ReMix: Final Fantasy V 'Groove, Sweet Groove'

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Mattias, aka "The Swedish ReMixing Machine," offers up yet another tasty morsel of ReMixing goodness. But first, some housekeeping issues: you've hopefully noticed some visual changes to the site, which are slowly being extended to detail and other pages. In addition to visually separating out information in a clearer fashion, we're also trying to move away from tables and towards more semantic HTML where possible. Excitement! We've got some upcoming changes to the forums as we upgrade to the latest & greatest version of vBulletin, and in the next week or so will be publishing a new interview that should be quite the business. So, we've been keeping busy, in other words.

And so is AnotherSoundscape - this is his fifth ReMix posted in 2008, which is pretty damn impressive, since all of them have been both memorable and varied. We last saw him giving the beloved Cheetahmen a funky clavinet makeover, and now he turns his attention to the dark horse of FF OSTs, V, continuing the trend of funk/jazz awesomeness:

"Final Fantasy V, the game no one really cared about until recently when it got a revival. I started this mostly because of AeroZ, his FFV remixes are amazing and he's always talking about how good the soundtrack is. So, after we met to see Distant Worlds and talked a lot I got an urge to finish this old piece I had been working on.

Right when I got Reason 4 (yeah I'm hip and trendy now) I realized the potential of the ReGroove tool and started making groovy drums. Since we just played a lot of Jazz in my drum lessons I got a lot of influences from there. The idea of making a 4/4 groove-based arrangement of Home Sweet Home wasn't really clear at first. It sorta came to life when I started experimenting with adding melodies from games I knew and loved and this one just jumped at me, sounding all good and stuff. So I started working!

I've really adapted the source, changing just about everything except the main melody. Honestly though, this source is all about that melody so I think it's okay. The only part that's NOT the main melody in the source is the part at 0.35 and I actually used that too and re-arranged it as a break (1.25 - 1.40) so I've covered the source while I definitely made it my own. ;)

I love Rhodes as always so I came up with some licks and added some .. let's call them counter-licks with a Hammond. I also tried out the new RPG-8 arpeggietor for the build-up and I must say I love it. Other than that the remix contains some serious Moogish soloing, a 909 playing un-tss, an odd time-sig fill, Thor, overusage of xylophone (I wish I was DrumUltimA) and my regular switch of styles towards the end (including accordion and swedish jewharp!). I think I severly butchered the original but I'm very happy with it and I know you can spot the original pretty well, in case you don't agree, see below."

Mattias knows Reason something fierce, and it's downright scary to think that he's already got the new stuff in 4 somewhat pegged and is productive without missing a beat for edumacational downtime sometimes required for software upgrades. This mix has a metric ton of funk, with xylo, organ, AND Rhodes for the keyboard trifecta... but wait, there's more! Accordion makes it four, plus you've got Moogish synth leads aplenty, groovy synth bass, and varied rock/jazz drums that segue into electronic sounds and back. There's tons of riffs, breaks, shifts, twists... it's an arrangement rollercoaster, more or less, which is evident from the source breakdown AnSo thankfully provided in his submission email. It gets a little cluttered at times, and there are passages here that are less arranged material and more glue to hold the whole thing together, but you can't deny the infectious groove, quirky instrumentation, and sheer talent that makes it all work. So we'll close out with Shariq's concise take:

"Yeah, without a doubt, this is hella groovy. Very creative, catchy, and interpretive."

Pretty much; more FFV excellene as Mattias joins in the global war against FF5 OST obscurity and proves himself a powerful ally.

― djpretzel