Phantasy Star Cave Message Board

Now that I have my own house, I inherited the family piano! It needs to be tuned, but it's still in great condition (considering this is the third house it's been moved to!), and I love it. I've had a couple PS medleys and arrangements bouncing around my head for years, and I finally decided to see if I could put one together!

I chose the PSIII overworld and moon themes. For the former, I wanted to highlight how the original game layered on what's really a simple theme based on the number of characters in your parts (which I always thought was really cool). It starts off kind of slow and soft and basic, but I assure you, things will pick up! I tried to stay pretty close to the original, but in the 5th statement of the theme, I played around with some of the voicings to make it more...heroic, I guess?

I don't have any fancy recording equipment, so you're going to have to live with my digital camera and a couple missed chords. Hey, I'm not a professional pianist, nor do I claim to be one!

This is awesome! *applauds!*

Ahh, I love it! Fantastic arrangement. The themes really do make for a nice, cohesive melody. I liked it when you got all heroic, too!

Yay! The piano was (kinda) tuned!

I wanted to do something with PSI, as the original is and always will be my favorite of the series. My first idea was to just do a medley, but then as I was thinking about it, I realized 1) anyone can just stick the songs together with a couple transitions, and 2) the Dezoris theme had a lot to work with on its own.

So then I was going to do some sort of theme and variation type thing with Dezoris, and as I was working it out, I realized two more things: 1) when I put certain chords to it, those chords reminded me of the Palma theme, and 2) Snorb had mentioned to me that he heard some similarities in the beginnings of the Motavia and Dezoris themes. After some casual analysis, I realized that the first half of each theme shares very similar chord structures, and I could probably do something with that.

I started off stating the Dezoris theme nice and slow, very relaxed. The second time through, I added some chords to the right-hand accompaniment and then transitioned into the Palma theme. In the third statement, I added the Motavia theme on top. With the fourth, I just messed around a little. (And I couldn't resist using a Picardy third and quoting the Palma theme again at the very end!)

In the original, the phrases are asymmetrical in the first half (which I'd never really paid attention to before). I left it as is for the first two statements, and then extended it so it would align with the Motavia theme (and then because the asymmetry was bugging me ).

The sound quality's still pretty crappy. We're hoping to upgrade our electronics come tax return time!

Enough talking!: