Eminence Online

Before we begin, please note: there's a lot of Final Fantasy talk in here, and with good reason. There are more Final Fantasy piano arrangements than any other franchise. But in this article, we will explore every nook and cranny, so don't be discouraged if you're tired of hearing about Uematsu and friends. There's a lot to learn here.

The article is broken into two sections: first, we will look at recorded piano performances and consider the merits of each. Then, we will discuss piano sheet music, including difficulty levels, places to purchase sheet music, and which book publishers are most reputable.

Let's get the Final Fantasy stuff out of the way. Every "numbered" (main-series) Final Fantasy has its own piano collection, except for I, II, III, and XII. X-2 has its own piano collection, and XI (the MMORPG) has two piano collections. The general trend found here is that, in order of publication, each subsequent piano collection had a stronger performance, and a higher difficulty level. The only exception to said rule are the two most recent releases, both from Final Fantasy XI.

The piano collections for IV, V, and VI used to be "holy grails." They were released as CD/book packages (the actual CD was attached inside a sleeve of the front cover of the book). It seems the intention of these albums was primarily to teach aspiring Japanese pianists how to play their favorite FF tunes. The CD/book sets each received a limited print and were sold out in a hurry. In the late 1990s, they would sell on eBay for as much as 300 dollars, and even today, the original versions' current market value is around 100 dollars each. However, if you're not interested in the sheet music and only want the CDs, NTT Publishing reprinted the albums in CD-only form, and these albums are still available at most import stores.

It's ironic that the rarest of the FF piano collections are widely held to be the ones with the simplest arrangements. For a time, it seemed VII wouldn't have a piano collection, as the next published piano collection was for Final Fantasy VIII, released a few months after the game itself. Though there weren't any battle themes featured on this piano collection, the difficulty level was ramped up a fair bit. It wasn't just the difficulty level, though. The arrangements here began to feel less like transcriptions and more like true "arrangements," with melodies and harmonies that would deviate from Uematsu's original compositions. There was a romantic streak among these arrangements, particularly in songs like "Find Your Way" and "Silence and Motion." 

FFIX's piano collection took control of all 88 keys of the piano, featuring arrangements that would require the performer, Louis Leerink (a British pianist, the only non-Japanese performer among the FF piano collections), to stretch his arms and his fingers to their limit. Then came FFX, which was the first FF to not be composed solely by Nobuo Uematsu. Junya Nakano and Masashi Hamauzu added to the score, and Hamauzu himself did the arrangements for this piano collection. If you like impressionism (Debussy, Ravel), then you simply need to have this CD. Hamauzu's arrangements made FFX sound different from anything. And, again, the difficulty level ramped up significantly. If you can perform the final battle piece from this CD as well as the professional performer, you had better be doing piano performance as a career. That song is insanely difficult.

Around the time of the Square Enix merger (late 2003), Square's music team was gearing up to score the soundtrack to the film Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. Perhaps as an early indicator that the "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII" was coming, Square finally decided to go back and give FFVII some piano-focused attention. Performer Seiji Honda showed up everyone that came before him by successfully performing the rhythmically complex "Cinco de Chocobo," the jaw-droppingly fast "JENOVA," and the uber-grandiose "One-Winged Angel." Some of the pieces from this CD would be used in Advent Children, including the standard battle theme, which is used in that first battle scene with Tifa in the church. If you've seen the film, you'll remember how awesome that arrangement was.

Only a few months after the release of VII's piano collection, a surprise entry was dropped on fans. The Final Fantasy X-2 Piano Collection went in a completely new direction: jazz. In almost all cases, the piano arrangers and the performers were one and the same, and there were a total of four different performers on this album. These jazz arrangements are fantastic! Many people griped about Noriko Matsueda and Takahito Eguchi's original score for X-2, but anyone who's taken the time to listen to these piano arrangements will see a whole new side to the music. Also, for fans of the game, note that the concerto-style piece played by Shuyin in the game is found, note-for-note, on the CD. Sweet.

There's some confusion over FFXI's Piano Collections. The first came exclusively as the last disc in a seven disc box set, which includes six discs' worth of OST material, the piano collection, and the sheet music for said piano collection. The same arrangers and performers that worked on this disc released a separate disc, with the exact same name (Piano Collections Final Fantasy XI), in the summer of 2008. This disc had its own set of arranged tracks. Both discs feature a few duets by the two female performers, but for the most part, it's still piano solo. These arrangements are mostly slow and relaxing, though there are some battle themes mixed in.

Across all of these CDs, there are some common arrangement techniques and traditional genres to be found. Uematsu was fond of ragtime, and thus, original ragtime compositions translated very well into piano arrangements. "Spinach Rag" (VI), "Slide Show Part2" (FFVIII), and "Sleepless City Treno" (IX) are all fantastic ragtime pieces. There are five Chocobo-centric piano pieces to be found (IV, V, VI, VII, and XI): most of them are jazzy in nature, and I'd suggest that VII's "Cinco de Chocobo" (in a 5/4 rhythm) is the most interesting arrangement of them all. Then there are swing-tempo jazz pieces like "Shuffle or Boogie" (VIII), "Descendant of Shinobi" (VII), "Johnny C. Bad" (VI), "Paine's Theme" (X-2), and more. Part of what makes the FF Piano Collections stand out above the rest is the intentional diversity thrown into the track selection and arrangement.

Before I hop off the FF piano train, let me say this: dear Square Enix, please make piano collections for I, II, III, and XII. I have no worries that you will follow through with XIII, since impressionist piano guru Hamauzu is composing the soundtrack. But I acknowledge that it would be difficult to arrange piano music for XII, due to Sakimoto's style of composition. Nonetheless, I'm sure it can be done. As for I-III, it wouldn't be difficult to arrange one disc's worth of content for the three games combined, and release the album so that fans can have a "complete" FF piano collection. Matoya's Cave and Eternal Legend of Wind on piano, please!!

Now then, on to Dragon Quest. The Dragon Quest "On Piano" albums are, in my opinion, not worth owning. Though they also had a difficulty ramp over time (VI and VII were fairly complex arrangements), the general consensus among listeners is that these albums, and their transcriptions, were made for children. "On Piano Vol.1" and "On Piano Vol.2" cover Dragon Quests I-IV, and they are base-level transcriptions of the melodic lines and bass notes from each song. They are not challenging, and as a result, they're not really worth listening to either. DQV isn't much better. DQVI begins to take "arrangement" seriously, and VII did an even better job. But apparently, no one really took interest in these albums, and Koichi Sugiyama decided not to produce an "On Piano" album for Dragon Quest VIII. A good decision, if you ask me.

While we're on the topic of Square Enix, one incredible album that most piano fans should at least consider for purchase: Piano Pieces "SF2" ~ Rhapsody on a Theme of SaGa Frontier 2. One of Hamauzu's earliest works with Square, SaGa Frontier 2 is the current pinnacle of Hamauzu's demonstration of impressionist savvy. Students at a local Japanese university were taken to task, arranging and performing 18 pieces from the soundtrack on piano. There are a few duets mixed in, and there's a bonus section: tracks 19 through 24 are chamber music arrangements (with emphasis on piano). Here's the best part of all--the CD comes with the sheet music. Whether you buy the original DigiCube print or the Square Enix reprint, you get all of the sheet music to tracks 1 through 18. Sadly, the paper upon which they are printed are the same size as a CD cover's dimensions, so students will want to get a magnifying glass or (better yet) scan and enlarge the pages.

Also, Square Enix released a Kingdom Hearts Piano Collection at the end of May. From what I've heard, I'm not entirely impressed with the album, but if you're a big fan of Kingdom Hearts, and you'd like to hear piano solo arrangements of Shimomura's work (something that's never been done before), you'll want this album.

Plenty of other piano solo arrangements are out there, with varying degrees of complexity. If you're fan of Nihon Falcom (Ys, Sorcerian, etc), there are some piano collections that you'll want to look into. Two of them were reprinted about a decade ago: Ys Piano Collection and Legend of Heroes Piano Collection. These two aren't too difficult to find, but you'll probably have to look for a used copy. The other two are far more rare, but are both worth the hunt. Ys Piano Collection 2, and Brandish Piano Collection, are great albums. I highly recommend the Brandish Piano Collection if you can find it. It is one of Falcom's darkest arrangements, and it works so well on the piano.

Some more out of print rarities that may be worth the trouble to locate: Arc The Lad Piano Album, SEGA Piano Nocturne, Genso Suikoden Piano Collection 1 and 2 (both of these include more instruments than piano, but piano is still the focus). If you like Japanese graphic adventures (dating sims), you can find three Tokimeki Memorial piano albums, two in the Memories Off series, two for game developer "Leaf," and one specifically for the game Canvas. Among these, I give highest recommendations to the Memories Off piano collections.

Recently, we've seen three piano collections hit the market that have received mixed reviews from critics (myself included). There's "Wild Arms Music the Best -feeling wind-," which I personally enjoyed a great deal despite its simplicity, but other people considered it unworthy of the Wild Arms name. There's also "Tales Of Series Piano Arrange Tracks," which, looking back, I don't think was a very good conceptual album, considering the composer (Motoi Sakuraba). Had they chosen to arrange some more fast-tempo tracks, including battle pieces, perhaps this album would have provided more for the listener. Finally, we cannot forget about "Okami Piano Arrange" for Capcom's highly-acclaimed adventure title for PS2 and Wii.

I would be remiss if I didn't point out one non-Japanese piano album; Michael "Piano Squall" Gluck's album GAME. This fan-based work received some funding from EA for publication and received a lot of attention last year. It contains arrangements for game and anime music, including Evangelion, Chrono Cross, Mega Man 2, Tetris, and much more.

Finally, it's worth mentioning that last year, SEGA (Wave Master) announced plans to release three Sakura Taisen piano collections. They were even assigned catalog numbers (WWCE-31172/3/4). But their release was postponed indefinitely, and they may end up being cancelled.

Let's start at the easiest level, the "bottom of the barrel," so to speak. For decades, a Japanese company called DoReMi Publishing has been doing simple, melody-and-harmony piano transcriptions for game and anime music. The easiest place to find DoReMi books is at Game Music Online, though you'll find a wider selection of books at Amazon Japan. As the publisher's name implies, "DoReMi" books are for beginners, just learning how to play music on piano (remember when Fraulein Maria taught children about music? You start with Do Re Mi!). If you're fairly capable of learning to play music by ear, there is no need to own any of these books. But if you're just getting started, or only consider yourself a "casual" pianist, know that there are tons of these books out there.

If the game was developed in Japan, and has seen some measure of success, there's probably a DoReMi book for it. Of course, Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest books exist. But there are also books for Xenogears, Xenosaga, Chrono Trigger/Cross, Seiken Densetsu, Zelda, SaGa, Mario, Donkey Kong, Front Mission, Grandia, Pokemon, and even some popular anime (most Miyazaki films, Evangelion, Gundam, etc). The vast majority of these books had their piano arrangements done by one person: Asako Niwa. Whoever she is, she's apparently quite adept at taking music and breaking it down to its most basic parts. Chord charts appear (for guitar/band accompaniment, or for improvisation) alongside the transcribed music. In this way, some of the songs are great for building one's own arrangement.

The other bonus with the DoReMi books are that they are quite "completionist" in nature. If the song was put on an OST, it'll be found in a DoReMi book. So even if you're not looking to play the song's "main" themes, just some obscure little track that you like from the OST, you'll find it in a DoReMi book.

If you want something really challenging, you'll want the sheet music for actual Piano Collection CDs. Sadly, the remaining discussion will have to be FF-centric. Hopefully, over time, we will see that change.

The easiest of the Final Fantasy Piano Collections are from IV and V. If you can play Beethoven's Fur Elise or Moonlight Sonata without much trouble, you're ready to take on most of the songs from IV and V. I would consider these books "intermediate" difficulty, primarily because they don't experiment much with difficult key signatures, complex time signatures, or quick hand changes spreading multiple octaves. FFVI adds some of these more difficult aspects to the mix, but I would still consider this book more "intermediate" than "advanced."

The tragedy is that the FF books for IV, V, and VI are the hardest to find. So unless you consider yourself a very talented pianist and are ready to skip these books, you'll want to find them, as they are the perfect difficulty level. As said in part 1 of this article, the original prints came as books with the CDs in the front cover. The reprints came CD-only, but NTT did a limited print run of the sheet music to purchase separately. Sadly, said sheet music is also long out-of-print; you won't find it for a cheap price, and that's if you find it at all.

The sheet music for VII through X-2 Piano Collections was printed by Yamaha, and it is available at a variety of stores, including Amazon Japan and SquareSound (the latter store also has plenty of fan-arranged sheet music, and is a great resource). The second XI Piano Collection can also be obtained through these stores. This sheet music demonstrates the varying difficulty levels of each book. Most "advanced" pianists (and I use the term loosely) should be able to perform at least two songs per book perfectly. Easier pieces include "At Zanarkand" (X), "Blue Fields" (VIII), "Yuna's Theme" (X-2), and "Tifa's Theme" (VII). If you know your impressionist composers, and are able to perform some of Debussy's 24 Preludes, you should be capable of playing most of the songs from FFX. If you can play all 24 Preludes without a problem, and can even tackle one or two of Debussy's "Etudes," then you're an incredible pianist, and you'll have no problem with anything in FFX (or any of these books at all, really).

It is unfortunate that many of the more challenging and interesting piano arrange albums have not had accompanying sheet music printed for them. If the DoReMi books are too easy for you, you may be left to your own devices, as well as fan arrangements, if you want to do anything outside the realm of Final Fantasy (or SaGa Frontier II, thank you Hamauzu for that!). As for me, I'll probably be practicing the "final battle" arrangements from VII, IX, X, and X-2 for the rest of my life. And when I need to relax, I'll sit down and listen to the Okami or Brandish piano albums.