This page contains answers to common questions about our site and fan arrangement archive. If you have questions related to the store, visit this page instead.
Easy! Head on over to our submission guidelines page for all the information you need.
Square Enix charges a royalty fee to all those who wish to perform and/or arrange their game music for any for-profit performance venue. In order to perform their music legally, you’ll need to obtain permission and pay the fee. Please contact Square Enix directly for information about how to obtain permission or find out more information.
Some composers have official English web sites, which allow fans to interact with them. If the composers have an English website available, it will be listed on their biography pages here at SquareSound. See the composer biographies page for details about the composers.
The majority of the sheet music on the site is in ZIP format when it’s first downloaded. What this means is that the file has be compressed for use on the Internet. The first thing you’ll need to do to open these files is use a program such as WinZip (free download from http://www.winzip.com) to decompress them. You’ll then most likely be left with a file with a .mus extension. These files were created using Finale, a music notation program created by Coda Music. To open these files, you’ll need the Finale Reader software, which can be downloaded for free from http://www.codamusic.com. Some sheet music, including many of the samples in our store are in Sibelius Scorch format. Again, the plugin to view/listen to these files is a free download. You can download the plugin from here.
If you’re trying to download a midi and all you see is an empty white box or a broken “Q” logo, the Quicktime software/plugin is probably the culprit. For some reason, Quicktime has issues with newer versions of Internet Explorer, and even if you switch the file associations so that midis open with a program other than Quicktime, it still seems to wrest control of them. I was able to fix this by opening Windows Media Player after installing Quicktime, going to tools – options, clicking the formats tab, clicking the midi checkbox, and clicking apply. If the midi checkbox is already clicked, unclick it, click it again, and click apply. This made it so midis opened with Media Player. If this doesn’t work for you, you can do one of two things: either uninstall Quicktime, or right-click on the link of the midi file you want and choose “Save Target As.” Then, simply save it to your desktop, or to a folder of your choice and open it with the software you’d prefer to use.
Our arrangement archive has links to each of the programs/plugins that are required to view the near the top of the page. Here’s an overview:
Finale (.mus) Files require the Finale Notepad, which can be downloaded for free from www.codamusic.com.
Sibelius (.sib) Files require the Scorch plugin, which can be downloaded for free from www.sibelius.com/scorch.
PDF (.pdf) Files require the Adobe Reader, which can be downloaded for free from www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.
Most other files should open with software you already have on your computer.
This music is copyrighted, and therefore illegal to post on the Internet. We sell pretty much all the sheet music that’s available for the Chrono, Xeno, and Final Fantasy series’ in our store. We also provide sample files (many of them interactive) so you can gauge the difficulty and sound of the music before purchasing. By purchasing the music legally as opposed to downloading it, you’re showing support for the composers and their hard work in composing it.
We cover the majority of the most popular games from Square Enix, and though there are many other great games we don’t cover, we are no less appreciative of them. We’re glad to post arrangements you’ve done for other games that we don’t cover. Please see our submission guidelines page for details on how to submit them.
No, but you are more than welcome to link to our site for downloads. Please place links to our arrangement archive and not to specific files.
We are always looking for volunteers to submit relevant news to our site on a consistent basis. If you are interested in this, please contact us. We’re also always looking for new submission to add to our arrangement archive, so if you’re a musician who has arranged a piece of video game music, we’d love to host it for you. Our most active contributors become “featured arrangers” and receive their own pages on the site, links to their work, blogs, and much more!
Print functionality must be enabled in these files by the original arranger. Unfortunately, it is disabled by default, and most users don’t realize this. In order to enable printing, you must open the file in the full version of Sibelius. No one on staff at SquareSound has this software, and thus we can’t enable printing in these files. We try to catch these files as they are submitted and request new files from the original arrangers, but this isn’t always possible. We apologize for the inconvenience.
The samples are provided to be just that, samples. We offer the sheet music samples to give you an idea of what the music sounds like, how difficult it is, etc. The music is copyrighted to the respective publishers and is posted only for your reference, not for the purposes of illegal downloading. If you enjoy the music, please support the composers and purchase it.