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Submission Information:
Series: Pokémon
Game: Pokémon HeartGold Version & Pokémon SoulSilver Version
Console: Nintendo DS
Title: National Park
Instrumentation Solo Piano
Arranger: Madmonk12345

[Madmonk12345]

Also, some performances of this, before anyone can claim this unplayable. Hopefully these will be sufficient.

Recording at home:

Recital:

[AmpharosAndy]

The pdf is a bit wonky-looking. You've got beams cutting across tempo markings and copyright thingies, weirdly placed glissandos, decrescendos colliding with dynamic markings. I don't know if they're all export errors but it doesn't look good.

[Madmonk12345]

Oi. You're right. Some more polish is probably in order.

There shouldn't be any glissandos though. Do you mean arpeggiated chords?

[Altissimo]

You also have to fix the subtitle ("Pokémon HeartGold Version & Pokémon SoulSilver Version", complete with uppercase G and S in HeartGold and SoulSilver) and not have the music running over the copyright info at the bottom. I think you should probably make it 4 staves per page instead of 5, as it is it's really messy and running the risk of falling off the printable area of the page.

[Yug_Guy]

Ayyy Madmonk! Haven't heard from you in a while. First things first, please include a video of the original for reference next time, like so:

Like Andy mentioned before, aesthetically your piece is a bit cluttered right now. You should try and avoid having things overlap with each other as much as possible, be it notes, dynamics, crescendos, etc. One possible solution could be resizing it to 90% or so, which should hopefully fix the overlap between one system & the one above or below it.

That being said, do you think there might be just a little bit too much going on? I certainly understand the want to include as many parts to be as accurate as possible to the original, but at some point you end up adding so much that you end up sacrificing playability in the process. Maybe go through the piece and ask yourself, "Do I really need this part, or would I not lose anything by taking it out?"

Otherwise, some random thoughts:

• Like Alti mentioned above, the full game title needs to be "Pokémon HeartGold Version & Pokémon SoulSilver Version"
• The site url should be "http://www.NinSheetMusic.org/" (with that specific capitalization)
• Nintendo and Game Freak should be separated by a comma, not a slash
• Any particular reason Bespinben is listed as a collaborator? I certainly haven't heard him talk about any collaborations recently, so I'm kind of puzzled as to why he's included here

Otherwise, you've got a good sheet so far!

[Madmonk12345]

stuff

Will do. The reason this is technically a collaboration with Bespinben is I used his incomplete version as a base to work off of, and I want to give him credit for the parts that were already built. Was there a better way to phrase that than collaboration?

[Yug_Guy]

Will do. The reason this is technically a collaboration with Bespinben is I used his incomplete version as a base to work off of, and I want to give him credit for the parts that were already built. Was there a better way to phrase that than collaboration?

Nope, that's perfectly fine. I didn't know about the incomplete version Ben made, so I didn't realize that was what was going on here. Carry on, then.

[AmpharosAndy]

Do you mean arpeggiated chords?

I meant arpeggiated chords

[Latios212]

Hello! Alright, let's see what's going on here...

There's... quite a lot going on in this sheet. It sounds great, and arrangement-wise some things were executed well. I don't mean this in a bad way, but there's no sugarcoating this - the sheet is a mess. Disregarding the sound and execution for a moment, there's so much going on in the sheet - that's not a bad thing in itself, but the number of overlapping and colliding different parts, markings, and dynamics is just too high. This sheet needs some major reformatting. Not to mention, regarding the arrangement itself, I would contest the playability as well. Yes, you can claim its playability since you don't have any large non-arpeggiated chords, but it's clear in the video that the performer must struggle a lot - to the point that attempting to play certain sections (particularly m. 37-45 for instance) loses the clarity of what the song sounds like. Sure, you can call it playable, but it's extremely unwieldy and impractical.

As a result, I have no choice but to conclude that it needs more work than we're able to give it right now, and thus should be deleted. The submissions board is supposed to be for sheets that are nearly ready to go on site, and this sheet needs a lot of work. You're still welcome, of course, to keep working on it, and we can give you feedback on your personal arrangement thread, but this should be there instead of on the submissions board.

[Madmonk12345]

OK, thanks for the feedback everyone. I've gone and uploaded a much cleaner version. I've done some minor actual changes because the version I was playing didn't have a minor tweak for playability I thought I had included in the piece, but before I start stripping out the wallpaper so to speak, I'd like to give it another pass. Is this sufficient, or am I just wasting everyone's time?

[AmpharosAndy]

It's a lot better looking now so I'll go through some new stuff I've noticed.

Spoiler

I think the intro section could use some cross-stave beaming to clean up the look of those runs. I can imagine that looking very professional.

Bars 8 and 9 arpeggios are a little squished into some notes and accidentals.

Bar 12 LH: is it worth changing clef for one note and then changing back again? It's not wrong, though.

Bar 16: Dynamics are clashing with the LH + the drawn out line showing where the triplet pattern is going needs to be a little cleaner.

Bar 20: It might be worth re-stating that the first Bb in the left hand is a Bb because the previous note was a double flat? I don't think it'd hurt.

Bar 32: LH F clashing with quaver rest/I think you could just hide all of the second voice rests in that bar as nothing's happening with it.

Bar 36: Dynamics need more space

Bar 37 onwards: I think that the left hand is too low and grumbly to give off the more upbeat feel of this section. Maybe experiment playing it more staccato or jig it around until it sounds right and then adjust the score. Maybe just an extra expression marking would help.

Bar 38 4th beat: change the Bb quaver to just be a semiquaver in the chord. Makes it cleaner to look at and easier to read.

Bar 45 4th beat: similar thing. I don't think it's worth holding the Db ocatves as it's pointless at that speed. Causes more problems than necessary. Also makes the score look better when they're all just semiquavers.

Bar 48: make those second voice rests invisible as there's only one note and it's an extension of one chord that plays at the same time.

[close]

[swimswamit]

That recital was really awesome looking, sounds great

[daj]

Hmmmm...okay. ^^ I was a little reluctant to post a comment here, but I genuinely believe that this arrangement has potential and doesn't really need to be deleted just like that.

I think the intro and opening section is not bad. The transcription accuracy is probably close to perfect, the playability is okay, and I believe there's enough space for the melody to sing. It's a little more complex than I'm comfortable with, but with a little practice and big hands I'm quite certain you can pull it off. You did a pretty good job with it in the recording too!~

The issue arises in the second section starting from bar 35. I think it's playable, but the way you write robs the music of its melodic and rhythmic identity. Here's what I mean:

Melodic identity:
If you play two notes successively and they are within the range of an octave, your brain tends to perceive that as a melody - a single continuous line of music, which defines most tracks in the VGM genre. You've made an amazing effort to pen down all the parts for this section, but sadly they don't blend that well on the piano: for example, in the last beat of bar 37, the only melody you're supposed to hear is the Bb-Db at the last half of the beat, but the chord on beat 4 changes that perception. So put enough of these in the same section, and we lose the melody of the original, which I feel is a pretty critical mistake that we can't make in the VGM genre~

Rhythmic identity:
This is a little harder to explain - the piano is a percussion-string hybrid instrument, so playing a low note, for example, creates an accent similar to a bass drum, while playing a high note cluster creates an accent similar to a hi-hat. The problem arises when the main beats get confused.

The beat of National Park's B section is not that straightforward, and you might want to do some close listening to figure that out...but I'd like to take a look at your left-hand part and see if you can mark out the natural accents. Chances are it'd be a it messy and confused...and that's why it felt like your performance had no rhythmic drive.

Honestly, these are concepts that took me years to figure out, and I didn't even fully get them until writing a whole collection of tough arrangements in build-up to National Park haha, so if you're still interested after I said all of that feel free to hit me up! ^^ If you're able to transcribe to this level of accuracy I am certain you can figure out a few extra techniques~

All the best!

[Latios212]

Hmmmm...okay. ^^ I was a little reluctant to post a comment here, but I genuinely believe that this arrangement has potential and doesn't really need to be deleted just like that.

To clarify my above post if it was misunderstood, I do agree that this arrangement has a lot of potential - the performance more than shows that! It just needs a lot of reworking, and that's not what this board is for. Deletion doesn't mean we're condemning an arrangement, but rather saying it should be worked on BEFORE submitting. Help us stay organized.

So to reiterate, I more than welcome working on this sheet and I'll help give feedback if wanted, but please, on the personal arrangements board instead.