LogFAQs > #964680038

2th
Game: Final Fantasy VI *Remix
Title: Dancing Mad (PAL)
Composer: Nobou Uematsu, Shnabubula [SiIvaGunner Rip]
Nominator: @NFUN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZypvxG0vJiA

shnabubula is one of my VERY favorite musicians, and also a very important person to me in general. he is going through a very difficult time at the moment and i can only wish for the best outcome...there are a lot of bad possible outcomes at this time. he has been on my mind far more than any other person has, this past month, so it's kinda bizarre to just be like...talking about this song right now candidly like any other song in the topic. i thought about not mentioning anything, but it felt wrong to not. he's in the hospital due to a...variety of severe issues; and i've been crying a lot...this happens once every few years to him, but this might be the worst it's ever been. thank you for being alive. every word of this post has been made with the best wishes i could possibly give to a person through "text on a message board" SIGNALS to [HEALING HUMAN LIFE AND MINDS ACROSS THE EARTH]

i've always loved Dancing Mad, one of my favorite tracks by Uematsu---uematsu has always been hit-or-miss to me but this particular track is a HIT hit. it didn't seem like the sorta song that even "needed" to be improved, but this song somehow managed to make something I already love even better to me? I don't even know where to begin, but as someone who liked Dancing Mad enough to nom/support it or at least push for it numerous times in the past...this arrangement appeals SIGNIFICANTLY more. so you're pushing it up to the highest of the 9.9s here really.

i suppose, i should point out, that far-and-away my favorite part of dancing mad is part 4, which these days, is especially for the quartal lines in the organ (though i love all parts more than you might expect me to at this point), SO, for the gimmick of this re-arrangement to be like..."part 1 in the style of part 4" and "part 4 in the style of part 1", well. It means i get DOUBLE the elements about this piece of music that I already loved most! Stuff like 2:04 where it's merging my favorite part of the original song with a backing that i already love (i love the mood of that part of part 1 as well)...it's just perfect. Something you can only get in this version

I also think it's to its benefit as a suite in general...it feels far more cohesive and interconnected to have these part 4 referenced in part 1 / part 1 elements referenced in part 4. The feel very CLIMACTIC and stuff, because the ideas from each other are referencing each other at the endcap portions of the song, so it just makes the structure of "ideas" waaaay more powerful to me than the original version of the track where it's really 4 separate songs to me. this is ONE song to me.

not going to write out the whole thing, but here's two of the big mixed meter sections. The timesigs AND timestamps here are based on what I can make out from this particular YT upload that has a piano roll with barlines:
https://youtu.be/EunT1LHCEd8?t=481

(8:02 - 8:10) 4/4, 4/4, 4/4, 4/4, 5/8
(8:10 - 8:28) 4 bars of 15/8, 2 bars of 13/16
(8:28 - 8:37) 9/8, 2/4, 12/16, 12/16, 4/4, 4/4
(8:37 - 8:53) 9/4, 4/4, 7/8, 9/8, 9/8, 15/8, 4/4, 4/4
(8:53 - 9:21) 8 bars of 15/8
(9:21 - 9:47) 13/8, 9/8, 2/4, 6 bars of 13/8, 2 bars of 4/4
(9:47 - 10:12) 6/4, 19/16, 6/4, 5/8, 9/8, 6/4, 9/8, 4/4, 17/16, 12/16, 4/4, 4/4, 2/4
...
(11:37 - 12:28) 4 bars of 4/4, 18 bars of 11/8
(12:28 - 13:12) 7 bars of 6/8, 1 bar of 11/16, 24 bars of 6/8
(13:12 - 13:23) 4 bars of 4/4
(13:23 - 13:33) 6 bars of 6/8, 5/8, 5/8, 6/8
(13:33 - 13:42) 9/16, 5 bars of 6/8
(13:42 - 13:45) 4 bars of 10/16?*
(13:45 - 14:12) 20 bars of 4/4
(14:12 - end) 4/4, 4/4, 4/4, 7/8, 10/8, all 4/4 to the end after that

*[this part is a polyrhythm that wouldn't translate to something easily understandable in midi/sonar/daw limitations without doing some sort of trick, which is probably why the tempo totally changes, so i'm not exactly sure what he wrote this bit like. I'm calling it 4 bars of 10/16. but it might be written in 4/4 with quintuplets or something bizarre like that...especially knowing that this is shnabubula of all people/based on what that sounds like. ]

those numbers don't...at all, indicate how rhythmically complex this is. and THIS ALREADY LOOKS intimidaing just from those numbers!!! The main thing that complexifies the stuff that already has a bunch of jumpy barline lengths is (of course) polymeter. Tons of layers don't line up with the barlines at all, and have their own barlines they're affixed to (or even an entire other grid/tempo in many cases, given all the polyrhythmic-y stuff in this)

there's so many good examples of this in the song like...oh my god when 12:34 hits and i'm hearing the chords from the original dancing mad's phase 1, but with these rapid proggy organ lines in the style of phase 4...I get some of the deepest chills i can think of ever having gotten while listening to music tbh. the simultaneous merging of "emotionally profound moment"(familiar dramatic theme reference) and "overstimulating numbers" it's like the biggest chemical rush you can get in a song like this.

even simply 8:10 is the same way, hearing a super proggy version of the phase 1 i'm very familiar with makes this feel very "YOURE AT THE END" in a way the original song never felt and it's SO Cool!!!!!

and then what the FUSE is this ending at like 13:58. It's like 3-4 different layers of different melodic threads you'd heard earlier AT THE SAME TIME but they're all on different grids from each other, yet they all intersect! Some stuff is being treated where each note is one "5/16th" beat length, while other stuff is more tethered to the 16th or 8th. Stuff that reaaally brings out "5 16ths" spaces is just...the most unashamedly "prog sounding" thing you can do really, but this does it in a way where each group of 5 is treated like a "1" since it's playing out a melody line from earlier and gaaah it is just so cOOL. What a finale.

a lot of predicted this to be #1, and honestly it is pretty close. i have no actual criticism of the track but my PURE OBSESSION is largely still around movement 1&4, so i think that's the only reason it didn't wind up there, this has the highest highs of nearly anything in the topic; but they're specific sections or moments of a VERY long track. basically everything shnabubula did to this was perfect and makes it significantly better to me, but no matter what, i'm going to have an unbalanced preference for certain bits of this over all else in it because of how the original was structured

this really needs to be the "2nd to last song" anyways, it fits that slot so perfectly in FINAL BOSS style. tho i wish first place felt more "credits-y" than the actual first place

(if you're smart, you might be able to figure out what the one remaining song left is!!!!)

((also yggdrasil is kinda heroic credits-y, but it being moved to first in the rerank wouldn't actually fix this 'problem' because #1 would just become #2 making this one become #3 probably))

(((though i guess it could almost be like.........dancing mad remix is "phases 1-4" of the final boss, and then [ranking topic spoilers] is an extremely trippy and surreal phase 5 of the final boss ala giygas. and then yggdrasil is the credits. that's my canon imagined way the rerank "video game track order" works out now)))

new zealand testers...i tell ya. they try so many crazy things. have so many crazy ideas. including things that no one would think make any sense to try........... and sometimes ....they are the best things you could possibly try. (shout out to sergio; because without him, this song would not actually exist)