FINALLY A POST, between the piano being twangy and my new job and just generally not having any motivation for piano, I had nothing to post for a while but I knocked the rust off of Vanille’s Theme and am finally able to post it. I do believe this is the very first time that I’m posting anything for this piece despite having recorded it tons of times over the past several years… today’s take isn’t perfect, either, but it’s good enough that I’ll post it and finally have it up! There’s a lot of meaning behind this piece for me but more on that later.

Detailed Analysis

After the opening phrase, we begin with the quarter note chords in the LH at 0:15. These are actually really challenging to play cleanly and quietly, but I’ve kinda just given up on the quiet part for now lol. I still remember my mom pointing out that I need to hold down the lower half notes when I was first learning this. The LH chord at 0:44 is too big for my hand but it’s rolled anyway, so I’ve just crossed over quickly. It doesn’t sound very smooth, but I guess I can at least play all the notes. The next few LH chords are also hard to roll properly because of the awkward hand shape. At 1:11 I always count diligently to 12 beats, with the final beat being a rest…

1:17 is where the momentum starts to build a little bit. I’ve definitely improved my voicing here over the years compared to when I first learned it. I cheat at 1:30 and shift the LH ninth such that I play the top note with my RH, and opposite deal at 1:35. 1:54 always gets me a little nervous because if I miss somewhere, then it usually is literally painful for my fingers (and leads to wrong notes) but we were good here. 8 beats from 1:58…

I have practiced the section at 2:02 SO MUCH that it’s actually the part I can play most reliably on camera LOL. I’ve improved my voicing a bit here, too, but I definitely have room to improve even more next time I come back to this piece. Plenty of swapping for the larger intervals, and also just having to stretch for a couple of LH ninths- sometimes I kinda make it, usually I don’t, but eh. 2:15 is pretty easy despite the eighth notes, and then the arpeggio in the RH at 2:22 always gets me a little nervous!!!!! I have improved that bit a lot compared to when I first began (with better fingering and also just technical improvement), but my hand was literally sweating during this take when I got here.

There’s a tempo change at 2:31 and I also took an extra second because my mind whited out and I couldn’t remember the LH placement for a second lol. You can also tell it’s time for me to clip my nails, whoops. Then the section from 2:40 is the reason I wanted to learn this piece in the first place!! I wasn’t able to play it as leisurely as I usually do because I was weirdly nervous during this take… but off camera, this is the part where I really tap into that Musicality. I worked hard on the decrescendo at 2:50 and it is so solidly learned- I’m proud of that part. My RH is too small to connect the notes at 2:52 so it’s not fluid unfortunately. My rhythm flubbed at 2:57 because I was about to make a mistake and at this point I’d already taken like nine bad takes and I was like I CANNOT afford to MISS THIS!!! 3:00 also sounds really terrible but oh well.

We return to the driving rhythm at 3:05 and build up to the section at 3:11 which is probably the most emphatic section of the piece. I struggled a little bit with playing the repeated LH chords, especially with the loud dynamic, but I’ve improved there so I’m happy.

The melody makes one last appearance at the climax at 3:22. For some reason, I always imagine a swirl of light peach, white, and pink for this part. The ascending arpeggios were fun to learn, especially since they flow between both hands. I’m not entirely sure this is how they were meant to be played, though. One last arpeggio at 3:33 and then things taper down.

I completely flammed the RH chord for the ending phrase at 3:44 due to my nerves but it’s cool. I also accidentally tapped a note in the LH right before the achromatic chord at 3:51. I WAS A MESS, I was so desperate to just finish the take somewhat cleanly. The chord itself at 3:51 is challenging because it’s beyond an octave, but I have finagled my hand into the perfect shape to hit it. Played the first note of the final chord at 4:04 way too loudly and I was regretting my entire life but I had to run with it to the end. Happy with how quiet the final Eb is, though.

Thoughts on the Learning Process

I don’t have too much to say here because I first learned this literally five years ago and it’s never been difficult to relearn this piece whenever I revisit it. There are certainly areas that I improved over time, but nothing majorly different.

Even when I first learned this back in 2017, I specifically chose this piece because the key signature was C major before the key change, so it was fairly straightforward. Also, most of the flow is quarter notes up until the Main Part that I learned this piece for (which goes into eighth notes), so technically it was not too challenging.

Probably the biggest challenges were due to the fact that this piece is written for bigger hands, but I found workarounds for most of those spots. And, as always, I accept that I can only do so much so some things will always sound kinda bad. :)

Conclusion & Final Thoughts

This piece is the very first thing I learned as I got back into playing piano. I discovered that there was a digital piano at a cafe on campus, so I bought this piano book and started learning Vanille’s Theme in my spare time- I was under a ton of post-grad stress (uncertainty of the future and all that fun stuff), so it was nice to have an outlet. At this point, it was the first time in my life that piano was truly enjoyable to play; I had grown up practicing a lot and playing a ton, but it moreso felt like something I “had to do” rather than something I “wanted to do”. Looking back, this was probably also a good starter piece to ease back into playing since it’s not very technically challenging.

Anyway, I recently passed my fifth anniversary of graduating college, so this piece came to mind again. Since I had nothing I really wanted to learn, this was something easy to come back to and give my fingers something to do. I’ve actually revisited this several times even while owning this blog, but as I mentioned, I never had a take good enough to post. But now I do!! There are things I wish I did differently in this take, but I’m glad I got it nonetheless.

Not sure what’s next for me! I’m still feeling unmotivated for piano so I might purchase a new book so I can increase my selection… we’ll see.