It’s really hard to choose a favorite when it comes to key sounds label but still those are the BGMs I love the most:
CLANNAD : Ushio,country train,to the same height
Little busters : Song for friends, ring ring ring
Air : Aozora
Kanon : Last regrets
Angel beats : Brave song
Tomoyo after : Light colours
Rewrite :rewrite, komiubi
Every time i visited itunes one thing bugged me, the price of the music albums. You wont believe me but it costs 2$ per album (average) in india whereas its its like 12 to 15$ (CLANNAD OST) in the US. I would like to know if there are other countries with the same pricing.
The CLANNAD OST is £15 on iTunes (UK) which must be over US$20!
I don’t know why but rewrite’s music reminds me of mass effect trilogy. Especially Sanka (Scattered flowers) and nirinsou (soft windflower). They give you a feeling of travelling through the stars.
I don’t know if I should start a new topic but…
Who’s going?!?!
Article in progress 
When you don’t know Japanese yet and have a slight fear of heights as well as enclosed spaces, so you can’t even go into planes.
Dang that’s an awesome thing. I hope somebody here goes and shares the experience. I can only begin to imagine hearing all of the brilliantly written music in person. They already sound great but, boy it’s gotta be a different beast to hear it in person.
Well, where to start now with the music I loved.
It all started…
when I was born…into this world (Ya get ya get I mean it’s a, yeah everyone got this joke)
I think I’ll start from oldest to newest in the VNs (the ones I played. Sorry Kanon, need to get to you, as well as and place my top 4. I chose 4 to start off with because Air doesn’t have a huge amount of music that I loved. I also refrain from using opening themes to the game, minus one. They’re so great. Nonetheless, the reasons why they were important for me, starting with Air:
4 Natsukage. I love Misuzu’s childish antics and this piece doesn’t honestly capture it in the way you’d think but, there’s just something about it. The tone, the slow buildup, the same sound throughout most of it after it built up. It’s a great theme for a great character.
3 Niji. Po. Kano reminded me a lot of Kotomi and, truthfully Kotomi was a cool gal so I kinda liked Kano right off the bat. This theme is really fantasy like and sounds like it deserves to be in a fantasy video game. Wait it is, sort of. Never mind, you get my point I hope. The mysterious nature of it all and it reminds me of when you stumble upon a magical NPC.
2 Farewell Song. I personally also have to say I love all the EDs as well, they do a fantastic job with them but, this is the only one that can reach the top four. Be it the lower amount of music in Air or not, it’s a catchy song and it’s the lyrics that does it for me ultimately. It’s very moving when you look up the lyrics and listen to it.
1 My number one goes to Hane. The true, main route in Air…oh boy, that ruined me. I mean it, I cried about 4 separate times and this song was the main culprit. I cannot recall how many times it was played, or where it was even but I always remember and equate to when Misuzu is on the beach and she calls out to her “mama”. It makes me tear up just thinking about it.
The next is Clannad:
5 That’s Like The Wind. I’m a huge Kyou fan and I can sit and talk about her for months. This song captures her extremely well to me. Real upbeat tune and it doesn’t ever really fluctuate with that. I love when songs go up and down, moves around but, they did a great job with Kyou’s theme in this regard. I can see her getting to a monstrous kicking combo every time I hear it.
4 Existence. There are few songs, pieces as well, than can give me goosebumps and Existence gives me goosebumps. It tugs at you in a way that is indescribable unless you’ve experienced it for yourself. It’s sad and makes you believe there’s no hope but somehow is still great to listen to.
3 Country Train. This would be number 1 in most games. I can’t even say much about it. It’s a nice, upbeat tune you know, it SOUNDS like a train but that’s not the reason I love it so much no, the reason is Ushio asking about her mom. Everyone who has played Clannad, whether or not you love this track, you can’t help but feel something at that scene. There’s a handful of those in Key visual novels and they’re great.
2 Shining in the Sky. Clannad makes me cry, alright? It just makes me cry and I loved it for that. I feel like I must like crying at this point because this track makes me cry, almost every time. It’s so simple and so effective, and then just once it reaches the top oh my goodness. There’s nothing else like it, period. It gets to that top and it’s like “There seems to be some rain in my room somehow”.
1 TOE. This wasn’t even a track I truly cared for but the sentimental value held up. I hear Kotomi utter “Father. Mother. Welcome home.” and it’s over. I do actually love the piece as well, the way it flows almost over time, across many continents, searching for it’s true destination. Especially the end of it. It feels like the song set out what it was supposed to do in life, accomplished that and faded away into the night.
Planetarian doesn’t have many tracks so I’ll just put that:
Little Busters:
5 Faraway. No words. I have no words other than “Was my life happy?” “That I wasn’t happy…how could I say that, when I had great friends like you!”
4 Only One Magic World. Speaking of very fantasy-esque tracks, this is another one that reminds me of that. It’s such a touching and sad song but there’s hope in there, somehow there’s some speck of hope. I love when it pauses and returns with such a beautiful little melody and sets forth it’s path right to your heart.
3 Ring Ring Ring!. Wow. All of the Little Busters themes, perfection. I mean it too they’re all fitting in their own way but, Rin’s takes the cake rather easily for me. Again, the buildup is big for me as I’ve stated several times before and then when it hits there you really think to yourself “Yeah, this is Rin!”. It takes time to warm to it, much like Rin and when you have warmed up to her, just like the song, it gets really going and you start to smile a bunch.
2 Little Melody. This was a hard choice because this means I had to leave out a song or two that I loved but, Little Melody, as it states, is a little melody and I fell in love with it’s simplicity. The amount of feelings I have just from listening to it is remarkable and this is one of those sentimental pieces for me. It’s beautiful, truly beautiful.
1 Song For Friends. There can’t be another number one, there cannot. It’s also my favorite song in any of the VNs I’ve listed here, pretty safe to say that as well. It is so lovely and so sweet but it’s also about such sadness and moving on almost. Whether you’re down in the dumps or in a great mood, this song works for all occasions. It’s, perfect.
Special mention would be Clear Weather After The Rain. I hate leaving it out but, when I look back at the Little Busters soundtrack, it’s amazing. There’s no other words I have.
Thanks for anyone who reads. I stayed up way too late and was thinking “Hey, I wanted to talk about music at least once here soon” so I decided to now. I mean, it’s 6 AM but, meh, I’m happy to talk about this. Plus I’m 5x more emotional at night. (Don’t do the math. That makes me like a 1504/100 on the emotional scale)
I’ve been listening to Key’s C93 Acoustic Album 『Humans pleasure』and I think it deserves a special mention.
To me it has definitely one of key’s best musical performances in recent times, I’d even consider it overall greater than 『KeyCLASSIC』from 2012. The album cover is adorable and the performances are just magical.
I’ve always been a big fan of Key’s classical remixes, even tracks that are originally pretty loud and jumpy can suddenly become emotional pieces when performed with the right instruments, by the right musicians 
Does anyone know if Humans Pleasure will ever be available on the iTunes US? A lot of Key albums are available on there a few months after the Japanese release, and I’d really like to be able to buy the album.
Hoshi No Fune in particular is the song that I’d love to be able to buy. The acoustic guitar with Lia’s wonderful voice in the snippet of the song just sounds so right with each other as a whole.
I’m a fan of “BGM 2” that came with Alka Tale. With the calmer piano on the right and the two sadder violins that chime in from different directions, it’s like a conversation. It’s cool how you can have that kind of blocking in music (maybe there’s an actual music term for it, Idk). BGM 1 is the track they want to push as a front of the ost, I guess. The timing is really making me believe there will be a vocal version; lyrics just seem to slot in very easily.
Before I checked out the track, I thought you were referring to something like Burgmüller’s The Little Party Etude, but it turns out it was something different, ahaha. Anyway, as for the exact term, uhhh, you might be thinking of countermelody. Or spatial mixing – a technique to create an illusion of depth in an audio file. They do sounded like they were coming from different directions. :o
I’ve been listening to Rewrite OSTs again lately, and was in the mood to rank them, so this video happened. Feel free to question my shit taste in music. :^)
Watching the Kanon 2006 anime, a new top 10 or maybe even top 5 contender for my favourite Key BGM
Fuyu no Hanabi - Winter Fireworks.
So haunting, it makes my eyes sweat, or something…
Scattered Flowers from Rewrite sits at the dais of the throne that contains Tori no Uta, for me. Talking about Tori no Uta would be cheating though, and frankly I don’t even know where to begin. Therefore, I’ll tackle a work of art that I can comprehend.
Key has many emotional songs, usually sitting under the wide umbrella of ‘sad’, but Scattered Flowers is a lot more than that to me. It is a nebulous cloud of many things, but primarily it grants me some semblance of peace, especially when I consider the context of when it plays in Rewrite. The scattered flowers it references are those of the cherry blossom petals, symbolic in Japan as a metaphor for the transient nature of life. They are like clouds, in how they appear and disappear like dreams or memories on the canvas of the endless blue sky, reminiscent of time itself.
I do not speak here of anything new, only to appreciate how focused this song is in helping feel the beauty of life because of how fragile it is. How all things are destined to end, and because of that ever present ceiling falling down on us, our precious time is best spent living our lives to the fullest. This is most reminiscent, of course, of Sakuya from Rewrite, who embodies this song better than any other Key character I can think of at the time of writing this.
Tomoyo After is kind of a poopy game. It has a beautiful ending and some scattered moments of legitimate emotion but overal the pacing is all over the place and there is no shortage of padding and filler. That said, Tomoyo After is responsible for creating not only my favorite Key song but one of my favorite pieces of music ever and that is the seminal work, “Life is like a Melody.”
The piece makes many allusions to the literal events of Tomomyo After, specifically its ending, but more so than any of that I want to talk about the narrative arc of the song itself and the beauty therein. The song can be divided roughly by it’s choruses, each of which state a different thing and the evolution of that message is where the heart of the story comes in. Worry not, I will not talk about the actual parallels to literal story events of Tomoyo After, so there will be no spoilers.
The first chorus reads as such:
Can we each walk on our own? Everyone around us will disappear
But the time we spent holding hands until today will carry us to the unknown future
Which establishes the mentality that life is finite and that the progression of time is relentless. “Can we walk on our own?” is reflective of this fear towards the unknown and the inevitable. We are sustained by our bonds, but ultimately the end is something we can not escape. Come the second chorus we see this mentality shift:
We could walk together, too; we believed strength was in our joined hearts
Our strides didn’t match well, but if we walked slowly we could be side-by-side
Here the focus has shifted. In order to fight the pain of isolation we come together. Can we walk on our own becomes “We could walk together too.” The second line draws out shades of Eva, discussing how even with the differences that we as people have and the fact that no one will ever quite line up people can still live together if that is what they desire, that the happiness that comes from that is worth the price. With a lot of uplifting or otherwise sentimental media the message of the piece would stop at this moment. “No one needs to be alone let us come together,” is a nice message and one that is easy to accept and integrate. However, Life is like a Melody goes a step further and it is in this that the meaning of the song goes all the way around to being one of my favorites. The final chorus reads:
Can we each walk on our own? Everyone around us will disappear
But this life of unforgotten trembling will engrave in us the hope we need to continue
The first line echoes that of the first chorus, but the second line shifts the meaning therein. Ultimately we live in a finite world with loss guaranteed. This is something that we must all accept in order to grow up. This final chorus tells us that that is okay. We will lose things in our life, but that is okay. What is important are the memories of the good times we carry with us that “engrave in us the hope we need to continue.”
I’ll leave this with the final final line of the song, which I feel captures this maturity and acceptance perfectly.
Our strides may never match again, but if we walk on, we can aim for the future
Stay golden,
Bread
I heard a bit about Summer Pockets and the number seven and thought that it’s fun to point out that a few of the game’s soundtracks have a 7/4 rhythm. I’m not sure yet if there are other tracks that has it because I haven’t listened to the entire album yet, but this one stood out to me in particular:
This too, which uses the same melody anyway, but it changed to a common time (4/4) around 1:25.
Key’s Music, goodness I could go on and on about how much I love it. Jun Maeda never disappoints wrt his musical ideas and works. One of the best things about Key is the sheer amount of music, it seems like I find a new song or album every week!
My favorite OST is Clannad’s by far, every song (except 1) I am a fan of. The top few works from Clannad I have (In no order) are as follows;
Next up is Little Busters, which also has a fantastic OST that has been rising in my ranks for the past few months. Here are a few of my favorites;
Honorable Mention
How to Make Delicious Pickles https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZoBhYZfL4A
It took me over a year to find this song, and it was worth it.
Air and Kanon in my opinion do not have an OST up to Par with Clannad and Little Busters, but I still enjoy the OSTs quite a bit.
Air - Giniro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URZ9ECuFXrc
Again, with the hollowness, the mystery, the piercing sound of this piece, its absolutely gorgeous. Sets up for the great anime or VN. The mix on Aozora, while it may not be a sad or emotional, I feel the absent of the instrumental variety gives it more of an “uneasy” vibe, much like Dango Daikazoku or Born into this World.
Kanon - Umaretate no Kaze https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEIPyVIABtY
Kanon, Kanon, Kanon. This piece plays in the perfect moments in the show! It is my favorite Kanon OST piece, but…
Canon in D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vTsGCCseFw is my favorite piece played in Kanon. I love the story of Pachelbel’s Canon. It was originally played for the wedding of Johann Sebastian Bach’s eldest brother, and after that, the piece itself was lost for almost 300 years, before it was rediscovered in 1919, and it is now an important part of Wedding Culture here in the West.
For Tomoyo After, Life is Like a Melody was mentioned above, so I will highlight Love Song - Piano https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7NF2Uq-zwc
I am now realizing what kind of Key music I love, the hollow pieces that carry little to no multi-instrumental parts, but are just beautiful melodies!
For Rewrite, I have not read the VN yet, but from what I have heard, Journey is my favorite piece. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvKq4fuR8ao
For Summer Pockets, I am still listening to the OST whenever I get the chance, but so far I am a huge fan of Sea, You, and Me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZQQWVV2ziA
I love the broad feel of this piece, it seems to set up a good perspective for the VN, unfortunately I cannot read Japanese, so I have no idea how this piece is applied into the VN. Its a good piece nonetheless.
Key’s Sound Label also has some fantastic songs, some of which took me a long time to track down and find the name of it. Below are a list of my two favorite albums from Key Sound Label;
Love Song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8pI6i2d0ow&list=PLPxNInTMGqy-DlRrmR_81OFAM-7x6As4i
Long Long Love Song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVR6A_2nH8k
Lia to be on a tv program “Anison Days” on March 4th and aveilable to see it on web.
https://vod.bs11.jp/video/anison-days/nz0wuh/
I cannot believe I forgot about Kud Wafter!! I have not played the game, but Kud’s game has some great music also, including a bunch of variations on “Adagio for Summer Wind” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=075EeO9ZqF8
This OST is actually not written by Jun, but it still is very encompassing and does its job.
The best piece of OST, and possibly the best Key music work is the ending song, Hoshikuzu (Stardust).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZw4_YHSPL0
The song is emotional for me, it really gives me a feeling unlike any key song, it makes me feel hopeful, which is a strange way to describe how a song makes you feel. It starts off sounding very floaty, as if you were listening to the last song you would ever listen to. The movement of the music almost seems like you are flying through space, or looking out over the clouds in an airplane, the feeling the song gives you is unreal. The song does a great job with the softness of the first verse, but after the chorus, it begins to drive, drive into the next verse with dynamics, and into the next chorus it keeps it up until the bridge, it keeps going up until a certain point where it stops, drops you off, and it almost makes you “fall” beck into the floaty melody we heard earlier. It finishes off back at the driving melody, with my favorite lines in the song;
Jp:
小さな星屑 宙（そら）を見つめてる
未来は手の中で 羽ばたき始める
きみの翼 未来（あした）へと届け
Eng:
We gaze at the tiny bits of stardust in space
We take off flying for the future in our hands
Reach the future with your wings
Those lines really resonate with me, it makes me feel calm, as if everything is going to be okay, the end is near, the feeling of hope will continue, and we will keep searching for that next joy in our lives. The future is out there, take hold of it, it only takes a little bit of stardust! 
So, did everyone with the Kanon OST CD find the hidden track at the end after the short verion of ‘Kaze no Tadoritsuku Basho’? After about a minute silence, an arrange version of Yuki no Shōjo.
Anyway, now I’ve had a chance to hear a good number of the vocal songs properly, these are my favourites from each:
Kanon - Last Regrets. It’s the repeated piano motif that underpins the whole song that I love so much
AIR - Aozora. Impossible to separate this from THAT moment in the VN / anime, brings me to tears every time. Also really like ‘Farewell Song’, very uplifitng
Clannad - Chiisana Tenohira. As above with the tears. All the goodness of Dango Daikazoku with added emotion.
Tomoyo After - Life is like a Melody. So yes, I’m pretty much sold on the big sentimental numbers and this has a truly great chorus.
EDIT continued…
Little Busters & EX - Difficult choice as none of the songs stand out to me and maybe only one or two in my top 10, so I can just mention ‘Little Busters’, ’ Song for Friends’ and ‘Saya’s Song’ but ‘Faraway’ would probably come out on top.
Angel Beats! - Has to be Ichiban no Takaramono (Yui ver.) for the pure emotional impact, with ‘My Soul, Your Beats!’ and ‘Brave Song’ this is a really powerful trio of songs.
Girls Dead Monster - Some really terrific rock songs that stand out in their own right. With Marina singing the sound is a bit more raw and Million Star is my favourite. With LiSA it’s different tonally and sounds more urgent, my favourite overall GlDeMo is ‘Thousand Enemies’. The three songs ‘Thousand Enemies’, ‘Shine Days’ and ‘23:50’ on the Perfect Vocal Collection are immense played in sequence.
Rewrite - I don’t know HF at all so just the original OST itself. Although ‘CANOE’ and ‘Watari no Uta’ are essentially slightly different arrangements of the same tune my favourite is the latter as I enjoy Aoi Tada’s voice and it comes through in a much more engaging way for me on the simpler arrangement. Also will give ‘Philosophyz’ and ‘Koibumi’ honorable mentions.
I’ve seen Charlotte once and nothing really stood out for me apart from a ZHIEND song which I can’t remember the title, and I haven’t seen Kud Wafter at all.
