Chrono Trigger - Peaceful Days (Patreon)

Happy January everyone, I hope it's been good! Chrono Trigger has always been an intimidating game for me to cover because each song in its soundtrack is an instant classic. The pressure's on to do it justice! This track in particular was very hard to get sounding right due to its flowing and lyrical nature. I'll explain a bit about what I mean in the breakdown:

0:00 - In this sparse, folk-y intro I have a collection of wide-panned acoustic guitars and dulcimer, with piano and celeste way up high. The rest of the ensemble comes in for what I can only call an "Ocarina of Time Morning Theme" style swell. (I believe it's the same kind of suspension, so it makes sense!)

0:09 - Aah Flute... extremely temperamental to mix as a lead instrument. The weird makeup of its harmonics can create some really bloated mids and highs, which often resonates with the ear wrong. To work around this I put in some dynamic EQ at around 800hz to push back on some of that bloating while at its worst. I added some light compression as well, which (I believe) made the instrument audible as a lead while being comfortable to listen to. I think flute is tied with horn as the most difficult instruments to have pop out in a mix. 

0:43 - Let's talk about sampled legato (my arch nemesis). Calm, lyrical pieces are some of the most difficult orchestral mockups to make, mostly due to virtual instrument legatos being for the most part... not great! There's a phenomenon in a lot of VI's that I like to call "Legato Hiccups," where instead of a smooth transition from one note to another, the instrument has these disjointed jumps in volume that makes the melody sound very unnatural. Since slow, emotional pieces like this have a lot of exposed and connected notes, it can be a nightmare to get everything sounding ok. 

My patch job solution for this is to layer sampled strings with instruments that are physically modeled or synthesized, as those legatos are much more reliable and realistic. In this case, I have sampled strings layered with SWAM Violins (my go-to physically modeled library). Not only does this add some vibrato depth (which many sampled strings really lack), it blends over melody lines and hides some of that unnatural legato. Additionally, this time around I have the lead melody layered with a sawtooth synth lead, absolutely drowned in reverb. This pushes the line forward into the mix, and simulates some of the higher frequencies in string parts. 

Ok niche rant over!

3:35 - I thought I'd close out the arrangement with a slower, Piano-led loop. This piece takes really well to this sort of instrumentation. :,)

That about wraps it up! Keep an eye out for the Cynthia revision soon. If you have any questions, let me know in the comments! Stay warm. :)