ariyassa

general all-around nerd

music composer and producer, keyboardist, bassist, recovering ex-software engineer, hobbyist GM for ttrpgs


Ok, if the first day was an intro to my esoteric indie game/electronic music choices, this next one is going to be a lot of NERD ENERGY.

Day 2 // Opening level music // Final Fantasy VI: Omen (Opening Theme)

Imagine yourself in 1994 on the Super Nintendo -- the era where we had to blow on plastic cartridges. You slot in this game, and this dramatic ass organ starts playing.

I realize that the more well-known of Nobuo Uematsu's works (in the U.S. at least) are FFVII and FFX, but I actually believe that his opus magnum was the soundtrack of FFVI. That strong musical opening is just the beginning, and those motifs keep coming back throughout the game to punch you in the feels. And that main villain... geez his theme just gets bigger and BIGGER as his role in the game follows the same growth.

I won't dive too deep here, but let me also link another track in this game that really exemplifies the complexity of this soundtrack... since I'm doing hard mode I can't use this game again, so now you get two tracks in one, muahaha!


Dancing Mad is the final boss music of this game, and it is an electronic symphony in four movements, composed for the SNES sound chip. Our Big Bad Final Boss has absorbed all of the world's magic to become a GOD, and you get to fight him through all of his phases. Each phase (movement) represents Hell, Purgatory, Heaven, and God, respectively. Just take a moment to let the compositional complexity of that sink in. It is an 18-minute beast (though each movement is written as a loop so it could be made shorter, e.g. the Distant Worlds version is about 11 minutes). Nonetheless, there are piano concertos that long.

Here's my very short list of takeaways from Dancing Mad: The 1st movement is an epic callback to Omen, and I absolutely love the chugging rhythm of that synth bass. The 2nd movement has a dissonant circus-y march that is very much on brand for this villain. There are some strong Bach Toccata and Fugue vibes. The 3rd movement is a crazy organ solo. And then all of a sudden around the 12-minute mark, the 4th movement comes in and it's like "HELLO, IT IS NOW TIME FOR PROG ROCK". It's intense.

Someone else has already done an excellent analysis of this track, so I'll drop that link here too for anyone interested.

I've been meaning to do a cover of this track (pretty sure I listen to it like once a month), but it's such a beast of a project that I need to break it down into smaller chunks and work on it slowly over a number of weeks. One day I may actually finish this...


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