It’s been a while!! I had a not insignificant case of the holiday blues and just didn’t have much to update.. but I heard this Genshin arrangement after returning to work this week and I just HAD to try my hands at it. I probably could’ve kept this as a oneshot post, but I made a substantial amount of progress in one day so I figured I could upload the first half before tackling the rest of it. This is the original arrangement, and the sheet music only costs about $2!! Very much worth my money.

Detailed Analysis

So to preface: I completely over-practiced for this take. It took forever to get a decent take despite getting multiple perfect takes off-camera right before, but I’ve learned my lesson.. this is not a problem I often have lol.

The beginning, as always, still requires work. My LH is too brutish to really be as delicate as it should be, but I wanted to try playing at tempo just to see how it goes. The opening phrase is probably the most difficult, honestly- there’s a lot of finesse needed for the voicing and echo effect. But, it’s my favorite kind of arrangement to learn, so it’s been fun! I can work more on playing the various LH intervals evenly, and also need to play them a bit quieter.. but it’s hard when I’m moving so quickly.

We open the next phrase at 0:20 with RH octaves, and the ending RH chord at 0:21 is actually so hard to hit precisely but I lucked out in this take. Next the E minor chord in the RH is even harder to hit at 0:24, and it doesn’t help that the LH is jumping down to an E octave at the same moment.. been working on this particular jump. The RH chord at 0:26 (with A octave) is also.. very difficult…… but it looks deceivingly smooth on camera for some reason. I assure you, I was probably not breathing during that moment when recording. And jumping down to the E octave with A around 0:27 is another moment where I just let Jesus take the wheel.. I had a lot of grief practicing the bit at 0:31; for some reason, it was fine at first and then I made a mistake one (1) time and my brain permanently programmed the mistake as truth. And the RH octaves with thirds from 0:34 are the toughest position for my RH, but somehow I made it. It’s been a miracle that I’ve gotten as far as I have, I tell ya.

I love the descending arpeggio/scale at 0:39 (this one is the easy one, though- I’m crying blood at the other one coming up), and then the build up into the next part.. which is where I stopped. The next part of the piece is actually the main reason why I wanted to learn this arrangement, but I’ll talk about that more when we get there.

Also the camera is really shaky for some reason.. I think the stand was set up too close to the piano today, oops.

Current Thoughts

I worked really hard on this today!! It was the first time in a very long time that I sat down and played for over two hours. I had started working on the first four bars with the voicing two days ago, though it was more just learning the notes.. I did the heavy lifting today. Still need to work on improving the precision of my voicing, but I’m happy that the voicing is somewhat noticeable already. I tend to play the pinky notes too loudly, so will need to work on keeping them quiet to preserve the echo.

The arrangement has quite a bit of jumping which keeps me on my toes, and it is fun to learn. I also just really love the chord progressions!!

On the whole, the octaves do give me grief BUT I think I’ve somehow improved at octaves marginally because they definitely don’t feel too bad, all things considered.. the me of a year ago wouldn’t feel as comfortable as I do today with all these strange positions, especially at this brisk tempo. However, my right wrist was strained somewhat once I stopped playing, so I still have my limitations. I’m doing my best to apply the “bouncy” technique that a friend taught me to reduce strain- basically, you hit the octave and then immediately release all tension, creating something of a bouncy effect.

Anyhow, I’ll finish working on this- the next section opens with another echo effect which sounds REALLY neat, but it’s going to be pretty tricky for voicing. But, it’s gonna sound really cool once finished. This piece isn’t all that long, since the tempo is pretty fast; hard to believe I spent all that time today on just like 40 seconds lol.