[MUL] Titan Souls - "Forest Songs" by gu

Started by Zeta, February 07, 2023, 06:07:02 PM

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Zeta

Submission Information:

Series: Other
Game: Titan Souls
Console: Multiplatform
Title: Forest Songs
Instrumentation Solo Piano
Arranger: gu

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gu


My favorite from Titan Souls
Some liberties were taken towards m67. I tried to sound like the original music without writing all the notes, as this would make the piece too clutter.
I'd love some feedback on how that went, and if I should instead stick more with the original

Kricketune54

This is a nice song, kind of reminds me of the acoustic stuff from The Last of Us games.

Formatting/Document
- Tempo should be a dotted quarter note given this is in 6/8. Dotted quarter = 100
- Keeping with typical dev, publisher format the copyright should be to Acid Nerve, Devolver Digital instead of David Fenn
- Looks like the Copyright from the MuseScore template ended up on each page. Additionally, the song title header is missing on every page after the first page. I would refer to existing sheets as a reference to fix this.
   - The font also lookes to be about 2 points too small.
- Margins are also off a little, in that the odd pages are correct on the page but the even ones need to stretch a bit more to the left.

- I don't really agree with the starting dynamic, it's too soft.  Piano seems more appropriate, and perhaps m5 should be mf.
- m12 For this r.h., I thihk it's typical for us to capitilize both initials. So R.H.
- Widen systems for m23-28 so top LH layer isn't so close to the RH notes. Do simlar for m71-74 as well. You could also widen m29-34 as well as 107-110, 111-144, m115-118 a little more but not as big a deal there.
- m30 slurs typically are added to grace notes. Optional bit but just making aware
- minor neatness bit: in m35 and m99 center the dynamic more by moving it left a bit


Overall the spacing of systems is a bit wide. I would suggest playing around with that pre-conversion, because there's lots of extra space on pages 2-7. I think you could fit at least 5 systems per page.

- In 6/8 time, beaming rules mean that a quarter note and half note (both non-dotted) would not be correct notation. Appplies for m5-10 RH and similar).  A correct example would be m5 and m10 looking like this for example. That way it is clear where beats 1 and 2 are.

It is not typical in 6/8 to put staccatos on quarter notes such as at m80 RH; instead write these as eighth notes, followed by two individual 8th rests.

Notes
- m27-28 bottom layer I hear the F's as dotted quarters. Not tied but just on beat one of each measure. Same rhythm would apply for m12, 14, and m26, not a dotted half note.
- m30-m34 The RH is again not tied but a dotted quarter on beat one. On m34, I don't hear a G in the LH, just the reverberated pitches of the m33 notes. You could put a pedal mark here, but given this arrangement is marked con pedale, player can do it at their discretion.
- m47-50 LH sounds like the F fades out in m49.
- m62 RH I hear A in that cluster as well
- m63-66 RH these could be the same layer, the notehead directions are also flipped from how they should be anyway.
- m67-70 You could put accents on the RH notes and/or put a smaller dynamic above m70 RH.

As far as m67-70 goes I think you should stick with the ascending acoustic notes that have been the LH part up to this point. The LH as is here sounds too different in my opinion, though I think you could take those top notes in the LH if you really wanted, move to the RH as a lower layer, and make them a 3rd or 5th above the original pitch (ex. C becomes Eb or G, Bb becomes D or F, kinda like m75). I would also advise that for these LH top layer notes I think they are better written as eighth notes (refer to my comments earlier about m80) based off their shorter sound.

gu

This submission was a lot rougher than I thought... sorry about that
I overhauled the entire sheet with your feedback in mind, which greatly help
About formating, the margins seem to be the same in Template 1.4, which I use as default, so I assumed an error occured on the transition. Hopefully things work out this time

Odd page margins are:
15mm in the left
13mm in the right

Even page margins are:
13mm in the left
15mm in the right

(At least on MuseScore, I couldn't find a way to see them on Notepad)
I did change the Up and Down margins to be able to fit 5 staffs per page (15mm on the top, and 13mm on the bottom for all pages), and incresed the font of the Copyright to 10pt (the default by the template was 8pt)

Kricketune54

Quote from: gu on March 11, 2023, 02:18:21 PM(At least on MuseScore, I couldn't find a way to see them on Notepad)
Yeah another thing NotePad does not display.

I've attached screenshots for what I meant by margins. Viewed in Finale
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The circled area shows the margin line of the page and the one for system 2; these should overlap, not both be visible for the margin to be correct.
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This is what the correct version looks like. I am pretty sure Cacabish's latest MuseScore guide explains everything as far as fixing margins, making sure the titles show up on pages two and on, right font sizes, etc. https://www.ninsheetmusic.org/forum/index.php?topic=11860.0. I apologize I don't have more to offer on the fixes given it's been a little while since I've done this process myself.

Additional Feedback:

- The note about the LH in the beginning is not necessary, most performers would know not to drown out the melody with the LH. You could delete this guidance, or perhaps have separate dynamics throughout for each staff (i.e. separate dynamics above top staff and another below the bottom staff for example)
- Does the simile in m14 mean to play top notes with the RH?
- m25-28 going to want to widen this system before you export so the slurs in the LH aren't touching the staff above them.
- m58 RH first note there is an A in there as well

- For the RH plucked parts like m51-52, m59-60, 80-84, 91-93 and similar, I'm not hearing the lower of the two notes. You could add an octave below (ex. replace A-F with A-A) though if you wanted, since the same note is also played down an octave for this part.

- m60 RH beat beat 2.0 (G-D) I don't hear the D under the G, just the G
- m73-74 RH, the articulations for the top layer seem to have been assigned to the bottom layer. Just need to delete them and readd them so they're applying to the top layer of notes.
- m98 RH for the top layer you could move the 8th rest down to a normal height (like m96-97)
- m104 missing a slur on grace note
- m108 RH the gliss should be between the G and the D in m109.
- m115 RH this chord sounds a bit different - I hear a Bb an octave above the current one, and the G up an octave as well. Keep the D as is, and maybe have another Bb at the bottom. Then, you could move the LH first part of the measure up an octave to its normal octave

gu

Hi Kricketune! Uhm... it's been a while

I'm so sorry for the SUPER late reply, I started my first year of college in these lasts months and haven't been able to do much of anything really. I'll be updating this sheet as I can, but I'll certainly slow down posting new ones for now, at least until things settle down a bit.

I've redone the entire sheet (a second time), trying to make a better foundation for updates that'll come, as well as fix the formatting, which I belive its now correct (big thanks for linking Cacabish's post, it helped a lot).

As for the most nottable changes:
- Arpeggios in the LH have been heavily altered, now with a focus on the bass in each chord change throughout the entire piece and some corrected harmonies, expecially on m83 onwards;
- I simplified most of the "2 voices" sections in the RH, to reduce clutter and to allow it to interfere more in the arpeggios, since the LH now jumps so often;

Again, pardon me for taking so long for respond, I'll try to be quicker next time, and (yeah, super late but still...) Congratulations on becoming an updater! Always love your feedback, and kudos for keeping up such great work :)

Kricketune54

Hello again gu, sorry my reply took a little while back as well. Thanks for the congratulations and kind words! Glad the Cacabish post helped, the sheet looks quite good aesthetically with his program/method

I think you made some good changes in this rewrite with treble instead of bass for top staff as well as the simplifications overall

Here are some bits from my review of your rewrite:

• You could move the starting dynamic a little more to the left so it is better centered over the first note
• I think a few instances like m6 or m10 the dotted quarter could be tied to an 8th note on beat 2.0, as the sound of the note doesn't cut out completely on that beat. I think that's how you had it before?
• m35-47 I think you took out a few RH beat 1 notes that could be played (I can hear a G on beat 1.0 in m37 for example), but I suppose if this is intended to be consistent with other measures where it's the LH needing to strike a lower pitch on beat 1 though, it makes sense.
• m78 still hearing an A in the RH chord
• m83 RH the beat 2 note is a Bb
• m84 RH the Eb is same length as previous two notes but D is good as is
• m93 RH rests on beat 2 should be grouped as dotted quarter
• m104 RH add a C grace note
• m108 RH move the gliss a little right so that it's not obscuring the dot on the dotted quarter note

I also think the con pedale could be worth including as you had before - though I suppose pedal is implied at the sections like LH m53-56 for example

gu


Kricketune54

Just a little bit more:

• m71 I think the last 2 8th notes in the RH should be in the LH, or at least written that way. It definitely flows better in the RH, so maybe we can move this with the note mover tool:
• Just to be consistent put a slur on the grace note in m104

I have made these changes in a .mus file here given there's not many and I don't think you can easily move notes if at all in NotePad; if you like how m71 looks, make the midi and pdf from this file and I'll mark this as approved!

gu

Looks great!
Thank you for the updates, just made some really small spacing adjustments (probably notepad stuff) and uploaded the files

Kricketune54


Bloop

-m5-34: In places like m11-12, the L.H. plays an octave lower than the original, which I'm guessing you did to make space for the R.H. While not a bad idea, it does make those measures suddenly sound fuller/deeper than the rest of the arrangement. An alternate suggestion could be something like this:
You cannot view this attachment.
This way you don't have a full measure of the L.H. playing an octave lower than normal and keep the constant arpeggios in the same register. I think taking some liberty and not trying to copy the exact notes, but instead write more pianistic arpeggios helps keep the arrangement a bit easier to play and -ironically- sound a bit more like the original. Also, make sure to not overdo the low L.H. bass notes: in m11-14, I only hear one low note per bar instead of two, and I don't hear them in m22 or m31-34 If you need help on how to tackle this in certain spots, feel free to ask me for help! If you are on our discord server, you can send me a message if you want to discuss on there ^^
-Throughout the sheet there are some places where you cut off the length of a guitar or piano note (like m29-30, or m72-74). I think you can tie these over the rests that are there, as they usually ring on for longer than the indicated length anyway.
-m51: Maybe you could add staccato markings to the pizzicato strings voice, to differentiate them from the piano? With the pedal they'll also have a different sound on acoustic pianos
-m56: I hear an Eb on top of this R.H. chord.
-m58: Also an F below the R.H. chord on beat 1.
-m72-79: Maybe you could try writing out the guitar melody in a seperate layer? This is so the player knows which voice to bring out more, or on which voice to focus if they don't wanna play all voices.
-m84-86: Is there a specific reason why you didn't write out the pizzicato voice in 8ths + two 8th rests here?
-m108: Slides like these are usually too small of a length to write out as a glissando. With a glissando the player has to slide over the white or black keys, both of which won't sound great in this situation. I'd suggest writing out the glissando as grace notes: I'd go for either C-C#-D for a smaller chromatic slide, or A-Bb-C-D for a longer diatonic slide.
-m116-118: Though I like the morendo marking and the fermata at the end, I don't hear the original getting softer, end the last bar is held for exactly it's length, not longer.
-I'll probably need to help you with this because of Finale Notepad, but it'll look a bit nicer to have the measure distribution evened out a bit more: instead of ending on systems with a length of 4 measures, you could take one measure from the 6 measure system above and make it 5-5 instead of 6-4. There's also a place where you have 7 measures, which looks a bit cramped. However, another take would be to just have the whole sheet at 6 measures a system: you don't necessarily need new sections to start at a new system, and with this, everything will fit nicely on 4 pages (with the last two systems being 5-5 instead of 6-4).

gu

Hi Bloop! Thank you for the feedback
I've been correcting the things you pointed, as well as some other nitpicks I've found
I loved your suggestion for the arpeggios,and I definitely want to incorporate those but I'm kinda insecure about how to change and rewrite it, nothing  seems to immediately strikes as "right" as your example did
That said, I'll gladly appreciate some help if you have the time :)
I'll send you a message on discord, since I expect a lot of back and forth between corrections, and It'll be faster there, if you're ok with this

gu


Bloop

Awesome! I mostly have some cleaning-up things to mention, but aside from that it looks good ^^

-Most of the dynamic markings throughout the sheet could be centered a bit more under the first note of the bar, they look a bit far right.
-m11 and 13: The dotted quarter rest on beat 1 should be below the melody, but you could decide to delete them as well, like in m25.
-m13 and 25: The L.H. here should like like it does in m11, with the D on beat 2 tied to a D in beat 4.
-m12 and 14: The R.H. here should have a whole rest, instead of dotted half rest.
-m30: Maybe you could leave out the first C in the grace notes before beat 1, since that same C is being played in the L.H. only an 8th before at the end of m29.
-m72: I think the two notes in the R.H. here should be in the same layer? They're both in the guitar voice.
-m73-79: Maybe you could move some of the rests in the R.H. up or down, so it's easier to see which layer they belong too. You could also tie over the notes into the rests if you want, but like this works too, since it's clearer what the main guitar melody is. You could also put accents on them though, if you do wanna tie some notes over ^^
-m96-98: The end of crescendo and decrescendo hairpins should be before the barline, not after.
-m112: The dotted quarter note here can be a dotted half note as well.
-m115: The wavy line can be moved a liiittle bit to the right, and the top of the wavy line should be aligned with the top of the top-most note in the chord (currently it's a bit too high)