Final Fantasy Piano Collections?

[Hoshino_Kid]

Anyone enjoying or playing 'em?

I love a number of FF piano pieces from 6-10 such as:

FF6:
Terra
Celes
Coin Song
Kids Run Through The City Corner

FF7:
Aerith's Theme
One Winged Angel
Rufus' Welcoming

FF8:
Succession of Witches
The Castle
The Successor
Fisherman's Horizon

FF9:
Treno
Rose of May
Melodies of Life

FF10:
To Zanarkand
Suteki Da Ne
Cave of Repentance (Via Purifico)
Ending Theme

[Losfer]

Excellent!  It's a thread where we can list our favorite tracks from somethng!

FF01
Color Me Surprised
Doom for Doom (In C#)
Splendid Guys

FF02
Piano No!
Delight and Sun Drop
Mercy of Golbez

FF03
Sweet Twinkle
Nice Trousers
Pickled Boss

FF04
To Battle!
Dancing Mad
Return to the Beautiful

FF05
Theme of Ex Death
Resurrected Evil

FF06
This one never came to America, so I don't know any of the tracks.  :/

FF07 (The best in the series.)
The Winged Angel
Bomb Mission
Turbo Riders
Aeris' Resurrection

FF08
Squall Lionhart
Angelo Battle
Choco Mini Games

FF09
Mercy of Golbez (Remix from FF03)

FF10
From Zanerkand
She Was Asking For It

FF11
This is not a real Final Fantasy game...  MMO's suck!  DX

FF12
Vaan's Theme (Prince of Arcadia)
Ondore's Lies
Bomb Mission (Originally in FF07!  I love Uematsu's compositions in these two games...)

FF13
Lightning Strikes Twice
The Clansman
Don't Look to the Eyes of a Stranger

I love these piano collections.  I love making lists.  I love this thread.  xD

[Wild Armor]

I'm a fan of playing Chocobo themes from any Final Fantasy on piano. I don't care much about other pieces that are transcribed for piano. The only exception is Battle on the Big Bridge Theme from FFV, or Gilgamesh's theme for those who remember it that way.

[Fei]

When Final Fantasy III (US) was released, I remember a soundtrack being sold in an included catalog... was sheet music being sold too?  What a vague memory.

I've been to one anime convention in my life, and I bought the FFVI piano collection, among others.  It's good, and I wouldn't mind being able to play the opera theme from FFVI on piano.

[Ramza]

When Final Fantasy III (US) was released, I remember a soundtrack being sold in an included catalog... was sheet music being sold too?  What a vague memory.

I've been to one anime convention in my life, and I bought the FFVI piano collection, among others.  It's good, and I wouldn't mind being able to play the opera theme from FFVI on piano.

Um...no, they did not sell sheet music. The FFIII album you're referring to is a direct reprint of the FFVI CD. It was called "Kefka's Domain," and we have it reviewed on the site.

The FFVI Piano Collection you own, to confirm: is it the 1994 edition where the CD came INSIDE the book with all the sheet music? Or was it the 2001 CD-only print?

To Losfer -- I know it's your job to be a dick, but you failed this time around. The OP is talking specifically about the piano collection arrangements, which is limited enough in scope to be less of an FF wank-fest than your satire would have us believe.

Wild Armor - are you referring to the Piano Collection arrangements, or the OST transcriptions from DoReMi? Because the former is awesome, and the latter is pure shit.

I own the sheet music books (from Yamaha) for 7, 8, 9, 10, and 10-2. I also have the book for the first of the two FF11 piano collections (it came with the box set). The second FF11 piano I believe I ordered from SquareSound (but I can't remember if I did that or not...)

Looking at your list... I am capable of performing Terra, Aerith's Theme, The Castle (AWESOME), Rose of May, Melodies of Life (performed at my older brother's wedding), To Zanarkand, and Via Purifico. But my favorites (all of which I can perform, to some degree) are:

FF4: Chocobo Theme, Battle Medley
FF7: um...these are all too hard for me, other than Aerith's theme. Seriously, a difficult series of arrangements.
FF8: almost all of it. Blue Fields, Find Your Way, The Oath, and Eyes On Me are the easiest for me.
FF9: Eternal Harvest (well, I USED to be good at it)
FF10: I worked super hard on this one. I can more-or-less play every song on here, EXCEPT for the Final Battle, which is just absurdly difficult. My personal favorites to perform are Besaid Island, Song of Prayer, and Thunder Plains
FF10-2: Crazy-hard jazz on this one...I can do the first two tracks (Crest of the Wind, Yuna's Theme), as well as 1000 Words. My goal in life is to be able to perform that one minute concerto piece and then the Last Battle music that follows. That is insanely difficult (for me).
FF11 (first one): PROMYVION. This one is definitely the easiest on the collection, and (fortunately) it's also my favorite track on the album. I've played it every day this week.

I'm pumped about this topic because I just got a piano in my house, after 3 years of being piano-less. I busted out the sheet music and am going to town. I just gotta get out the SaGa Frontier II Piano~Rhapsody music again. TIIIINY print.

Ramza

[Hoshino_Kid]

@Ramza

Wow... The Castle, one of the hardest pieces ever o_o gawd I wish I can play that piece.

I can only play Celes (FFVI), The Successor (FFVIII), a bit of Terra (FFVI), and Ending Theme (FFX). I'm deciding whether to play Ami or Rose of May... Which is better? I'm kinda looking for a cheesy-romantic-bittersweet style of song.

Although a number of people didn't enjoy The Successor because of it's length, I say it's one of the awesome pieces out there. Despite its length, it's very emotional and has this sweet-bitter-angry-forgiving-hopeful melody and

Code:

it somewhat tells the story of Edea, her life in the light house, her gaining the evil powers and her losing her evil powers.

[Ramza]

Rose of May is, IMO, the better piece. However, it gets significantly difficult at about the last page, when it breaks into those 16th notes in the left hand. That is no joke.

The Castle is really not too hard of a piece. The key signatures are a pain at first, and that one section where the tempo goes nuts (top of page 3, I believe) requires a lot of practice. But if you compare that to ... well ... almost all the battle themes (JENOVA, One-Winged Angel, FFVII Regular Battle, FFIX final boss, FFX final boss, FFX-2 final boss), it's really mild in comparison. Seriously, do a thorough study of that FFX boss battle again. And you'll quickly remember why impressionism is awesome, and why we suck at piano. :)

I'm also a huge fan of the Successor. Then again, I'm in love with pretty much all of FFVIII's soundtrack. The piano collection and orchestra albums are some of the best things to ever come from Square. I forgot to mention that another one I'm fairly good at on VIII is "Silence and Motion." I'm not sure I can perform it at the tempo you hear on the CD, but I can go start to finish without a break (except...to turn the pages... ugh).

Ramza

[Wild Armor]

Wild Armor - are you referring to the Piano Collection arrangements, or the OST transcriptions from DoReMi? Because the former is awesome, and the latter is pure shit.

I'll have to find it, I don't know what OST transcriptions from DoReMi you are talking about, I believe it could have been a fan arrangement that I accepted as tolerable.... or not. Speaking of which, I've never played Eternal harvest but it must be really fun to play. :)

Wow, now that I think about it... It's been a while since I played game songs on the piano. I remember playing "Frog's Theme" for my audition into the B.A. in music... yeah that was weird with its side of fun. Reading all this stuff bring backs memories of me playing all those game songs on the piano in High School. Bad times, bad times. Hahaha. Maybe that's why I have a distaste for piano arrangements for Final Fantasy games?

[Prime Mover]

I actually did a full studio album (and concert) of game music that I had arranged for piano. I spent quite a bit of my last year at Oberlin down in the studio trying out different mic placement techniques on the studio grand, and produced 8 tracks. There are 3 from Final Fantasy games. I have them on my site here.

http://music.ericbarker.com/sevenLevels/

I especially recommend "Freya" and "Jenova", the latter of which garnered enough popularity that I commonly get requests for sheet music, and a few people have youtube videos playing the arrangement. I only have sheet music for Jenova and Norfair, though.

[CDFN]

My favorites are:

Terra
To Zanarkand
Aerith's theme
A buch from FFVIII like fisherman's horizon among others.