For the latest entry to the “song of the day” feature I go back to my younger years. I’m talking about when I was still barely into my 20’s. My choice for the new song of the day is Japanese composer Uematsu Nobuo’s main title theme for the Squaresoft (before they became Square-Enix) fantasy role-playing game Final Fantasy VI.

The song is “Terra’s Theme” (in the original Japanese it was called “Tina’s Theme”) and starts off the game. The version above is the piano solo version which Square-Enix produced as part of the special “Final Fantasy Piano Collections” cd releases which took all the video game music for each game in the Final Fantasy series game and remade them into piano solo pieces. Uematsu’s original composition for Final Fantasy VI (also for most of the game’s in the series he composed the music for) were very heavily-influenced by classical music traditions and one can really hear it in this main theme.

While the piano solo version is quite a haunting melody which gives some clues to the character of Terra Branford. The two versions below are the original video game music which is really a well-done MIDI file to allow it to be encoded into the game cartridge when it was first released for the SNES system. The other one is a live recording of Uematsu himself conducting an orchestra. While all three have become one of my favorite pieces of music of all kinds (not just video game music) it is the piano solo which solidified “Terra’s Theme” as one of the best songs I’ve ever heard.

Terra’s Theme (Live Orchestral)

Terra’s Theme (Original Video Game Music)