apiacherie 11/30/20 apiacherie 11/30/20

Shadowlord #1

I wanted to update this blog before we enter December so here I am, frantically typing away on a Monday night lol. It’s been a while!! I was just generally in a slump for the past several weeks and I wasn’t in any mental headspace to record myself, much less update this blog.. I also didn’t have the drive to pursue any pieces properly, as evidenced by the last couple of posts here (we’ll call them hit and runs).

But here I am with “Shadowlord” from the Nier series, which I haven’t played (what’s new). I’ve already learned the whole piece so I think the next video will also be the last for this one. Anyway, we’re back to my roots with this one: dark, dramatic, and bittersweet. It’s a pretty rough take by my standards, but I’ve already made so much progress that I wanted to get a recording up (from two days ago) before I polished it any further.

Andrea Kim 10/12/20 Andrea Kim 10/12/20

Eternal Harvest #1

Long time no post! I hit a slump for the past several weeks (IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE) and frankly didn’t really play much piano- like I played piano but I didn’t really practice, you know? I just played mindlessly for the sake of playing, and didn’t focus on any one piece much. But I picked this one up a couple weeks ago while sightplaying through my book and wanted to post an update on it. It’s originally from FFIX, which I’ve never played, but for some reason I was really familiar with this tune.. plus, it’s autumn, and I have no idea if the og game’s track is actually correlated to a harvest at all, but CLOSE ENOUGH!! I also tried a slightly different style of video editing so I hope it’s okay!!

apiacherie 9/10/20 apiacherie 9/10/20

Blinded by Light #1

I sightplayed Lightning’s theme a couple weeks ago and am posting now since I’ve started chipping away at it properly. This is another one of those pieces that I’ve attempted halfheartedly a couple of times in the past few years but I always gave up because of hand size (the composer/arranger for this particular collection must have big hands, he uses a lot of ninths =_=). However, at this point, I’m a little more comfortable (and resigned) with the fact that I have to make do with workarounds, and I recently got FFXIII on Steam and am replaying it for the first time in several years, so I figured I’d try learning this piece again! This is arguably one of the most well-known tracks from the game, and probably from the more recent FF games.. still a bop over 10 years later imo.

apiacherie 8/28/20 apiacherie 8/28/20

Kairi’s Theme #2 [END]

EDIT: This is the final take for now. There’s one wrong note but otherwise, it was solid enough where I’ll mark it complete.

Last post before the final take for this one! All the notes came back to me, and I worked on refining a few bits. Otherwise, I just played through over and over again.

apiacherie 8/18/20 apiacherie 8/18/20

Kairi’s Theme #1(?)

I’ve been hacking away at “Stand Your Ground” for the past couple of weeks and am still struggling with recording, so here’s a random take of Kairi’s theme, which I’ve been revisiting as a warm up/cooldown piece recently. Also, my audio file turned out really wonky, so it’s phone audio today.. and this was my ONE take of the evening since my phone ran out of storage in the middle of the second one lol. This isn’t quite a genuine First Impressions post, but it’s the first time I’m posting the piece, so we’ll go with it.

apiacherie 8/7/20 apiacherie 8/7/20

Stand Your Ground #4

Hello!! It’s been a while, had some personal stuff going on.. but things are resolved now and I was able to take a progress video of the whole piece. It’s not great, but at least it’ll help me gauge my progress.. I’d say I’m about 70% done with the piece, with my goal being 80%. There are some parts that are just physically so beyond me that I am lowering my own standards, but more on that later..

Andrea Kim 7/22/20 Andrea Kim 7/22/20

Stand Your Ground #3

Short update today- brushed up older sections and worked on the next few, but still work in progress. I took a break the past couple of days so I’m a little rusty but I wanted to update this week before I learn any more of this.. and didn’t have access to the usual setup today, so just phone audio. Volume warning!! Also not sure if it’s just me, but a few sections look super laggy on video, so.. sorry for the janky quality all around lol.

Andrea Kim 7/12/20 Andrea Kim 7/12/20

Stand Your Ground #2

Here’s the first.. third or so of the piece, now that I’ve spent a week working on it. This is the section I’ve learned before most, so the notes came back to me easily and it was more a matter of really fine-tuning the maneuvers and also musicality. Still rough, but I think it’s a good progress marker, all things considered. Also recorded later sections that I haven’t practiced yet, but I wanted them on camera so I can look back later.

apiacherie 7/9/20 apiacherie 7/9/20

Stand Your Ground #1

I’ve finally come back to “Stand Your Ground”- this is an initial recording to gauge where I’m at, but this isn’t a blind sightread since I have worked a bit on this piece before. With that said, it’s been well over a year since I’ve touched this, so my memory is foggy at best.. and a warning that the audio is just phone audio, I never know how long these first videos will take so I just opt for phone-only recordings.

Andrea Kim 7/5/20 Andrea Kim 7/5/20

Smile Again

Finished my latest “break” piece- this time I played “Smile Again” from ARIA. I don’t know much about ARIA; I only read a handful of chapters when I was a young teen because the art was nice but didn’t get into it, but a friend showed me this piece recently and it was just so lovely I was like “I must learn this someday”.. and then I finished “1000 Words” and was like now would be a good time. So here we are!! Today’s post is going to be shorter than usual since the difficulty was extremely manageable for me, and the piece itself is pretty short.