Racing Into the Night #1

IT’S HERE!!!!! The arrangement I thought I’d never be able to play for a multitude of reasons… it is finally here. My good friend gifted me a Fukane arrangement book for my birthday recently and this was the first arrangement in it and SINCE THIS IS MY FAVE YOASOBI SONG (to date), I had to start with this one. It’s… an interesting arrangement and my thoughts have changed in the past few weeks of working on it, but overall it’s been a lot of fun. Here’s the first like 20%- Fukane uses soooo many repeats and codas and del signos… Anyway, please bear with me as I attempt to waffle my way through while minimizing wrist strain lol.

Detailed Analysis

The opening phrase is probably the easiest one before we kick off into the nonstop LH syncopation… more on that shortly. In this first section, honestly I had to play around with some fingerings in the RH to make sure I could just crossover along the melody, but it sounds pretty smooth so I’m good with it.

And then from 0:17 we launch into Reason #1 why I thought I wouldn’t be able to play this- that LH is intimidating!!!!! It’s somehow been more manageable than I’d expected, luckily, but… yeah, I can’t practice this for too long otherwise my left wrist definitely starts feeling it lol. That RH jump in the melody at 0:19 and again at 0:26 is probably the only thing that holds me back in terms of tempo- that jump is so hard??? I’ve tried a couple different fingerings and I’ve broken it down slowly, but still, at tempo, it is very challenging to get right. I got by the first time, but you can hear the slip the second time at 0:26. And the RH phrase at 0:31 is deceivingly difficult; it sounds okay with the pedal hiding the lilt near the end, but man it sounds so bad dry… Let it be known that my technique is definitely not the best (though that’s probably no secret at this point).

We go to the first verse(?) at 0:33, where the arrangement calms down a bit. The LH is just chords while RH is single-note melody, so it’s a good time to try and ease out any strain from the previous phrase. For some reason I had slipped into learning the LH at 0:43 incorrectly and corrected it right before recording this day… but I love the little gap there, especially since “negative space” is so sparse in this arrangement. Same idea at 0:46 with the negative space.

0:48 is the same melody but the arrangement starts to up the ante. The LH is a lot easier than the intro section since there’s none of that crazy jumping, but the syncopation still took some practicing to get right. The good news is that the same syncopation is used throughout the arrangement, so I only had to put in the work once… the rest of the arrangement has been a breeze rhythmically, for the most part. Anyway, I played it dry in this recording to flex my syncopation but also moreso because I simply DO NOT KNOW HOW TO PEDAL FOR THIS ARRANGEMENT!!! I get by for the previous sections but I really do not know… how to pedal. I studied Fukane’s version, but I don’t know if it’s because he’s playing a digital keyboard or what but it wasn’t very helpful… I’m still playing around with the pedaling for the most part. The syncopation at 0:57 through 0:58 especially was tricky, but it feels so good to get it right.

And from 1:03 is the newest section; I’d learned most of it the day of recording so it’s not super solid, but it was solid enough where I figured I’d include it in the recording to gauge progress later on. There’re several repeating notes!!!!! I’m so bad at those… never really had to deal with them in past repertoire….. but I’m Trying. The LH for the tiny phrase at 1:07 was also an intimidating section, but it’s actually… surprisingly manageable. I’m not going to question it. And from 1:12 I slowed down because it was so new… had learned the notes, but was still getting figuratively tongue-tied with my fingers. And then we hit the chorus… which is right where I end.

Current Thoughts

So at first, when I found this arrangement probably a year ago now, I was like EYE EMOJI I won’t be able to play this because of those octaves but the arrangement slaps. But fast forward several months later and here we are!! I don’t think I’ll be able to achieve quarter note = 130 as written, but I’m hitting a healthy 120+ bpm so that’s good enough for me. Might need to take it down even further if I attempt a one take at the end, but man… this arrangement takes a LOT of energy lol. So we’ll see. It’s feeling “easier” by the day which is both good but also scares me because why is it feeling easier? Does that mean it was never actually that challenging in the first place and it was all just in my head? Who knows. But the easier feeling is good since it helps my wrists chill out and prolong my limited stamina.

There are a few things I had to sacrifice like some octaves in the intro phrase and there are other octaves I’ll have to give up later on in the chorus and beyond, but I’m not too torn for once since 1) it’s just frankly SO impossible for my hands that I’m not angsting and 2) the melody comes through well enough while omitting those octaves.

Now that I’ve gotten the muscle memory down for the syncopation, I think the rest of the learning process is mostly going to be just learning notes and then applying this rhythm… there are some sections with different rhythmic patterns ahead, of course, but I’d say 80% of the remainder is the same as what I’ve learned so far. I AM fearing the solo part since there are a couple of unpopular thumb crossovers that are needed due to the octaves in the arpeggios, but hopefully it’s not too bad…

Overall, I AM super enjoying the learning process since I LOVE THIS SONG SO MUCH LOL and this arrangement is just really good imo!!! It sounds so much like the actual song while still preserving the “piano sound” and it’s super fun to play. Above all, though, I’m really glad I can still attempt this arrangement with my hand size the way it is… there are a few other arrangements I’d like to learn from this book, but not sure if it’s feasible. We’ll see when we get there.

Like I mentioned earlier, this piece strains my wrists if I play too long so I’ve been chipping away at this as a secondary project, so hopefully I can finish by year end? Not going to stress over completion time (or try, anyway).