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.
Detailed Analysis
The opening phrase is really delicate and introduces some spicy chords even in that short window before the piece really takes off at 0:17. The first melody here is what got me and made me want to learn this piece.. I’d never heard it before, but somehow the music still made me feel some type of way, ya know? My main challenge throughout the piece was voicing, since there’re several instances of the RH melody being in the upper register and letting that ring as the RH quickly jumps down to play some supporting chords. You can already see a lot of moments in this first section. Jumping in the LH was also something to get accustomed to (particularly jumping without slamming my “landing” notes since the LH is consistently supporting in this piece).
The phrase at 0:41 was tricky in the RH with the broken supporting chord before jumping up to the octave chord at 0:42. Not really “difficult”, but definitely not something I could comfortably sightread. At 0:54, the closing line is swapped from the LH to the RH very briefly. I was prepared for this with the power of 1000 WORDS!! (Love when little things I work on for a specific piece show up again in other pieces.)
We hit the “theme” at 1:17; again, lots of jumping in both hands. The LH at 1:26 was particularly tricky since the jumps are so big compared to what I’m used to, but it was very manageable once I properly learned the notes. The theme repeats at 1:49, albeit with a little more flair and jumping, and then closes out on a quiet note (pun intended).
Conclusion
Notably, I didn’t memorize this. I never, EVER stress over memorization but I usually happen to memorize things naturally as I practice; my contact time with this piece was so short that I didn’t even reach that point, oops. It was pretty sightreadable which means I grew reliant on using the score as a guide.. which isn’t conducive to memorization lol. I also changed a few notes in the transcription since it didn’t quite match what I heard in the official recording, but they’re really minute details. It was satisfying to catch those details, though.
Aside from the jumps, there wasn’t much that was technically challenging for me. I really just wanted to learn this because of how Emotional the melody is, and there are a lot of lovely chords embedded. There’s definitely room for improvement on the musicality side of things, but I am satisfied with my final product considering the time I spent on this, and the recording process was significantly less angsty than usual.
One thing I wish I could’ve changed: I think this would’ve sounded nicer if my piano was tuned properly.. a lot of the higher register notes ring so terribly here. A warmer tone definitely would suit the piece better. Maybe I’ll record another take someday when the piano actually sounds like itself again.
Anyhow, this was a nice break from larger pieces, but I’m ready to move onto something more difficult now. I might end up learning two things at once since one piece I’m eyeing is definitely not a walk in the park, but we’ll see..