Prelude (Final Fantasy)

Nobuo Uematsu wrote the music for Final Fantasy, which went on sale in Japan on December 18, 1987. In 2014, Red Bull Music Academy asked him what he remembered about “Prelude,” the first track of the game. He said: “Around the time I worked on that, I'd just finished making all the music and thought everything was complete. Then my boss Hironobu Sakaguchi suddenly came into the room and told me to make one more song for the opening screen. He gave me 30 minutes. I remember rushing to make it right there.”

The piece is short. It is one line of broken chords. The notes climb, come back down, and the pattern repeats while the chords change. On the Famicom it sounds a little like a harp.

Final Fantasy became a long series, and the Prelude stayed with it. The piece appears in nearly every game in the series. Uematsu has also changed it himself. In the Final Fantasy XI version, the first loop uses the usual chords, and then the music moves to different ones. In a 2024 interview for the game's official site, he was asked about this change. He said: “Maybe I was just tired of the traditional version?”

In the same 2014 answer, Uematsu also said: “I never dreamed that song would continue to be used in the Final Fantasy series.” When someone asks you for one more thing just as you think you are finished, that may be the work that stays.