Somewhere to Belong

Today’s post is a first for this blog!! I did a COLLAB with my dear friend Alvin and we played “Somewhere to Belong” from FE3H together- neither of us have played the game but it’s no secret that I have been emotionally invested in FE3H since like August 2019 without playing the game, so.. this was bound to happen. (Yes, I’m still eyeing “Fodlan Winds”..) Anyway, I’m posting both Alvin’s full video and also just my piano part so I can talk about both!

General Thoughts

Let me preface by saying that I literally just sent my files to Alvin and he built this house from the ground up on his own in like a week.. you can see from the piano-only video that I recorded this a month ago now but I didn’t send my files until waaaay later (thanks for being patient with me, Alvin!!), and then homeboy yeeted this video onto the Internet like a week after I sent him everything. Sasuga KING

I first wanted to play this piece because the cello melody is soooo beautiful, right from the beginning, and the chords are my cup of tea. Overall, I think the piece has a bittersweet but also subtly hopeful atmosphere which charmed me.

The cello’s first peak on the A at 0:09 and the end of that phrase hit HARD, but my favorite part of the entire piece is the harmonic A at 0:35 (and that mini-phrase starting at 0:33). Yes, that phrase is the reason I wanted to learn this piece!! I love the entire cello solo, but those are the highlights for me.

My solo starts at 0:51 and Alvin added in backing on his keyboard which was neat! I like how the phrase introduces a new idea while staying cohesive with the cello solo, and then cello joins back in around 1:04 as we close this phrase. I really like the staggered ascending lines at 1:10; I think it’s much more interesting than a unified approach.

Alvin whips out a glockenspiel at 1:16, keeping our rendition true to form. I like the way the piano supports the glock playing the melody, and the cello closes out the piece with piano embellishments. Then we loop!

Detailed Analysis

Okay, now to talk about my specific part. Luckily in an ensemble setting, the flaws in my part were definitely way less noticeable, but I still want to talk through the piano part for my own reference.

I’ll start by saying that my part was significantly easier compared to the solo pieces I usually learn, but it wasn’t a total walk in the park. I also had to tweak two fanscriptions and add my own corrections to emulate the original track as much as possible, but I’m pretty happy with the end product for the piano part!

The piece starts out with pretty standard arpeggios and chords that support the cello solo, and things first get interesting with the inverted(?) patterns at 0:13 and 0:19. One thing I focused on throughout the piece was making all of the broken intervals and chords sound clean despite the hands almost constantly being in motion, and I think I did a decent job in this recording.

0:25 introduces a more dynamic section, with a wider range of keys. I tried to make sure the RH parts in the higher range were audible and stood out from the arpeggios in the lower range, and I especially paid attention to the final two RH chords at 0:35. The doublestops at 0:44 in the RH were really difficult and I didn’t always nail them, but I’m still really weak with those in general so I’m not too worked up.

The piano solo starts at 0:50, and it was pretty standard; I guess the main focus was to bring out the piano after supporting the cello solo. Not too much to say, no big challenges aside from the usual (e.g., playing wide chords evenly).

The most challenging (and maybe only) part of this piece was at 1:02; the triplets in the LH were tough because of all the strange crossovers along with the polyrhythm in the RH and the jumps in the LH from 1:05, but I’m very satisfied that I learned it so robustly and it looks unexpectedly smooth on-camera!! The RH octaves at 1:09 were also a little difficult because consecutive RH octaves are always going to be difficult for me physically, especially for white keys.. but the tempo was extremely manageable, thankfully.

1:14 brings us to the final phrase of the piece, where the glock has the melody and the piano plays in unison. The broken chords were really fun to play here, especially the one at 1:16. I’ve found that breaking chords cleaning often involves more energy than I’ve used in the past, especially for odd hand shapes. (The chord at 1:22 is supposed to be RH only but my hand can’t reach that.. it’s free real estate, baybee!!) I had the most fun with the chord at 1:25, and then we close out the piece as we loop.

Conclusion

This was my first time actually collaborating with someone else in a longgggg time (and definitely my first time in a casual setting), and it was a lot of fun! I wish we could’ve recorded in person, but ya know, not the time for that, unfortunately. It’s super fulfilling to see a final product like this, and it motivates me to complete more pieces and get proper recordings. This is a really lovely piece and I’m happy I was able to create my own version with Alvin. It was a fun project, and I hope we can do more in the future!! :)