This song really makes me feel great inside. It feels entirely free, and it does bring back memories of Kakariko. Great job again team with this one. I’m excited to hear more!

Oh my god Fire… This is probably going to sound really lame, but you brought tears to my eyes. This has got to be the most beautiful song ZREO has ever released and was damn well worth the multiple delays.

Good job, Mathazzar. Very smooth. An arrangement many are sure to love.

I totally agree with Stephen. I don’t think any other song has had this much emotion put into it.

Got chillz down my spine, truly wonderful.

Hello, folks!

First of all, I want to publicly apologize for the delayed release of this installment. I was extremely ill and I premiered a play, so it was a pretty hectic period of time and I didn’t want to rush things just to say that I released on time.

Quality is important to me, and I wanted to make sure that I could properly focus on this release while I was working on it.

So thank you all very much for your patience with me, and trust me when I say that I am very happy to hear that this movement is so well-received!

Regular updates from now on, I promise. I’m always happy to hear from you guys, so thank you all for commenting!

Just an FYI guys, I blogged about this as a review and promotion combined. The post is at my blog here: http://francehopper.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/zreos-second-part-of-open-symphony/

Just thought you might want to know.

Wow…I’ve been a long time ZREO supporter, but this is the first time I had to comment.

I always thought, “What if Fire offers variations or remixes of Zelda tunes instead of covering them?” And here is the result. This is seriously your best work in my opinion. I love how somber the Kakariko Melody sounds. Additionally, the way you flawlessly integrated a part of Clocktown’s riff into the melody is so enchanting. Of course, the audio samples are excellent stuff as usual.

Keep it up, man. You should submit this track to OC Remix or something. I’m pretty sure they’ll dig it.

Thanks for the blog, Stephen. It’ll be nice to get news of this out across the internet.

AFM, glad you noticed the counterpoint. And it’s funny you should mention the OCRemix idea…I was thinking that, once the entire symphony is released, I would pitch it to OC for consideration. I think they’ll be happy with a new, fully-orchestrated arrangement/medley.

Thanks for the responses

Excellent Movement. I love the Emotion. this has to be one of my favorite projects from ZREO.

I believe blind praise is incredibly detrimental. Forgive my criticism, but I think it’s warranted. I don’t want to comment on the sound quality, although the use of the samples could be a bit more deft. There were some moments where the counterpoint delivered a vague cloud of sound instead of clearly independent lines, but if you’re putting out an orchestral score there’s much more to be aware of.

Here are a couple observations of mine after a brief glance at the score. These are fine subtleties, but still very important if you are going to create an orchestral score.

1. Are the string slurs phrasing or bowing indications? Several passages are impractical under a single bow.
2. Are you familiar with the way a harp is tuned? It is impossible to alter a pitch without taking a moment to adjust the pedals. Currently the part is unplayable with the presence of the A-flat.
3. Are the violas playing double stops or divisi?
4. What’s with the cello double stop in the final measure? Give a note to the bass or viola. The fifth will lock in stronger.
5. Give each percussion instrument its own staff, or at the very least, its own voice within the staff. It’s very dense and confusing when multiple instruments are playing.
6. The tuba might be a better choice in mm 89-92. Trombones down there at mezzo-forte will be hard.
7. Use cross-staff beaming for the harp in mm 73-80… otherwise there’s no need for the bass clef to be there.
8. Use the same dynamic for the violins in m 57.
9. I would have taken a bit more advantage of the bass’s extreme low range, but that’s more a compositional tendency than anything else.
10. In passages where the oboe is doubling the flute in the bottom of the staff, the flute is going to be almost inaudible, especially at quiter dynamics.

Pretty fine engraving and orchestrating overall, though.

Treefarm, thank you. Honestly. I can’t speak for Fire and Mathazzar, but I know from a composer’s standpoint that blind praise doesn’t really help anyone. Your comments were very specific and helpful. However, I do feel there’s a lot more good than bad to this piece. Zelda has never had such a rich orchestration for Kakariko Village, and that’s the truth. It is world’s above what this theme has previously known. I agree there are a few spots I’d touch up on.

1. Change that trumpet. Get a live performer, if you have to. They’re all over the place. The one used just doesn’t match the rest of the library imo.

2. Watch the parallel octaves in measures 16 & 17 (and when the same passage appears later on) between the oboe and the double bass. I know the voice leading is very nice the way it stands, but the parallel octaves strangles that rich sound. Instead of the double bass playing ‘d,d,e,f#,g,d,e,d,d,g’ it could play ‘d,f#,g,down to c,d,d,e,down to a,up to d,g’ That’s probably how I would do it, but I’m not the arranger ^_^

3. As a trombone player, I agree, unless you specifically have a bass trombone for measures 85-92, give the final 4 measures to the tuba. Those staccato low d’s aren’t gonna sound pretty out of a tenor tbn.

I said I thought the piece definitely deserved praise. Here’s why. Koji Kondo would be proud of how you incorporated Clock Town into it. He does that kind of stuff in his music all the time, and it makes the pieces so much more interesting, because you start to make little connections you hadn’t thought of before. The piece overall is stunningly beautiful, and the criticisms are minor. This is the direction I feel Zelda’s music should be taking. Great job, guys.

You know, maybe we should show this to Nintendo when it’s done… I just fear the outcome might not be good (if they don’t like it they have the power and right to shut us down). I know Fire emailed them awhile back but that was when ZREO was still young. Look at it now, 195 songs, 6.5 hours of music, an almost fully reorched OoT and half a gig worth of music (503MB according to iTunes). That is something I’d think Nintendo might be impressed by.
Just a thought…

Treefarm and Vruliic, thank you both very much for your precise criticisms - it’ll be helpful for me to keep those suggestions in mind for upcoming movements and edits of this one. I appreciate that you took the time to come up with such detailed comments.

As for showing it to Nintendo, it’s not a bad idea. It’d actually be very interesting to see what kind of response we could get; however, I agree that it should wait until this particular symphony (in this case) is completed so that they get a full product.

Thanks again for all the helpful support, guys, you’re a wonderful audience