Final Fantasy VII Music

Nobuo Uematsu composed and produced the music of Final Fantasy VII in eight months, though he has said that he would have preferred to spend at least a year on the task. While the media capabilities of the PlayStation allowed for CD quality music, Uematsu opted for MIDI, saying that "I prefer better sound [quality] but recorded sound needs time to read, sound chips don't. [With sound chips, the] Music changes more quickly and smoothly. I don't want players to feel stress, so I chose sound chips". The first piece of music that Uematsu composed for the game was the opening theme; game director Yoshinori Kitase showed him the opening cinematic to the game and asked him to begin the project there. The track was well received in the company, and Uematsu took it as a good sign for the success of the project as a whole. Final Fantasy VII was the first game in the series to include a track with digitized vocals, "One-Winged Angel", which has been described as Uematsu's "most recognizable contribution" to the music of the Final Fantasy series. The lyrics of the song, a Latin choral track which plays at the climax of the game, were taken from the medieval poetry Carl Orff based his Carmina Burana on, respectively the songs "Estuans Interius", "O Fortuna", "Veni, Veni, Venias" and "Ave Formosissima". Uematsu has stated in interviews that the intro of "One-Winged Angel" is based on Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze", and that despite the chorus and orchestra, he still thinks of the song as a "rock piece". There was a plan to use a "famous vocalist" for the ending song as a "theme song" for the game, but the plans were dropped due to time constraints and thematic concerns. Uematsu has also said that the soundtrack has a feel of "realism", which prevented him from using "exorbitant, crazy music".[6] Uematsu has stated that his favorite tunes from the soundtrack are "Aerith's Theme", "Overworld Theme", and "Desert Canyon", although at other times he has mentioned "One-Winged Angel" as his favorite.