Well I kinda wanted to do it in Mitsuda's style, which I don't mean to be a precocious jackass but I am probably the foremost authority on Mitsuda (besides Mitsuda himself) as I've spent literally several hundred hours listening, remixing, re-arranging, re-writing, and tabbing out all of his stuff. Mitsuda rarely uses full orchestra tutti, and the horns are rarely used as well. CT was about the only time he wrote for horns excessively. The percussion is very Mitsuda-esque as well, using shakers/maracas, bongos, taiko drum, bass drum, timpani, tambourine, glockenspiel. And of course violin, Mitsuda's main instrument. Double Bass pizzicato as he always does, cellos doing a rhythmic variation of the violin, viola/violin pizzicato playing a quick phrase. I was shooting for more of an RD/CC feel, thus the lack of horns. There IS, however, oboe and trumpet doubling the violin on the chorus section.
I decided to keep it all with instruments Mitsuda typically uses in Chrono games.
on the frozen flame song, the woodwind instrument used is an oboe, so I decided on that.
in CT the brass is usually either horns (sometimes known as french horns even though they were invented in Germany), or trumpets. I decided to use trumpets as I liked the sound trumpet/oboe doubling each other and the violin better.
violin because, let's face it, almost every song Mitsuda does has a solo violin (Hurricane, the CC battle theme. Time's Scar, CC intro theme. Nocturne, a song off KiRite. The intro of CT has some violin, Chrono series also has lots of violin/viola pizzicato short phrases (Snake Remains Chamber from CC, Wind Scene from CT).
Double Bass pizzicato, as he uses that a lot especially in RD (the ending song for instance).
Shakers/maracas play a pretty well static beat throughout, just like Snake Remains Chamber.
Tambourine(or a jingle), that makes appearances in a lot of his works, such as Hurricane, the boss fight in RD.
Timpani, used in RD's boss fight
Bass drum and taiko drum, used in RD's boss fight, used in Hurricane, used in Snake Remains Chamber
Woodblock, used in hurricane
glocken/vibra/marimba etc used in a lot of stuff, snake remains chamber, theme of crono, the 'music box' themes in RD and CC
I COULD have done something with nylon acoustic, piano and choir, but decided against it. I felt there were already enough instruments. Mitsuda is a typically minimalist composers (uses the least amount of colors/instruments instead of always doing big full tutti orchestra).
