Great song. It does justice to the original, which has to be one of the best rpg themes out there. Wild Arms as a whole has great music, but the original theme is the best part of it all.
OCR Spotlight: A Symphonic Tale
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 On 05/29/2013 at 07:34 AM by daftman See More From This User » |
Riding the Live Orchestra stage line into the Wild West
From: Wild Arms
Remixed by: Paul Levasseur
Julian just started a new podcast about game music called Sound in Action. One of the songs in the inaugural episode is from the opening of Wild Arms, an early PS1 RPG with a Wild West-like setting and music to match. The song features acoustic guitar and a guy that can whistle like nobody's business. Seriously, it's a great song and you should definitely give it and the new podcast a listen.
It just so happens that I have a remix from OCR to match. The remixer, Paul Levasseur, was a music undergrad at the University of Manitoba when he wrote this arrangement for orchestra. The original from Wild Arms was one of the songs that pushed him to study composition in the first place. Long story short, he showed it to his director who liked it so much that he put it on the final concert program. It's not hard to see why. Paul took a song with pop sensibilities and turned it into a emotional journey. The first steps start quietly with a solo cello but it's soon joined by strings and some woodwinds and then the brass just before the minute mark. The song continues to build from there, cresting a hill at 1'40" and then continuing on with a great violin solo before starting the final ascent at 2'16". Paul does a great job bringing the disparate parts of the orchestra together in that push to the top, the brass at 2'33" being one of my favorites parts of the song. At 2'47" we get a complete and triumphant statement of the melody before things start to dissapate and wind down.
It's not a perfect song and you could nitpick a few things if you wanted, like a few intonation problems and even a kid coughing near the end, but that's the nature of a live recording. And considering all the factors involved in such a recording and all the possible things that can go wrong, I'd say things turned out quite well. And props to the orchestra for putting so much expression in the performance. It's a work of art, really, and I'm glad it was recorded in the first place so that the rest of the world--like those of us here on PixlBit--get to enjoy it too.
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