Final Fantasy VI Analysis Series PART 1: Development of Melodic Ideas
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- Опубліковано 13 лип 2024
- In this new, 3-part series on the music of Final Fantasy VI, I take a look at how long time series composer Nobuo Uematsu writes music on a note-by-note level. I like breaking down music to as fundamental level as I can to see if there are any patterns or strategies that I can take for my own writing, so hopefully you guys find that interesting too!
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#finalfantasymusic #videogamemusic #musictheory - Ігри
That joke outta nowhere almost ended my 27 years on this earth. Well written.
What joke xD
LagAttack I think it is 0:48.
I was drinking coffee. This joke is dangerous.
It was mildly amusing, I don't know about life-ending, though
Ahh but Terra's theme also has a snare behind it, turning a lyrical music into march, emphasizing her past work as a soldier, as if it was haunting her. Really beautiful music
To me it makes it feel much grander and more epic and adds so much more depth
@@skriller7102yeah and turns into a bit of a fanfare on the last section
It's not just about her past, but also her future. As Terra has to keep moving forward to see any peace for the future. Her arc in the second half is about her stopping, thinking that she can get away from all these problems by settling down, before being reminded that no, in order to solve the problems she hopes to solve, she must get moving again. It's all about this constancy of moving forward with Terra.
Gives it an Ennio Morricone kinda vibe
Wow, hearing that Uematsu is self-taught is a huge inspiration to me. I’m also a self-taught musician and Uematsu is a very important role model of mine. It was the opera that convinced me to learn as much of the FFVI soundtrack as I could on the piano. Uematsu is a genius! My favorite piece of his is definitely Dancing Mad. I love how it’s classical-inspired and just how epic it is!
Agreed dancing mad is a masterpiece
Wait what he's self taught?
Let's go bro me too!
That makes me feel better as someone mostly self-taught who has been having difficulty understanding music in a formal, university level context.
Let's just ignore the fact that 8-bMT is hungry for brains.
CEASE YOUR INVESTIGATIONS
Quick! Throw a Phoenix Down on him!
As long as it helps him put out content!
@@jamesgrey13 *Revivify 😁
Never thought I'd see the day where I hear Setzer get called a "Degenerate Otaku Fanboy".
Pretty true though
Hè really is though..
I sometimes like to play around with the idea of turning FF6 into scripts for a blockbuster saga, and one of the bigger challenges is being true to Setzer's character and not making him sound like a creep.
@@aldeayeah He is a creep. But he's attractive so women give him a pass. That's how it works. If you're attractive you can do things that on anyone else would be creepy. But on the attractive person they just say they're "incorrigible."
If you could just go through the whole Final Fantasy series, that'd be great. Love the content 😘
(Edit: If you could also analyze how we're able to listen to battle music for hours and not get tired of it, that'd be pretty radical too.)
McMenemy5orSomething agreed.
A nonspecific video on looping battle music would be great.
The battle theme even borrows a few things from Terra's theme.
Sideways did a really cool video about repeated music recently. tl:dw; It turns out hearing music more often messes with your brain and actually makes you like it more.
Of course, the music has to be good enough to not completely drive you away from the game first :P
McMenemy5orSomething omggg!!! All I wanted is him to analyse battle themes from Nobuo Uematsu! This would be my Christmas present 😵😵❤️❤️🙏🏻🙏🏻
This is probably my favorite youtube channel of all time.
Agreed, I'd be a patreon supporter in a heartbeat if I, you know, had any money
It's not my favorite but it's close and a good choice
I've said it before but I'll say it again. I truly love how you've found your editing and structural style first extracting the core thing that is being played on a piano with a transparant visual and then bringing back in the actual song with the sheet music itself. Also I really love the slight additions of you softly hammering in the difference in sound between alternative choices. Your channel was already great before but recently with the cleaner look and structure it became amazing.
His playing and experimenting with alternate chords is by far my favorite thing he incorporates. It's so cool to hear different ideas in songs I grew up with. I wholeheartedly agree with you. He's become so good at this.
REALLY would be mind blown were he to do the same thing to any part of Der Ring des Nibelungen. (THE greatest human artistic creation of any medium.)
This game, and its soundtrack, always get to me on a very deep, philosophical and emotional level. I can't stress how much I'm glad that you picked to do a 3 parter on THIS game above all the other Final Fantasy games you could have picked. And the first two songs are basically the themes of the two leading ladies. BRAVO!
This is such a great breakdown of why Uematsu's music WORKS. It isn't just pretty, or fun, or fitting. It WORKS. That was always my composition professor's highest praise. Functional music is so important to understanding composition, and Uematsu absolutely makes functional music that is also fun, and pretty, and fitting! Great stuff, looking forward to the rest of this series!
Terra's Theme always gets my eyes welled up.
E: AND THE OPERA BRINGS IT HOME. This isn't fair.
Terra's theme sounds very Morricone.
Yes 10000% agree. Terra's theme NEVER fails to deliver the teary eyes or goosebumps. It always reminds me of how perfect this music is, and the amazing, ageless and epic piece of art FFVI is in every possible sense.
I love, love, *love* this series. Uematsu is almost single-handedly responsible for me getting into composition. (The rest was bad luck--I broke my left hand and no longer had the grip strength to keep playing bass.)
I almost wish this were a second channel, doing this kind of analysis for *all* of Uematsu's work. Especially with what you have planned for the second episode--while I see where you're going, *the* game, if you're looking at how to reuse material in new ways, is Final Fantasy 8, not 6. (Listen to the soundtrack, and count how many times "Eyes on Me" and "Ami" get reused. Don't do this as a drinking game, though, or you'll die of alcohol poisoning.)
As much as I agree with you, you're so wrong about FF8 being a better showcase of reoccurring leitmotifs. FF6 has 14(!!) playable characters, all of them have their unique character theme, and each of them are referenced to across the game and occur when the character is of importance to the plot/setting. Each character theme is rearranged in 2, three or four different pieces. Every town has their own theme which reoccurs, even side characters have themes. Oh, did I mention the main antagonist Kefka has a theme that reoccurs 10 times, and is rearranged 3 times? Also the massive final boss music that references some 17 previously heard themes. Not to mention the ending theme that features all 14 characters' themes combined in a single epic arrangement, bringing it all full circle?
Eyes on Me sure is repeated a lot in FF8, but nothing in that game comes close to this scale of leitmotifs. FF6's soundtrack stands alongside Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen and Shore's LOTR score as the three most elaborate uses of leitmotifs as a musical storytelling device ever composed.
Dancing Mad is such an awesome theme, especially when you put all of the different sections together, perhaps loop each of them once before moving onto the next section. Five separate pieces of music that loop endlessly in the game, but change seamlessly as you move up the statue and eventually to Kefka himself... that had to be an absolute marvel to do with the SNES hardware, because each of those is its own track. It's not one giant track that plays, because if you rip the SPC audio from the ROM, you get 5 separate SPC tracks. I'm not sure I know of any other SNES game that does this, that has a multi-part continuous track (without stops/breaks except for when Kefka himself finally comes down) that changes depending on the action in the game. I know Parasite Eve did the same thing with the Ultimate Being theme, but that's a PS1 game.
you were supposed to break your hand and start composing
maybe
Aria Di Mezzo Carattere will always be in my top 10 videogame themes of all time, despite never having gotten past the opening parts of FF6 (though it is on my to-finish list, once I get a copy of my own). It is just such a beautiful piece, y'know...?
3:04 "It's also worth noting the Uematsu harmonized the end of this phrase with a minor dominant chord and not a... Dominant dominant chord... Wait I'm just gonna call this the 5 chord" LMAO
Makes sense. I just thought it was funny lol
I liked your 31-EDO song
Uematsu-san is a pillar of VGM, arguably with FFVI being his best work. 16 well-developed characters with distinct leitmotifs? Genius. I look forward to all 3 of these videos!
Maki best idol
6 is great but 10-2 soundtrack is probably my favorite and seriously underrated.
I think that the fact that ffvi was a masterpiece in itself really helped.
It makes me wonder if the story and characters were influenced by the soundtrack as the game was being made.
Everything just work so well together that it doesn't make sense that the music was added last.
Nah bby. VIII is his zenith.
@@mason4882 | 😁🍅
"Meticulously crafted with everything in the right place" - same could be said of your analyses. Love this channel!
Uematsu is probably most in his element in bass line driven tunes, of which many examples come to mind from FF6 - 9 and his contributions to Chrono Trigger. From FF6, consider "Phantom Forest", which features a beautiful haunting melody, but the acoustic bass almost steals the show completely. Consider CT's "Silent Light" where he put particular attention not only to the structure of the bass melody but even portamentos that emulate a live performer. This in the 16-bit era where every byte of ROM still had to be accounted for. You can't talk about Uematsu without talking about his charismatic bass lines.
Helped me inspire me on learning more music theory
same my dude
From this the most interesting thing for me was in the manner of how Nobuo gets as much mileage as he does out of very brief, repetitious motifs with minimally simplistic permutations to follow the cadence and chord changes.
13:01 that melody will haunt me forever... This game is such a crucial moment in my life.
As a music theory nerd and gamer, I find your content the best in youtube. Thank you for doing this.
describing the musical phrases in terms of their ideas is the only music theory that makes sense to me. That's how I've always heard music.
I'm writing my composer demo reel for my senior project at uni right now, and it's on video game scoring. Considering FF6 is one of the games that got me interested in vgm in the first place, this series is perfectly timed
Hey 8-bit! You probably won’t notice this, but I think any video of odd time signatures in splatoon 2 would be really great! Have a great day!
This man knows what's up, a Splatoon vid would be awesome!
E
I personally feel like a dissection of pop tunes in general through Splatoon would be nice.
I would help make that video. Splatoon references a lot of cool music. Polysics was probably an influence concerning odd-time signatures
So happy to see this series coming out. The first piece of MIDI I ever tried to study on day one of learning music theory was Into the Darkness. FF has the best VGM ever!
Love the channel. Thanks!
Glad that you finally touch on Uematsu. I loved his style in the old 8 to 16 bit era, though I started growing less fond of him once we jumped to the 32 bit era. Maybe a video on how the restrictions of 8 and 16 bit music were what made some of these tunes so memorable would be interesting? Unless I missed it in the archives, of course, and if so, I'm sure someone will point it to me.
Oh, and while FFVI was the pinnacle of the series on the SNES, I hope you eventually touch on FFIV and FFV, that have their own unique musical styles, eventually
To be fair, he was starting to get burned out while making the soundtrack for FFVIII. Its why his quality kinda drops after 7.
0:55 gah why are my eyes tearing up? Is this all it takes, for real?!?
This is gonna be a good series.
What theme is this? Main theme to 6? opening theme?
That joke was really well, done, especially the way it's just clipped off. Good job. :D
And the rest of the video was fascinating as usual.
It sounds like Uematsu taught himself by listening to rock music--moving a melody/riff to a different root note in the same key is a very common method in rock music. For example: in Metallica's "Hero of the Day" they started the song in A Major and then shifted to the relative minor F# for the bridge/outro--and in the outro is an overdubbed riff that is the intro riff transposed from A Major to F# Minor. Also, the infamous "playing a riff in E and then shifting it to A for a chorus or solo".
Uematsu is confirmed to be a big fan of metal, so I think you're on to something.
Rock music is weird...
You're correct. He did learn from rock music as he grew up with it.
Uematsu is a true genius! I've always considered him up there with Mozart, Beethoven and all the greats and your videos just make that feeling stronger!
Your channel deserves substantially more than 167K subscribers. You put forth incredible effort and coherence and it really shows.
He didnt cover the structure of dancing mad...
4 days later its 169K...I subbed like a year ago and I feel like it was under 100K then, though I might be wrong. He'll get there.
Still cool that a channel not afraid to jump into the deep end of music theory can have 167k though
Subscriber count low because is this even English? No, it’s unfiltered music theory terms, to most people a magic 8-ball of words.
@Keithustus Almost like its called 8 bit music theory
Great analysis, as always! It's hard not to enjoy the music that you choose to look at, too.
Time to be confused as usual.
nah this vid was hella intelligible tbh
mate, you don't understand; i'm an idiot
lol u dumb im smart lole
SirBanana Same, but still I enjoy watching these videos. I feel like I would understand if I could.
i don't really know much about music theory, but i think it's pretty cool to see how a song was structured, the ideas behind it, and the feeling that the result can create... but it's true, it can be confusing sometimes xD
all right! Time to watch this video in 80-second increments over and over again until i understand what you are really talking about.
I would just like to mention that the opera scene's music is quite possibly the best peice of video game music ever.
Your videos are so good! I love learning about the music in my favorite games and you’re fantastic at teaching it!
I really like your videos and I appreciate the amount of detail you put into analyzing the music. Always happy to see new content to learn from.
Boy pulled out a Schoenberg quote for tonal music? Just crazy enough to work.
This is the first video of your's that I've seen, and it is fantastic. After seeing A New World last night, this is exactly what I needed today!
Omg a series of videos on FFVI, I couldn't have asked for more
Yes. I've been looking forward to this ever since I first discovered your channel. Thank you so much!
I’ve been waiting for this very video/series since I subscribed.
This is the most important video game to me, musically.
Thank you so much!
LOVE this video. Great analysis. Amazing job!
I am so happy you are doing a whole series about one of my favorite videogames ever, probably my favorite VGM. Looking forward to your next videos!
I can't tell you how much I love this video. I have been scouring youtube for a long time now trying to find someone doing some heavy analysis of video game music, especially of Nobuo Uematsu's work (my favorite of which is from this game). And you absolutely came through! I cannot wait for the next video in the series.
2 minutes and already added to my favorites list. Thanks for making these, 8bit! Between your videos and hanging on the music theory discord channel, my composing has improved immensely.
I love watching these videos and playing along to some sections. Great work!
I would love to double-like your videos man. I feel like every time I watch them I learn more and more. I've been rewatching every single video (about 5 times each) and analyzing them myself and I just can't get enough! I love the way you explain and the way you always seem to make them enjoyable for everyone, having enough jokes and swiftly explaining each step. Seriously... THANKS! 😊
So awesome.... not only are your videos some of the best out there, you're covering probably my #1 video game soundtrack of all time.... great work, can't wait for the other parts!
Thank you for this 8 bit music theory, this is my favorite final fantasy game! Thank you Focussing on this game! It truly has a beautiful soundtrack engulfed in emotion
He is probably my favorite video game composers. Keeping a solid structure to his compositions without sounding robotic, or monotonous.
This channel is everything! Thank you, i appreciate your works. Keep doing it sir!
Loved this... Everything you'll be will to do on this matter will be highly valuable and totally appreciated!!!
Outstanding analysis. Enjoyed the whole thing. Cheers.
This is amazing. thank you for taking the time to do videos like this.
Can't seriously explain how much I LOVED the youtube algorithm when it showed me this channel!!
This is such a unique channel. AMAZING work here!!!
This is perfect man. Love the structural approach you give to the whole subject of melodic development! It really gives you ideas 💡
The thing i love about this video (and pretty much all your videos) is that you really really love and have a deep fascination for all the pieces and composers you analyze. It'd be one thing just to be able to decompose and see patterns and motifs in these things, but your passion and love bleeds through your words and videos and I love to hear what you have to say because it comes from someone who has a personal attachment to the music instead of coming off as just cold or calculating. Wish that I had not only the talent but also the heart to be able to analyze and fully enjoy such bangers
Keep it up my dude can't wait to see what you have next
My Favourite Video of yours! Well done!
Thanks for sharing your knowledge mate , fantastic work!
Brilliant video, 8bmt. I didn't think I could love Uematsu more than I already did, but this video changed that. Absolutely looking forward to parts 2 and 3!
The only video i’ve seen on youtube that doesn’t have a dislike.
McKay Oustrich 5 dislikes :D
Honestly, the level of production value, detail, and polish in these videos is something that makes you stand out like a lighthouse on the ocean. Excellent craftsmanship as usual. These videos make my, and many others', days, and I hope you enjoy making them enough to continue doing them. Bravo! Look forward to this series!
I have been listening to different arrangements of dancing mad today so I am fully expecting an in depth analysis of it here now! Keep up the good work!
great work man!!! your channel is a goldmine in youtube
This is phenomenal, great job! Thank you for focusing on this incredible music.
Amazing, been waiting for this since I subscribed to this awesome channel :)
Thanks for the good work ;)
I'm so happy you exist, and your channel exists. This content is so niche, and SOOOO pleasing for me^^
This is so inspiring. Thank you for your work. ❤️
I loved that you quoted Schoenburg in this video. If you can, keep quoting composers' thoughts on music. It gives me, at least, a good meta-understanding of the structure behind music besides just music.
Love your videos. Seriously, you gave me inspiration to start composing again about a year ago, now I watch every video that you do! Thanks a bunch for doing these!
Love FF6 and the music in the series. Had no idea he was self taught, that's amazing.
Awesome video, can’t wait for the other 2
This is everything I could have possibly wanted. Thank you so much.
Wow this was really helpful! I’ve never really grasped the idea of musical continuity and intelligibility until this video. This will help me so much in my music, thankyou so much 8bMT 😀😀😀
Finally, I fantasize about these videos 😁
Nobuo is my hero, this video was unexpected but I'm so happy you're back talking about Final Fantasy. More, please! Can't wait!
Yes! FFVI is my favorite RPG, largely because of the music. Thank you for doing this video, I’m watching it immediately!
Is it strange that I got shivers just from the first 3 notes of Terra's theme?
Now I need to go and replay through ffvi again.
Bruh, I really like how you aproach the theory of the music, it can be very confusing sometimes but i think you are nailing it from my point of perspective. I learned good things from this video, keep up.
It's funny, because when you released the video on voice leading in Donkey Kong, my theory course was talking about voice leading. Now, we've just finished up temporary tonicization and modulation, and are moving on to musical form, which is partially what this video is about (though we're focusing initially on binary rounded).
It's such a coincidence, but it's fun to learn in class and in here as well.
Fantastic as usual!
I love you videos so much! Always leaves me appreciating the music even more. I studied music theory for years but I don’t use it directly for my career (though I do use the underlying systematic intellectual habits it formed). It’s nice to follow along so as to not forget.
Thank you for keeping the music alive. The Celes song brings a tear to my eye everytime I hear it.
One of the first songs I ever learn to play was Celes Theme on the piano. My dad taught it to me because we were both fans of FF6 and he knew his way around music. He sadly passed away in 2011 and It's thanks to him I got into the Final Fantasy series in the first place and I can still playing Celes theme by heart thanks to him. Keep up the good work maybe next video I'll try to cry less.
Outstanding. I look forward to the next episode.
This is like the first time I've actually understood motivic development and what effective motivic development looks like. Thanks for this video, it kicked ass!
I knew it, you transcribe all of these yourself. Dude you are amazing. The gaming community needs you continue this work.
Thank you, 8-bit. Starving for more!
Damn. I've been watching your channel for a little bit, first of all great great work. But this vid takes it to the next level. Thank you for doing a deep dive on ff6, can't wait for the next installment!
I squealed with delight when I saw this show up in my subscription list - thank you for taking on this game (it's my all-time favorite, in case that isn't obvious)! I look forward to part 2!
Never clicked a video faster..
This is delightful, I can't wait for part 2!
Final Fantasy VI has always been my favorite FF game due to its iconic villain and amazing soundtrack. I'm absolutely thrilled you chose this one of all the games to use as your focal point! It's awesome to hear how brilliantly Uematsu put this soundtrack together. :D
Can't wait for Part 2.
Love this video. FFVI was my favorite game of all time for most of my young life, so as a musician and composer, it has naturally bled into my own musical language. Love that you're dissecting it!
I have never stopped what I was watching for a notification faster than this. I have maintained to this day that FFVI's soundtrack has been Uematsu's magnum opus so far. Looking forward to the rest of the series!
I would say IX is his magnus opus, given how he took his approach with leitmotivic musical development heavily expanded in VI and VII and took it to even further heights, giving most characters, major side-characters, and other ideas some reoccurring thematic idea heard in multiple tracks (although Armarant got screwed and just has the one track lol). On top of that, with the advent of utilizing a LOT of FMVs, he had the opportunity to do a bunch of scored-to-picture cues, playing with some leitmotifs from the in-game score even further. VI, VII, and VIII only got a handful of those prior, but IX wound up getting a whole extra album dedicated to those cues.
@@Sawngawkuh Fair enough. IX also has a solid soundtrack; Rose of May and Kuja's Theme are among my favorite tracks in video games. However, I've always felt that in terms of structure and framing, VI has a more dramatic and operatic quality to it despite the SNES soundfont, which I like more. Like you said, pretty much all of the characters and entities in VI have very distinct themes and leitmotifs with memorable melodies, which are referenced in key dramatic moments (i.e. Terra's theme in Protect the Espers, a minor mode version of Locke's theme in Forever Rachael, and Celes' theme in Aria de Mezzo Carattere), as well as adding to the story by themselves (i.e. Celes' theme playing when she attempts suicide or Locke's theme playing when he is protecting Terra in Narshe).
IX does the same in some aspects, but most of the main characters don't have a distinct memorable theme/leitmotif that adds a musical framing to their struggles; they are all pretty much covered under the catchall theme of Melodies of Life. While there are exceptions like Beatrix, Kuja, and to a lesser extent, Vivi, I would argue that IX doesn't do this quite as well as VI. I can list at least 8 character themes from VI that were memorable and encapsulated what those characters and their stories were all about, as well as adding to their conflicts or defining moments in the story. Both soundtracks are very well written imo, and I have just about as many favorites from both. But, in terms of structure and framing, I feel that VI does it a little better, despite IX being my favorite FF game.
However, at the end of the day, it comes down to preference.
I'm also open to the possibility that I wasn't listening hard enough and missed a lot of the nuances in IX's soundtrack.
Actually, most of the main characters do indeed have a leitmotif utilized throughout the game's score (barring, as I said before, Amarant, who gets screwed over due to be a character included much later in the game and thus only got a single piece for him).
Zidane's is developed and rearranged in a more melancholic light in "Unfulfilled Feelings" to reflect his inner desires that conflict with his exterior personality,
Steiner's is toyed with in "Reckless Steiner" to represent his inabilities to cope with various situations and keep the princess under his watch.
Vivi's is developed in "Limited Time" and "Black Mage Village" as he grows to find out more about who and what he is.
Freya's gets treatment in "Burmecia" and "A Face Unforgotten" to accompany her whole arc involving the Alexandria invasion and her reunion with Fratley.
Quina gets some minor attention with Qu's Marsh (like with Armarant she/he also got a bit of a shaft but at least functions as a leitmotif due to that extra piece toying with her material).
Eiko's is played with that "Slew of Love Letters" piece that intermingles her theme with Garnet's to represent her juvenile crush and competitiveness with Zidane's love.
And Garnet's is littered all over the place, as her leitmotif essentially doubles as love theme. It's mainly her that falls under the Melodies of Life idea rather than it being a catchall theme. Uematsu would continue with this approach in FFX by having Yuna's theme double as the love theme in that score.
Apart from Kuja and Beatrix being more obvious examples (especially the former, whose theme is littered in in-game and FMV cues), other major NPCs like Brahne, Garland, and the Tantalus group also have their ideas played with in a handful of tracks.
While how memorable all these themes are is subjective (one can't just force a person to think a theme is memorable or not LOL), it's still worth noting that all these characters do indeed have some thematic idea associated with them and their struggles.
Uematsu doesn't really focus on umbrella themes for most of his scores during the VI-X period. Only FFVIII wound up being the exception, opting to revolve around three main themes (the sorceress, love, and friendship/ami themes) rather than numerous character leitmotifs.
@@Sawngawkuh Interesting. Definitely going to have to go back and listen to those, then. I guess I just didn't notice it in my playthroughs.
Incredibly interesting video - I've never considered how melodic content can be derived in this manner! I'll be excited to hear what else you talk about as you continue this series!
New subscriber here, I've been watching most of your videos old and new, and I noticed in this one in particular, you seem more patient and deliberate in elaborating the ideas and analysis for each section of the music. I find myself, like most, only sometimes fully grasping your points on your older videos, but here I felt I can truly appreciate just how methodological yet beautiful these two songs are, being able to almost fully understand your points of view in elaborating. And I don't even play FF6 xD
Truly appreciate this slight change in delivery
OMG. I remember finding this video when it first came out and watched it with a coworker, who quickly turned it off because "yeah ok i get it he used the phrase again and again" and I was never able to rediscover it- till today!! So happy to find it again and give it the love it deserves!!!
I remember when this channel had one video. Glad to see how much it has grown in such a short time, and how many appreciate the art form of video game music. This guy is a genius, I couldn't even understand what he was saying when I first started watching, but I've started to understand more as time went on. Thank you for making this content!