What Final Fantasy music-related week would it be without meeting up with the man himself? Just today, yours truly and a Hardware Zone colleague dropped by for a small meet and greet session with the stars of the sold-out Distant Worlds: Music Of Final Fantasy orchestra concert. Who are they, you may ask? Why it’s none other than Arnie Roth and Nobuo Uematsu, gracing us with their presence to the humble media.

Held in the National Library at Victoria Street, we were sitting casually with the two as they talk about Distant Worlds in itself and other things relative to orchestra music and Final Fantasy compositions.

Apologies in advance if the story here feels more focused on Arnie than Uematsu; telling Uematsu’s translator on-the-spot questions tend to get said questions tweaked for efficiency.

How It All Began

“It all stemmed from Jason Paul, a renown manager who did the late Pavarotti concerts, who told me about this other show he was doing, Final Fantasy. From there, we discussed about bringing Uematsu’s Dear Friends concert to America, in the Rosemont Theater in Chicago. Distant Worlds somehow worked itself from the success of the Dear Friends concert, with me being the music director and conductor from there on.“

Arnie’s Favorite Final Fantasy Score

“It’s hard to pick a favorite. But one song that struck to me is “Aerith’s Theme”. It has that strong emotional connection with the fans. With all the battle and fierce music in Final Fantasy, the more intimate ones balance the mood out.”

Arnie’s First Instrument

“There was nobody in my family who was into music. Essentially, my mom arranged violin lessons for me when I was 8 and I got stuck playing it for about 20 years of my life. Frankly, I have no idea how and why it was stuck to me at this point.”

Arnie’s Thought On Live Concerts Gelling With The Fans

“This is a very educated fanbase. They’re able to send me their personal opinions like “That piece has a faster tempo than the last time back in Seattle”. They’re married to those tempos and they always have opinions about them. But the beautiful thing about all this is that it’s a live concert experience, and it lives, it breathes and it moves. We choose to change the tempo depending on the mood and setting; no two concerts are ever the same. With a hundred performers on stage, we could do a vast triple forte and a wonderful triple piano; improvise the original if you will.”

Arnie On Conveying Orchestra To The Audience

“First of all, the music itself isn’t passive and introspective. There are certain themes which are quieter and more intimate. What is it like to be in a live concert? To a layperson, the best way to describe it is to say it’s visual and cinematic, meaning that there’s lot of colors and excitement. When we get to a classic tune or a famous battle piece, it’s quite important to use a bigger amount of contrast on the live concert than on the studio. In a studio, you can control the onus: going from “soft” to “loud” in a few seconds. The technical effort in doing transitions for the live concerts is tremendous. The actual nuts and bolts require more effort in putting that emotion in the performance.”

Uematsu’s Thought Process On Terra’s Theme in Final Fantasy VI (Featured Song In This Distant Worlds, By The By)

I had South American panflutes in mind. There wasn’t any sampling technology during the SNES time, so I had to make due with the electronic notes and sounds that could mimic the piano and flute. I was aiming for something more orchestra-like to give the theme character. It just sounded right mixing in both the sounds of the panflute and chalango.”

Uematsu On One Winged Angel Being A “Sequel” To Dancing Mad

“Dancing Mad” was built to have five shifting tones to correlate with the boss battle, while “One Winged Angel” was something new I wanted to try out. The mood, the notes, the bridges: it all came piece by piece; usually when a new composition idea came up it mixed together with another piece from scratch. Eventually, I got the timing down and created an awesome mood that became “One Winged Angel”. It was definitely a different way of composing in terms of this song, rather than the standard method of composing it one-way.”

Arnie On Playing Games

“I’m not a gamer, but I have played a few old games. Usually it’s helpful for me to gain not only a historical perspective of the medium, but also useful to have a close connection with the original composers and to get the early audio development tracks for studying. I study the musical theories and compositions to get ready for the concerts and preparing the orchestra.”

Arnie On The Orchestra Music Scene In This Day & Age

“We have a unique situation here where we not only promote videogame music, but also orchestra music. In this day and age, we need a new excuse or a whole new way to introduce a fresh audience to symphonic concerts. We all read about the extinction of the classical music audience, and that symphonies are relegated to museums. The United States, and in some parts Japan, is having a problem with that, with personnel cutbacks and orchestra groups going out of business.

We figured that here’s a way to bring in an audience who attend these venues for the very first time in their home cities or area; to be introduced to live orchestral music. We should not underplay the importance of this, as orchestra groups are searching for ways to bring in new people.

The biggest challenge is getting the audience to come back again to appreciate classical music, seeing as Distant Worlds is sold out (three shows to boot). For example, if we were to do a rendition of Carmina Burana (a famous scenic cantata) on a Singapore symphony concert, perhaps we can propose to do “One Winged Angel” on the same concert. Its chorus, its orchestra. It correlates perfectly with Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. “