it with my duet partner, and he can't really play it (don't blame him). SO yeah. gl!

I like this guy

Yay! I like you too! Not in a gay way, but I like you too!~

Anyway, the Route 216 is marked as "incomplete". Realised that I'm missing sixteen bars somewhere xD

Welcome! I'm sure you will enjoy your stay here! It will be nice having someone in the same timezone as me!

It's nice to see someone with a different arranging style, as well.

Waaait. You're in the same timezone? Soooo Singaporean? Malaysian? Chinese? Indonesian? Anything is cool !

Literally half of the reason I love Grainger right there. Stephen Melillo is even weirder though once I go back home for break, I'll try to find my part for Once More Unto the Breach so I can show you some of the ridiculous shit he wrote XD just to give you an idea, there's a note of encouragement running vertically on the left side of the first page, ending with "Godspeed!" So uh, yeah. Some composers can be rather interesting...

Oh, and dajw, welcome to NSM! Also, it's spelled Lumiose City

Wow, I've lived in the hole of classical music and the cave of modern music simultaneously for too long xD. Would be cool to see that, whee~

Also CRAP. I have to go open finale again and that program is so tough to use aaargh
And it's just to change one letter ;;

~

Also, added a Verdanturf Cello + Piano arrangement that I never got down to recording and a Route 216 (the snowy route in DPPt) for four hands! Both are pretty tough, especially the Route 216 - it's impossible to play in time

Hey, I'm really really late!~

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8txjpezte7x436n/Vb6PLvnzpd

That's the Dropbox ^^!

[3DS] Pokemon X/Y - "Welcome to Kalos Region"
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8txjpezte7x436n/-AM_Tn8d-P/Pkmn%20XY%20-%20Welcome%20To%20Kalos%20Region

[3DS] Pokemon X/Y - "Lumoise City"
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8txjpezte7x436n/Qfc4dOcuk2/Pkmn%20XY%20-%20Lumoise%20City

EDIT: Apparently it's spelt "Lumiose". Hmm. Need to change everything to switch the position of two letters ;w;

~

EDITEDIT: If it's okay to submit another score in place of the Lumoise, I'd submit this ^^!~

[NDS] Pokemon DPPt - "Route 216 (Duet)"
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/s9s6u4jo7o7hc3f/eCLhKSOIHk

Hey, that's some nice work ya got there! I'm very impressed by the quality of your works and the humour your pour into them too! I've got just a couple of things to talk about in terms of submitting for this site (if you're gonna do that):

1. Sure, Sibelius is a good software to use (I say this 'cause I have to use it next year for Uni), but you should think of getting a Finale product. Everyone here works off the American system which is Finale, hence why everything is .MUS files. I think you can still get a free version of Finale Notepad 2012 from their official site, plus there's ways of getting their other products too...

2. There's formatting guidelines around here too. I'm too lazy to link it here for you so you're gonna have to find them yourself.

Other than that, excellent work! I hope to see plenty more come this way! Just don't steal the Pokemon X/Y ones I've put down on my list 'cause I AM going to be doing them.

Appreciated ^^! Also, I've taken a look at your reserved list, and yeah, sure, I won't do those. After all they're kinda insane and I can imagine how unplayable it would be sooo :p

Anyway, I'll address your points.

1. Yeah, I kinda got that at some point of time xD. I think I'll be working on a Route 217 duet (that is, the blizzard route from DPPt) for four hands, aaaand the Xerneas/Yveltal request - hey, that's two submissions already ^^. Think I'll mainly be using Sib, but it doesn't hurt learning new software~

2. And I hate it. I even had to vent on my other forum for a while xD. But nah, I'm ready to follow the rules now, don't worry~

Also, quick question - does this place mandate the use of Italian terms, such that you get an absolute musical effect, or does it allow these slightly less formal performance directions? I mean, I prefer these lassiez-faire style instructions because they leave more space for musical development - in classical, we call it "French style". But hey, anything's cool~

I can see you don't like the normal italian expression markings not that there is anything wrong with that - kinda funny.
There are very good!

Yep! It's not that I can't do the italian markings, but they're boring and kinda what we term a "pointless formality". Plus, this is game music, and is supposed to be really light hearted. Most of the time. Well, in Pokemon at least (it's so utopian, really).

Oh, and thanks for that, hehe ^^