[Wii] The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - "Agitha's Castle" (Replacement) by Onionleaf

[Zeta]

Submission Information:
Series: The Legend of Zelda
Game: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Console: Nintendo Wii
Title: Agitha's Castle
Instrumentation Solo Piano
Arranger: Onionleaf


Replacement Information:
Links to Existing Sheet: MUS | MIDI | PDF
Replacement Type: Challenge (new arranger)

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[Onionleaf]

[Libera]

Twilight Princess yay!  I keep meaning to get around to do some of these, but I haven't as of yet.  Nice to see a replacement though as most of the Twilight Princess section on the site is ... not all that great...

-The copyright isn't properly vertically aligned, and the composer/arranger info isn't horizontally aligned.
-I'd get rid of the octaves in the melody on the first page.  It seems a little overly heavy compared to the original for me and just ends up resulting in a lot of collisions with the left hand.
-The note in bar 21 should probably read 'small notes optional, play pp' and I'd adjust it so that the lettering isn't going through the bar-line.
-Might just be me really disliking finales default staff size, but I think (as I usually do) that a 0.65cm would make the sheet look a lot neater.  You might need to fiddle with the distribution afterwards, possibly with five systems on each page.
-I'm not 100% sure on what you should do with the barlines in this piece, but I don't think there should be two final barlines.  One of them should be a double barline, but I'm not entirely certain which one it is.  That being said, I'm not entirely sure why the fine is necessary in the first place since this piece doesn't have a distinct ending point and it doesn't seem to me to be a particularly obvious place to finish a performance.
-I might beam that chord in bar 38 across the staffs and have the roll across the entire thing.  I guess that's more of a personal preference, but worth mentioning I think.
-It looks a little awkward both ways, but I think going to bass clef from 21 to 34 works a bit better since usually the pianist is more used to reading treble for rh and bass for lh.  It also removes the need for the 8va in bar 28.
-The D in bar the left hand of bar 36 is actually an octave lower, but writing that out might look a little awkward.  You could move the arpeggio things to the top stave and do some cross staffing stuff maybe...  Maybe try some stuff out and see if you can come up with anything there as I'm not 100% sure what the best option is at that moment.
-The A# in bar 26 should probably be a Bb like in bar 34.
-You could include the start of the quaver part in bar 28 like this (ignore the horrible formatting; I do strange stuff to sheets while I'm checking them a lot of the time):

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(You can also remove the E in the right hand if you want to, like in my picture, because it's now in the left hand.)
-You could remove the parentheses on the F in bar 35 since it's not a 'proper' collision.  I normally don't write those in myself because it might look like the note can be left out, when it really does need to be played.

Might seem like a lot, but it's all really just small visual things.  Good work!

[Latios212]

*poke*

[Libera]

Bump for arranger.

[Latios212]

*slightly harder poke*

[Onionleaf]

Sorry sorry sorry, I'll get onto this soon!

[Onionleaf]

Twilight Princess yay!  I keep meaning to get around to do some of these, but I haven't as of yet.  Nice to see a replacement though as most of the Twilight Princess section on the site is ... not all that great...

Aye, the sheets need a bit of a polish. But it's a great soundtrack and a real pleasure to work with, so would definitely recommend.

I took note of your comments above, thank you! Some of my replies are bolded below:

-The note in bar 21 should probably read 'small notes optional, play pp' and I'd adjust it so that the lettering isn't going through the bar-line.
Fixed, also moved the text's position after making the change below.

-Might just be me really disliking finales default staff size, but I think (as I usually do) that a 0.65cm would make the sheet look a lot neater.  You might need to fiddle with the distribution afterwards, possibly with five systems on each page.
I wasn't sure how to adjust the size to be exactly 0.65cm, is there a quick way of doing this? Let me know if the size looks better now, otherwise feel free to edit the file/send a snip and I'll adjust accordingly.

-I'm not 100% sure on what you should do with the barlines in this piece, but I don't think there should be two final barlines.  One of them should be a double barline, but I'm not entirely certain which one it is.  That being said, I'm not entirely sure why the fine is necessary in the first place since this piece doesn't have a distinct ending point and it doesn't seem to me to be a particularly obvious place to finish a performance.
Noted, have added a D.S. repeat instead.

-The D in bar the left hand of bar 36 is actually an octave lower, but writing that out might look a little awkward.  You could move the arpeggio things to the top stave and do some cross staffing stuff maybe...  Maybe try some stuff out and see if you can come up with anything there as I'm not 100% sure what the best option is at that moment.
Tinkered around with this idea, let me know what you think? Hopefully that's not too many clef changes in the left hand?

-You could include the start of the quaver part in bar 28 like this (ignore the horrible formatting; I do strange stuff to sheets while I'm checking them a lot of the time):

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(You can also remove the E in the right hand if you want to, like in my picture, because it's now in the left hand.)
Have included the above, except kept the first beat in the left hand as a crotchet/quarter note b/c that is what I'm hearing in the original?

[Libera]

Nice to see you back!

I wasn't sure how to adjust the size to be exactly 0.65cm, is there a quick way of doing this? Let me know if the size looks better now, otherwise feel free to edit the file/send a snip and I'll adjust accordingly.

If you click next to the staff with the resize tool it brings up this box:

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and under 'Staff Height' you can set it exactly.  You can stick to finale default size if you want to, but I just personally think it looks better at 0.65cm.  If you do that though remember you'll need to fiddle with the layout of the sheet since everything won't take up quite as much room.

Tinkered around with this idea, let me know what you think? Hopefully that's not too many clef changes in the left hand?

Yes this looks better I think.  Three clef changes in two bars is quite a lot, but I'm not sure there's really much way to get around that with the notes being as they are.

Have included the above, except kept the first beat in the left hand as a crotchet/quarter note b/c that is what I'm hearing in the original?

Hmm, I definitely still hear the quaver C on beat 1.5 but that being said, on a second look at this I'm not wholly convinced my way of writing things out is really all that good.  The E on beat 1 of bar 28 is a continuation of the small notes from the previous bar and so I think the way you originally wrote it (with it in the right hand) makes more sense.  Maybe this would be a better way of writing it out?

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Final thing that I noticed is that I think the bottom note in the chord at bar 38 should be a G rather than a D.  (i.e. cut the D out.)

The other edits look good to me!

[Onionleaf]

Thanks Libera, it is nice to be back! ^^

• Neat! The staff resizing tool will definitely help in the future.
• I agree with all the points that you've raised (and could finally hear the C that you mentioned, hooray!)

I've these final few changes, hope it looks better now.

[Libera]

Edits look good to me and I'm not sure I have anything else to add here.  Approved!


This doesn't really relate to my approval or anything, but I would like to say that considering this sheet is so vastly different from the current on-site version it might be better to forgo the 'edited by' and just give yourself sole arranger credit for the sheet.  But, it's obviously your choice.

[JDMEK5]

Wow, nice job! The sheet currently on site seems like one of those cases where it's not so bad but still could be so much better. I find myself agreeing with Libera here^; this seems like your take on the piece rather than so much as correction of the one on site- therefore I also don't think I'd see any problem with you slapping your name on it. You know the way it was put together but so long as I'm correct in that it's your own take on the piece, I'd say that justifies it.

I too am pretty close to ready to sign off on this one (it looks so nice as well), but have two small things to offer forth first:
1) Maybe consider explicitly indicating some kind of sustain pedal usage somewhere? All the bells and percussive resonance in the original sounds like the job of the sustain pedal; I don't think you can really go wrong including it and I also can't imagine playing it without the pedal. I can't tell you the best way of notating it, but I think it's pretty important in a piece like this and if it's going to be present, it should be explicitly written.
2) I can't help but feel like the LH could help play the counterpoint melody in the first half of the piece (doubling the melody an octave lower for the first phrase, jumping away to some bigger intervals later on, etc). The LH right now isn't too busy, so I think if you're clever about it I think there may be a nice way to include that in here. This is more of a comment in the process of making this sheet the best that it can be- it's not bad now by any means, but this may be a way to potentially improve it further. Of course, I could be wrong about there being a clever nice way of including that doesn't clunk up and mess with the LH; but I think the possibility ought to be explored.

Aside from those things, I have nothing more to say for myself about it besides well done.

[Onionleaf]

Thank you for the kind and helpful comments. It's fine by me either way which arranger is listed on the site, but I'm happy to change it to being both myself and Erich if that's one of the available options?

In response to your comment (1), I played the piece on the piano to see what would be the best option. (I should really make a habit of doing this prior to submitting sheets, as it really helps with reviewing them!) I found that the LH in the first half (up to m20) plays well as a non-legato (like the chiming of bells), while the second half sounds lovely with a continuous sustain pedal and makes for a good contrast. So I've annotated my sheet accordingly.

(2) is a fair comment, and it would be nice to include this; however, while playing the piece I felt that both hands are already playing within a rather narrow register so introducing this idea would make the piece more difficult to play without making a significant contribution all-in-all.

Hope my responses make logical & musical sense!

[JDMEK5]

For sure; sounds good! Everything looks ready to go on my end as well now except for one question: did you want to list it as Arranged by Elrich & Onionleaf or keep it as you have it on the score right now as Edited by Onionleaf? Bespinben edited my An Unswerving Heart from Pokemon B/W but didn't have himself listed on the site (despite my saying it would've been totally cool with me). How exactly do you want it listed both on sheet and on site? We could still list you both as arrangers on site yet have the sheet read "edited by" if that's what you want. Of course I don't mean to speak for everyone by this so if any other updaters have any thoughts on this by all means bump in- this is the way I'd go about it. But yeah, how exactly would you like it worked up?

[Latios212]

I do think that what we list on site should match one-to-one with the "Arranged by" field on the sheet. Anyway, my recommendation would be to list you as the sole arranger.

Other thing I noticed while glancing at this - the courtesy accidentals. Don't use articulations for that, you can press P when using the Simple Entry Tool and it will automatically respace things for you. You'll also need to clear the manual horizontal positioning