A Place in the Sun

A few months later, Alvin and I return with another collab!! This time we played “A Place in the Sun” from Xenoblade Chronicles II- haven’t played the game, but I found this piece in a playlist by chance and when I realized it was just cello and piano, I got super hyped lol. This wasn’t my best performance since I was a bit time-crunched (my bad), but I did hit all the notes so I guess that was my first priority. It was a faster project than the one from before, but it was enjoyable all the same and I learned a lot!

General Thoughts

The thing I’ll remember most about this one was having to transcribe the piano part by ear.. I found a single transcription online, and while the cello part was written out perfectly, the piano part was really lacking compared to the original track. I think there were about 40 bars for my part and there was only one (1) bar that didn’t need revision, and that one bar only had five notes in the RH lol.. 100 crying emojis, man. Listening to the same bar or sometimes same two beats over and over again as I try to catch the notes can be tedious in the moment, but I did have a lot of fun throughout the transcription process. My mom actually commented “Wow, you look like you’re really enjoying yourself” one evening when I was working on this LOL. This was by far the most time-consuming part of the process; I think I spent a total of 4 hours or so on this alone, and the actual playing practice was pretty short since it was an extremely doable piano part. I had short enough contact time where I didn’t memorize it.

ANYWAY, transcription aside, I really love the pastoral vibes of this piece; it sounds really lush and warm, and there are a lot of lovely chords. The opening melody in the cello in the lower register is super rich, and the block chords in the piano are a nice opener before we hit the higher register in the cello and the arpeggios in the piano.

The part at 0:51 is one of my favorite moments, where the cello and piano RH play the melody together (I forgot the music term for this.. I feel like in quartets and such there’s a term where you play the same part together?? Tutti maybe?).

1:02 brings us to a melody with a somber tinge, and the music swells here. I like how the cello holds out longer notes while the piano fills in the space with chords like at 1:10 and 1:24! But I really like the cello’s melody throughout this entire section. And then the ending phrase is piano-only, with a ton of sevenths in the LH (my favorite hehe).

Detailed Analysis

So Alvin’s fantastic editing completely hid the fact that I didn’t memorize this LOL, and I also printed the last page landscape for some reason……. anyway……. I talked about the transcription trials and tribulations earlier, but I’m really proud of how the piano part came out. It sounds really true to the original in my opinion after I went in and revised it. There were a couple of spots that I couldn’t quite decode which was pretty frustrating because I’m so used to my perfect pitch giving me all the answers lol.. but not too bad. I also played really rigidly in this take unfortunately because I was anxious about playing all the right notes, so there really isn’t much musicality to discuss here.

The block chords at the beginning were pretty tough because it’s hard to play all the keys at the same time consistently, but Alvin’s playing luckily covered a lot of my mistakes. I never managed to perfectly crack the RH at 0:28, which still makes me angst, but I think it got close enough.

We introduce the broken chords at 0:31, and the piano part starts to pick up momentum. The arpeggios are pretty colorful, which is nice to hear and fun to play, and I like the little RH accents in the higher register at 0:39. The chords at 0:57 right before the next section took a lot of focus for some reason- I tended to play the wrong “shape” chords in the RH.

0:59 really starts to build the swell of the music (as the cello melody begins to sing), and I tried to convey a bit of that weight here. I’m happy I picked up on the constant G bottom note in the intervals at 1:08 in the RH because I think they add depth to the filler chords. The phrase at 1:13 is one of my favorites for the piano part, but definitely the phrase I had to work hardest mentally; I was waffling constantly on some of the notes until the last minute, so even during practice I was still experimenting sometimes here. The RH chords at 1:17 are probably my favorite phrase in the piece for the piano part; they’re blocked chords with the same lower notes as the top note moves, and it just makes for a really cool phrase. (The bar at 1:52 is the one bar that didn’t have any corrections during transcription, for reference.)

Honestly, there were a lot of spots until the piano-only part that were somewhat tricky, but it looks so smooth on camera here and it’s been over a week since I recorded this, so it’s kinda hard to remember which they were. A couple of the rolled chords were a bit big for my RH but it looks smooth enough that I can’t pinpoint them. Well, I guess it’s good that even I can’t pick up on them haha.

The piano-only part starts at 1:56, and it was easily the most nerve-wracking part during recording. Because, obviously, if I flubbed here, I’d have to start all over.. I wish I played it more delicately, but at the same time, I know it was a rigid take with perfect note accuracy so I guess I’ll take what I can get. I mentioned the sevenths earlier, but I’ll mention them again, because I love sevenths lol.

Conclusion

This project was pretty speedy, but despite that, I really enjoyed working on it. Something about this piece feels strangely nostalgic, and I was hit with a sense of.. yearning.. even during my very first listen lol. I do wish I’d taken the time to plan ahead and get a better take, but I’ll work harder for the next piece we work on. :) Or we can revisit this in the future sometime. Thanks again to Alvin for doing literally all of the editing and also for doing a stellar job with the cello part!