Final Fantasy VI Analysis Series PART 1: Development of Melodic Ideas
Here's the public release! Enjoy!
Final Fantasy VI Analysis Series PART 1: Development of Melodic Ideas (YouTube)
Comments (2)
I meant to get around to requesting a topic... and now I don't have to! This is exactly the topic I had in mind, on exactly the game. It's out of your wheelhouse, but I would also love an exploration of how Square was able to so clearly evoke real instruments with limited synthesis hardware.
Isn't that due to the SPC700 chip that was created for the SNES and the rest of the sound module ? It could run on a number of things, including the basic MIDI sound library. I think that chip also had a 16-bit digital signal processor, so that may help it as well. I remember, way back in the late 90s, trying to run older notation programs like MusicTime and Encore (before I was introduced to Finale and Sibelius), and the sound libraries and the sound cards of the day sounded ridiculously close to what the SNES could put out? Heck, I remember finding old midis people had created from the FF series, and they were almost sound for sound. I don't know if the sound cards of today could generate the same output; it would be interesting to take my newer sound libraries and put Final Fantasy music into it with full scoring and see what it sounds like as opposed to midi.