more of a fantasy, so "a serious piece as well as silly, fun pieces could fit in." He felt the theme was medieval music, and was given a two-week break to travel in Europe for inspiration—"looking at old castles in Germany and so on." However, the music was not entirely composed in the medieval mode, as Uematsu claims that "it would be unbalanced" and "a little boring". He aimed for a "simple, warm" style and included uncommon instruments such as a kazoo and dulcimer. Uematsu also included motifs from older Final Fantasy games "because Final Fantasy IX was returning to the roots, so to speak" and incorporated ideas such as "the old intro for battle music" and arranged the Volcano theme from Final Fantasy and the Pandemonium theme from Final Fantasy II, as well as others from the series. Uematsu has claimed several times that Final Fantasy IX is his favorite work, as well as the one he is most proud of. He also stated in the liner notes for the Final Fantasy IX: Original Soundtrack album that he was "glad that [he] was able to join this project." Albums "FINAL FANTASY IX" Original Soundtrack Final Fantasy IX Original Soundtrack is a soundtrack album containing musical tracks from the game, composed, arranged and produced by Nobuo Uematsu. It spans four discs and 110 tracks, covering a duration of 4:46:31. It was first released on 30 August 2000 by DigiCube, and subsequently re-released on 10 May 2004 by Square Enix. The lyrics for the theme song to the game, "Melodies of Life", were written by Hiroyuki Ito for the Japanese version and Alexander O. Smith for the English version. The song was performed in both languages by Emiko Shiratori. The album reached #4 on the Japan Oricon charts, and sold 101,000 copies as of January 2010. The album was well received; many reviewers found that it was a "good" soundtrack, though not without faults. Josh Bizeau and Roko Zaper of Soundtrack Central especially liked it, finding it to be "a blessing for Final Fantasy music", and both Patrick Gann of RPGFan and Isaac Engelhorn of Soundtrack Central felt it was Uematsu's second-best work to date, behind only the soundtrack of Final Fantasy VI. Ben Schweitzer of RPGFan, however, found that the heavy reliance of the soundtrack on music and themes from previous Final Fantasy soundtracks resulted in a sense of "stretched