Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with fans watching a live gig while people all around me dance, cheer, and hold glow sticks above their heads is not something I’ve experienced in a while. Strangely enough, I’m not even talking about your usual concert here — I’m talking about sitting in Limsa Lominsa Lower Decks and watching Final Fantasy 14’s The Songbirds perform.
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The Songbirds have carved a name out for themselves as an idol group that perform concerts across all servers and data centers. Their concerts bring in players from all over the world and attract hundreds of viewers on Twitch. Their popularity has grown since their debut in 2018, to the point where you can now snag yourself some coveted merch from their official website. “The response we've received is of overwhelming wholesomeness and support,” The Songbirds co-manager Raven Ambree tells me… “People send me messages saying how our concerts just made their terrible day better — how we helped bring [them] happiness.”
But how is all this musical magic possible? In 2017, Square Enix added Performance Mode to Final Fantasy 14, an update designed to allow Bards level 30 and above to play a range of notes to create melodies, with a variety of different musical instruments on offer. However, orchestrating a successful gig takes a whole lot more work than most people realise.
Mewsical Miqo, one of the fantastic people behind The Songbirds, explains that they had to teach themselves most of the skills they needed to make the group work. “It was necessary to learn a wide range of disparate skills, some of which I had little to no existing proficiency in,” they say. “This includes hard technical skills such as setting up and maintaining the PC hardware necessary to run a large number of game accounts, [learning] software development to create the tools necessary to carry out our performances, and conducting a large amount of low-level research into how in-game performance works.” Mewsical also had to learn an array of creative skills, such as using music composition software.
Mewiscal uses specialized music production software to help compose songs outside of the game. Depending on the track they are covering, the work and time involved can vary drastically. “It could take me as little as 15 minutes to an hour to make a complete octet arrangement for songs in which good source material is readily available — a game sequence, MIDI, or other score format,” they tell me. “Conversely, for songs with no publicly available score — i.e. FFXIV songs — they would have to [be] transcribed by ear first. I will typically commission transcription jobs to a third party, though it may still take weeks to receive the completed transcription before I can even start working on an arrangement.”
The set list includes an impressive number of tracks that will be familiar to Final Fantasy fans. You can’t help but marvel at how perfectly crafted the songs are — as The Songbirds play To The Edge, it reminds me of my time spent completing The Seat of Sacrifice, and I’m not ashamed to say I died the first time… or two.
However, not all songs can be successfully recreated in Performance Mode – at least not while retaining the high standards of The Songbirds. Mewsical tells me that the fan-favorite Endwalker theme is missing from their repertoire as a result of these limitations. “There are times during arrangement where the song simply does not play nice, often due to being limited to eight Bards.” Mewsical explains. “I enjoy creating arrangements as faithful to the original as possible, as I dislike discarding melody and harmonics for the sake of making things fit inside of an ensemble.”
Square Enix has updated the Performance Mode since its initial launch, adding in new instruments such as the electric guitar and the Tone Change feature. More updates are likely, so it’s exciting to think what these possible additions could mean for The Songbirds in the future.
“I'd like to see more interesting instruments like how they did the special mode for the guitar,” Raven says. Meanwhile, Mewsical hopes for “more octaves, chords, velocity control, a drumkit, and more instruments — shamisen please.”
Both Raven and Mewiscal tell me they used to be casual Final Fantasy 14 players, but now their time is dominated with running The Songbirds and their event schedule, while also continuing to grow their Twitch presence. The band is often hired by other players for various events, such as in-game wedding parties, entertainment venues, Free Company recruitment drives, and more. They also participate in in-game festivals, and that’s all in addition to their usual pop-up concerts.
With the launch of the Endwalker on the horizon, Raven and Mewsical tell me they will be chasing down the main scenario quests, much like the rest of us. However, they’ll also be looking to add songs from the new expansion to The Songbird’s oeuvre.
You can keep up to date with The Songbirds and their tours across Eorzea on their Discord Channel and Twitter account.
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