I don't understand. Is SE/Uematsu involved in this show in any way?? If not, how can they do the show? It's not like FF7 music is public domain...
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Final Fantasy VII Concert turned scam.. not all songs are live, and 3/4 are MiDi Files
- Thread starter Mgs2master2
- Start date
I was there. I wouldn't say it was as bad as the tweets imply, but I definitely didn't get my money's worth.
I think even more offensive than the game bits with midi soundtrack were the trailers for Crisis Core, Advent Children, and Dirge of Cerberus. Like what's the point other than to remind me why I don't trust Square to do the FFVII remake justice?
I think even more offensive than the game bits with midi soundtrack were the trailers for Crisis Core, Advent Children, and Dirge of Cerberus. Like what's the point other than to remind me why I don't trust Square to do the FFVII remake justice?
Both those usages are incorrect. MIDI is a serial data transmission protocol. MIDI files are more comparable to a musical score - they don't make any sounds themselves and need to be replayed from a device that can transmit midi streams to one or more instruments. Instruments can be anything from a $7000 analogue synthesizer to a Roland SoundCanvas or a soundcard with SoundFont support. With the right playback devices, even poor old 7bit MIDI can sound like a full orchestra.
This is also incorrect. Prerecorded audio is not midi. Algorithmically generated music using control voltages is not midi. You can use midi live, to control one instrument from another in realtime, to control the audio mix, or multiple effects units from a single pedal board, or to send synchronisation information between sequencers, computer playback. It's even used to control lighting rigs.
The confusion might stem in part from the (not-unfairly maligned) General MIDI standard, a seperate standard which defines a set of sounds that a device should implement if it wants to get a little GM logo on it. Most commonly seen on CasioTone and similar cheap keyboards, it was invented so that people who wanted to distribute music in the form of MIDI files (like for PC games at one point, and karaoke now) had a reliable set of instruments to work with even if the sound quality varied according to the end user's setup. From memory GM does not define any control parameters beyond note and velocity (how hard the note is struck), which puts a hard limit on the expressiveness it can achieve. The actual MIDI protocol does not have this problem.
Yeah this is surprising considering their concerts are usually ace. Disappointing.
How bizarre to hear. I've been to many Distant Worlds, Kingdom Hearts, and Eorzean Symphony concerts, and they've all been world-class. It sounds like this show was put together either on a budget or in a hurry -- considering the need to have it take place during E3, probably the latter.
Square hired a different production company to put on the show than the one that typically does the Final Fantasy concerts.
Chances are this concert was a rush job. They performed the Distant Worlds arrangements, but there weren't any new ones.
I wonder if they just got screwed by whoever they might've been arranging this with in the US. I think WildFaery is based in France so maybe whoever they collaborated with in the US just did a bad job? I just don't understand how something like this happens with any of these participating parties otherwise if someone didn't get screwed over (other than the fans who attended :S ). SQEX has been good at arranging concerts (by themselves and collaborating/licensing things out) and WildFaery has done legit KH stuff, so it's not like they are some total scam of a company. I really want to know the story behind this. Like, did someone just ACTUALLY think a concert like this is a good idea or is there more to it?
Yea. I can't imagine SE and Uematsu saw the result and OKed without a care.
Pretty sure Shinjimoto was in the audience as well. It was a super obvious fail to anyone who's already been to a real FF concert.
Sorry I was being a bit hyperbolic. I believe it was 3 out of the 10 total songs were piano. Keep in mind a typical distant worlds concert has around 20 songs with only a few at most being piano so the ratio was absolutely unacceptable.
They used the PS1 versions, which are technically not "midi" but it's an easy way for most people to understand what the music generally sounded like.
I mean, technically they ARE MIDI, but with samples built or the synthesizer of the PS1. However, are you certain it was the PS1 version and not the PC version (which sounds wrong in many ways)?
Hey, this is going to sound weird, but I've been going through a rash of depression lately and this response really made my day. Thank you :)
Sorry I really was just shitposting thoughtlessly, the concerts do have a solid track record. Personally I am often disappointed by Square but I know a lot of other people enjoy their recent output, which matters.
The problem, by the way, is that orchestration is expensive and time consuming. Just adding one score to Distant Worlds can take months (I've had some pretty interesting chats with Arnie Roth about this over the years), so the second they announced a FF7-only concert I was like "hang on... where are they getting all these scores from? Not enough arrangements exist to fill a show."
And that's why you get stuff like a third of the show being piano-only versions as shown on the piano arrangement CDs, and why also some tracks were just the original recordings, I guess - the groundwork wasn't there for this show to actually work. It might be if a good chunk of the remake music is orchestrated for the actual game, though, as at that point they can just use those scores - again, this is why Distant Worlds has been able to do like 6 different FF14 tracks and 4 different FF15 tracks in a few years but can only add tracks from older games a few per year - because they can use orchestration composed for the original live recordings.
No excuse for this being as shit as it was, though.
And that's why you get stuff like a third of the show being piano-only versions as shown on the piano arrangement CDs, and why also some tracks were just the original recordings, I guess - the groundwork wasn't there for this show to actually work. It might be if a good chunk of the remake music is orchestrated for the actual game, though, as at that point they can just use those scores - again, this is why Distant Worlds has been able to do like 6 different FF14 tracks and 4 different FF15 tracks in a few years but can only add tracks from older games a few per year - because they can use orchestration composed for the original live recordings.
No excuse for this being as shit as it was, though.
I'm almost certain they hired him to try and get whatever piss-poor planning was happening off the ground and shape the concert into something performable.
They could have hired a wind orchestra and performed the FFVII Brass de Bravo concert that they've done in Japan. Look up "Final Fantasy VII Brass de Bravo" on YouTube—it's not a symphony orchestra in terms of sheer power, but it's 50 minutes of great music!
Wild Faery has a pretty bad track record when it comes to event planning itself, but the result in terms of music itself usually depends on how much Square Enix is involved in supervision and orchestration (hence the high quality of the Kingdom Hearts World of Tres concert, plus this concert mostly used the same scores as KHIII). Their own productions are usually pretty poor, like the Namco Bandai tribute concert they did in Paris in 2017, which was abysmal.
Even IF the process would've taken months, which sounds a little incredible to me (he might be referring to the whole process of licensing and approval from Japan, because as an orchestral arranger myself I know it doesn't take months to write a 3-5 minute arrangement!), that's still no excuse for not having a single new arrangement in the show that they've been planning on for... months.
Not only that but the tickets were at minimum more expensive than any videogame concert that I've seen to date, which implied to the buyer there would be higher production costs. And since I also knew they would be a bit short on arrangements, and that they would have to get more written for this, or maybe even adapt some of the new ones written for the remake, I felt the costs were totally justified. Then... the concert happened, and... it made history.
So anyways, yes I agree there's no excuse for what happened.
The original PC version had soundfonts included to make it sound near-identical to the PSX game, but I guess this "wildfaery" isn't gonna spend those big buxx. :P
I grew up hearing the PC versions and didn't get to hear the much better PSX versions until a few years later, so I am intimately familiar with both, and I can promise you they used the PSX versions. Not that it really made things any better for an audience of people who paid to listen to live orchestra music.
That fucking sucks, I feel really bad for the people who paid tickets for this :(
Was anyone able to get a refund?
Was anyone able to get a refund?
No denial Wild Faery is poor here, and yeah, they could've used Brass De Bravo or even A New World arrangements (If they could get them, but rights to arrangements is another issue - like there's great FF7 material from the German concerts, Symphonic Fantasies etc, but they probably won't share their work), but then there's other challenges beyond that when you have part of a concert program that uses one orchestra setup and another uses a different one - it just gets complicated, messy, and hard to execute. This is why they do A New World and Distant Worlds as separate shows, too - you even really need different venues for different sorts of setups, depending on the acoustics, and that hall is a fuckin' big venue.
So, like, there wasn't enough material for what they proposed, really. I stand by that analysis. Distant Worlds has been doing it right, where they're doing a 'FF7 tribute' show where in the first half they cram a little over an hour of music from every other FF and then in the second half do 45 minutes of 7.
There's a lot of factors, I guess. There's licensor/SE approval, quite often composer approval, and even multiple layers within SE itself (licensing, brand, creators - these are different branches, any of which might take issue). For Distant Worlds, there's also video sync which all has to go through visual works etc - though not all concerts have this concern. I've interviewed Roth from DW several times, though, and in one of them he did say it was a months-long back and forth process to add a new track to the repertoire when a proper orchestral score doesn't already exist. Obviously when it does, like with orchestrated tracks from newer games, the whole process is massively expedited on all levels, as even from the licensing perspective you're no longer asking for approval of a new arrangement, just approval to use an existing, already approved one.
The thread title's phrasing and use if the term MIDI had me believing that 3/4s of the members of the orchestra were faking it while their parts were being played back through midi. That would have been far more of a scam.
Sounds like this might have been for nostalgia and perhaps pad it out a little? I dont know Final Fantasy music really but if I went to a live orchestra Zelda concert and they sprinkled in some of the original chiptune pieces in between performances I dont think I'd be mad about it.
Sounds like this might have been for nostalgia and perhaps pad it out a little? I dont know Final Fantasy music really but if I went to a live orchestra Zelda concert and they sprinkled in some of the original chiptune pieces in between performances I dont think I'd be mad about it.
I have a childhood friend who only played the PC version. Imma clown on him for listening to this bullshit the next time I see him
