I did this one over one listen, and I think the main reason why is that I’m highly familiar with the song. I think that, having not listened to it in a good while also helped as I wasn’t overthinking. Maybe sleep last night also helped.

Anyway, I was hoping to get a sense of where the song is used across. That didn’t come through anywhere as much as I’d hoped, but I think what I wrote works well enough in getting an idea of the song across.

Nobuo Uematsu’s (植松 伸夫) “Prelude to the Void” (“虚空への前奏曲”) is from Final Fantasy V‘s soundtrack, Final Fantasy V Original Sound Version.

I hope you enjoy.

—

Bass and percussion, and some wind, and another bright bit of percussion, everything forms frame, loops and repeats. Strings come in, tense, pressuring, and so do other sounds. A frame pressing down, pressing in, urging.

When brass enters and builds, the strings follow and underscore, rising and falling in smaller steps. The brass climbs, rises, falls, rises, falls, and the sounds around continue on, keeping frame, keeping space, keeping in step. Continuing on.

The strings change once more, almost play with some sort of sudden chaos, but then let tension coil again before everything cycles.

Once more, everything builds, tension keeps coiling, pressure builds, and the sounds keep on urging. They keep urging and driving forward, and within them, perhaps, is a sense of otherworldliness. Familiarity, but everything is off. Thrown together, permanent and temporary.

And those strings, once more, return to that sudden chaos. A sudden burst, but calm, before coiling once more, and once more cycling back with everything as everything fades away and the song ends.