[D] First Round #8 (Wandering Flame vs. The Final Showdown...?)

Listen to both songs and select the one you prefer.

Download Links:

Final Fantasy X - Wandering Flame
Donkey Kong - The Final Showdown...?

Streaming:

Wandering Flame: Get the Flash Player to play this audio file:
The Final Showdown...?: Get the Flash Player to play this audio file:

Wandering Flame is some kind of droning ambience that I don't remember at all from the game. It does nothing for me, and certainly doesn't seem like "best song" quality. "The Final Showdown...?" annoyed me too, since its obviously a piercing chiptune, but it's nowhere near as aimless and has stuff like a melody and direction.

Final Fantasy X - Wandering Flame
While I generally dislike Hamauzu, I think that FFX is some of his best work, and a few of the tunes he penned for it are quite good. This is one of the ones I like, though I'm at a bit of a loss to explain why. Playing the game certainly helped, and the ambiance is soothing while containing a tragic undercurrent. Whatever the cause, I do like it.

Donkey Kong - The Final Showdown...?
I thought this was a Donkey Kong Country song at first, and was preparing my standard rant. But it's something much different and much better. The stone-age synth doesn't do well by the melody (a few notes sound quite off, as if the emulation was poorly timed), but it's a fine melody.

Wandering.

How do you not know of the song if you played the game. It played all the time during sad moments and it was not very forgettable.

Originally Posted by BZ

How do you not know of the song if you played the game. It played all the time during sad moments and it was not very forgettable.

I do know of it. I meant that playing the game helped me enjoy it, and that emotional connection is probably a pretty key reason I like it despite all indications to the contrary.

Oh dear, katchum's going to have a field day with the chord progressions in Hamauzu's "Wandering Flame"!

Originally Posted by orion_mk3

I do know of it. I meant that playing the game helped me enjoy it, and that emotional connection is probably a pretty key reason I like it despite all indications to the contrary.

I guess I should have quoted, but I wasn't talking to you. Thought it was obvious it was towards Summonmaster

Final Fantasy X - Wandering Flame
I'm trying to remember where this was played. I think it's when you go to Zanarkand after the battle with that big dragon with lasers or when those people at the beach were just killed by Sin. So which chord progression do we have here? We're in e minor doing VI IV I Vdim over and over again. This is a chord progression that is harmonically correct. But it does get so repetitive, I want to vote Hamauzu, but I'm not impressed by the song. And I'm certainly no fan of FFX music, give me DoC instead.

Donkey Kong - The Final Showdown...?
But Hamauzu is better than this for sure.

All this talk of when "Wandering Flame" is played in-game...to me, it's similar to the track "Sprouting" in terms of usage, just more sombre and played further into the game. Anyway, enough of the FFX-nerdiness, it's kind of sad.

"Wandering Flame" is a great piece IMO. Sweetly melancholic with some great instrumental features and soothing washes of ambience. I'm usually a fan of downtempo stuff like this, and this one is no exception. I mean, it's far from my favourite Hamauzu FFX track, but it's still a joy to listen to.

"The Final Showdown...?" has a really cool but weird sound going on. The melody's irritating and piercing at first, but once I got into the DK groove, I really got into this one. As such, it'll get my vote since I've heard the FFX piece like 1000 times and this is a touch more exciting.

"Wandering Flame" - 8.5/10
"The Final Showdown...?" - 8.5/10

Despite having a stronger melody and all that, the DOnkey Kong track is rendered completely unlistenable by the horrific, screeching, piercing chiptune samples. It is rare for a track to literally be painful to listen to, but this one manages it.

Wandering Flame wins by default.

That bassoon (or whatever the hell it is) in Wandering Flame totally gives it a Crystal Chronicles vibe.

I thought I knew Donkey Kong pretty well, but this track is completely unfamiliar to me. Great range, but unfortunately those high notes are killing my ears.

For what it may lack in overt complexity, Wandering is a beautiful piece of ambient music. I consider it in the same vein as Compression of Time from FFVIII, if anyone remembers that. A few people were asking about where it is heard in the game--I know at least that it is played in the farplane (I believe that's what it is called--it has been a number of years) in Guadosalam. (Also, Katchum, are you sure that the last chord is a V dim? I'm pretty sure I don't hear an f natural there. Maybe 'tis but an issue with nomenclature, I don't know.)

The Final Showdown isn't horrible, but it definitely isn't fantastic. My vote shall be for Wandering.

Honestly I think Wandering Flame is a good track. It's repetitive... but for some reason that doesn't bother me. It reminds me of waves (which the scene I remember it being associated to had them). Waves are pretty ambient, so I think it's pretty good. It has some stuff pop out of the texture that are kind of interesting, too.

The oddity is I like Chip tunes, but this one, in my opinion, isn't very good. Wandering Flame takes it.

I agree with the assertion that Hamauzu's greatest stuff lies outside of the FFX franchise, though there are a few gooduns from the game and definitely some gems from the piano collections (Besaid Island as one, for sure). When I first heard Wandering, I believed it to be of Nakano stock because he typically experiments with harmonies and focuses more on ambiance and mood in his music; to my surprise, however, it was Hamauzu, which surprised me because of how distinctly unlike him it is (in many regards) to compose something so soothingly atmospheric--his songs are typically much more vibrant and lively, sometimes to a point of excess, than this one. Nevertheless it's not an unwelcome development, and it's nice to hear something by him that's a little less like his usual stuff.

Kinda neat hearing something from Donkey Kong (it's been a while), but it doesn't really do much for me. It doesn't kick off too far from its exposition, and I would have preferred a little more development from the main theme (or a little more texture in the existent one). Wandering gets my vote this round.

(Also, for Wandering, the fourth chord sounds to me like an inverted G major 9th, where the B is the base note of the III chord (in terms of E as the i chord). Love those colors!)

Oh yeah, you're right, that's more plausible, being in G major doing: IV II VI III over and over again. But those are weird chord progressions then, don't you think? (it sure doesn't sound like we're in major, using all those modal chords)

Wandering Flame is a very beautiful and soothing/haunting tune. If my nomination has to lose (which it looks like it's going to), I'm glad it's losing to this. My vote still lies with The Final Showdown - come on now, BITCHING GAME BOY GUITAR RIFFS what more can you ask for

Originally Posted by GB

That bassoon (or whatever the hell it is) in Wandering Flame totally gives it a Crystal Chronicles vibe.

I think it's a bass clarinet. Bassoon has less attack.

While the Donkey Kong theme has a fun melody, 'Wandering Flame' is an immensely better piece of music. It's probably the most minimalist piece on the entire FFX soundtrack, and it does a great job of underscoring the pathos of the story. If I recall correctly, the piece is used in the same general part of the game as tunes like "Someday This Dream Will End" and "People From the North Pole", which are also incredibly emotive pieces. All this aside, the chord progression is wonderfully lush and the melody is lovely.

The chord progression is something like:

Cmaj7/D - Am9 - Bm7/E - Gmaj9/B

It's all in the key of G major, but the chords all carry a very modal sound, since the bass notes often create a heavily suspended sound. The first chord could be seen as a D13 with no 3rd or 5th. The third chord adds up to an E(m)11 with no third. Despite this swelling ambiguity, the "right hand" chords add up to a love IVmaj7 - iim9 - iiim7 - Imaj9 that allows considerable melodic freedom.

Wandering Flame-
I love the pure suspension of this one. It just keeps looping into another chord and never really resolves. Beautiful minimalism.

Donkey-
ouch.

I remember "Wandering Flame" played to great effect in one rather important scene early in the game involving Tidus. Very atmospheric and great progression. I like how many of the chords in the song kind of hang and float. "The Final Showdown" is actually pretty good. I did wish the song was more consistent; amidst the cool parts, there were some bits that could have been better.