Game:

Chrono Cross (1999)

Duration: 0:00

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Hi everyone!!! Last video for the year, I’ve just really been feeling the Chrono stuff lately ya know?!?!! This is a redo of a 2005 arrangement by Will Buck (AKA Conqueso) my second (technically third) recording of this — last time was ten years ago, the time before that was TWENTY years ago lol, so this is just part of my long ongoing revisitation of the Chrono OSTs to explore what they mean to me today.

I came across this arrangement in 2005 as part of the unofficial Chrono Cross Piano Collections Project on the now defunct Gamingforce.com forums. I recorded a number of the arrangements I liked, and over the years held on to yellowing xerox copies of the ones that continued to speak to me, and 20 years later, Will’s Dimension Breach is one of them. It’s fascinating to see how unofficial arrangements revealed the state of fandom at the time, like an archaeological artifact—Will’s inventive intro/outro material and daring reharmonizations reminds me of how the newly-released FF piano collections inspired so many of us back then to try to emulate Hamaguchi’s arranging style in our own works. Will absolutely accomplished that here; his version sounds like it really could be from an official Chrono Cross piano collections, i am just as impressed by it as I was from day one!!!! Revisiting it twenty years later, however, I altered a few areas to suit my own taste to be able to deliver the work as authentically as I possibly could. When you’re interpreting someone else’s arrangement of a thing you’re also intimately connected with, it becomes a multi-pronged challenge to perform it in a way that is true to the arranger’s intention but also your own vision of the source material. My vision of Chrono Cross and my own arranging has evolved over two decades so there were things that came up this time that did not before that I had to contend with haha. But I hope I was able to do both Will’s arrangement and Chrono Cross justice, at least better than I did previously!!!

(Will’s rampant use of half-diminished chords and tasty chromatic chordal movement in general is also rather Christmasy haha, very reminiscent of the progressions found in some of the chill jazz holiday numbers like The Christmas Song and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas so there’s that lol!)

I’m agonizing trying to rank all my 2024 games so I’ll have that list up shortly!!! (a good kind of agony lol) In the meantime hope you guys are all having a wonderful holiday!!! ❤️❤️ Thank you as always for stopping by!!!

all my Chrono covers:    • Chrono Cross/Chrono Trigger  

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