Place I'll Return To Someday

[Forsaken Lover]

I'm no expert on music so I'm not sure what it's called but it seems like the opening screen song is remixed in the game. I mean it sounds like the beat is the same but has different instruments or something.

Original "Place I'lL Return To Someday/Place To Call home" you hear when starting up FFIX:
YouTube - Final Fantasy IX Music - A Place to Call Home

Then "Oeilvert" which you hear..iN Oeilvert:
YouTube - Final Fantasy IX Music - Oeilvert

"Ipsen's Heritage" from ipsen's Castle:
YouTube - Final Fantasy IX Music - Ipsen's Heritage

"Four Mirrors" played during the plan of attack on the Four Shrines.
YouTube - Final Fantasy IX Music - The Four Medallions

"Terra":
YouTube - Final Fantasy IX Music - Terra

Anyway, which is your personal favorite? Mine is the Ipsen version.

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

It's called a motif, generally. Every Final Fantasy since FFIV has featured similar rearrangements of its main theme.

My favorite arrangements of this one are the title screen track, the Oeilvert track (just because it's the first version you hear in the game itself, and it's far along enough in the game to surprise you with the connection it makes), and the serene theme of Terra.

[scrumpleberry]

Terra, because it's basically my favourite from the IX soundtrack.

[sdm42393]

I like them all but my favorite would have to be the Four Medallions version.

[Depression Moon]

Damn, I just realized that they're all remixes I've had to have played this game at least 11 times and yet I couldn't see it or the symbolic relationships. That's funny.

[charliepanayi]

I love the opening music on the title screen for FFIX, it's one of my favourite pieces of FF music. It is a fun motif for FF music to use a main theme as the backbone for various tracks throughout the game. In a similar fashion I think Melodies of Life gets used in the World Map theme and the music playing when Garnet/Steiner arrive at South Gate.

[Rantz]

Daughter of Madain Sari is pretty much a mix of Eiko's Theme and Melodies of Life. Garnet's Theme also partially uses the melody of Melodies of Life.

Protecting My Devotion, Loss of Me and Rose of May (notice also the similar-sounding names of the latter two) are also variations on the same melody.

They do this a lot in the game. It's pretty interesting to look for connections, since they're never randomly the same. The music has a connection, generally, when the situations they're played in are connected.

[Kawaii Ryûkishi]

Protecting My Devotion, Loss of Me and Rose of May (notice also the similar-sounding names of the latter two) are also variations on the same melody.

"Loss of Me" and "Rose of May" are the exact same track; the title just got transliterated two different ways. (For the record, the latter interpretation is the correct one.)

:steiner:

[qwertysaur]

The theme of Terra is breathtakingly beautiful.

[Forsaken Lover]

But Loss of Me is a better name. Especially since it plays when Beatrix is having an internal conflict.

[qwertysaur]

But Loss of Me is a better name. Especially since it plays when Beatrix is having an internal conflict.

Rose of May is better fitting with the rose theme that is woven around Alexandria. (Bhrane's ship the red rose is another example)

[Rantz]

Protecting My Devotion, Loss of Me and Rose of May (notice also the similar-sounding names of the latter two) are also variations on the same melody.

"Loss of Me" and "Rose of May" are the exact same track; the title just got transliterated two different ways. (For the record, the latter interpretation is the correct one.)

:steiner:

Ack! That's what I get for only being a sporadic listener.

[Quindiana Jones]

God, it feels good to listen to A Place to Call Home again. Every time I start up the game and that track comes on, I just relax. It's phenomenal. No other piece of music, let alone game music, has this effect on me.

Terra, Bran Bal and Pandemonium all have a profound effect on me also, though in a slightly different way to APtCH. Kinda like the difference between clicking your fingers after a long piece of writing, and clicking your back in the morning. They're both satisfying, but the morning back click has something that the finger clicking doesn't. And whereas the APtCHesque ones are relaxing, Pandemonium is the one that spurs me into action. If I have something that needs to be done but can't be arsed, like finishing this unnecessarily long post, then I'll crack that on and blast through it in no time. I don't know why. It just does.

As stated earlier, no other music of any sort affects me in such a strong way as the tunes mentioned above.

[Yeargdribble]

These are leitmotifs. Wagner made them famous. Give a single person, place, or even feeling it's own theme or in some cases just a chord (the "Tristan" chord from Tristan und Isolde). You should pay attention good soundtracks to anything and you'll be able to catch very, very subtle use of this through abstracting the original tone set or rhythm in an almost unrecognizable way and laying it over something else.

In a Wagner opera you might have something like a theme of one person, and another person, and a love them, and a strife theme and they would all be layered differently throughout the orchestra to signify the people's attraction and the turmoil it causes. It can be used to say without words that one person is thinking of another person.

Nobuo Uematsu uses it frequently, but usually not in such complex ways. Mostly he just gives a person or place (or thing or feeling) a very obvious theme and then makes a sad version or a more upbeat version. Less subtle hints and more blatant stuff.

But leitmotifs are everywhere and if you're listening for them in movies and even in some TV shows you may get a hint of extra depth about the plot that's not spelled out in the actions or scripting.

[nik0tine]

It's called a motif, generally. Every Final Fantasy since FFIV has featured similar rearrangements of its main theme.

My favorite arrangements of this one are the title screen track, the Oeilvert track (just because it's the first version you hear in the game itself, and it's far along enough in the game to surprise you with the connection it makes), and the serene theme of Terra.

This, exactly. The only thing I'll add is that there is more than one musical theme in this game that is reintroduced in an arrangement later on. Without these arrangements I don't think FFIX would have been half as stellar as it is.