Mario Kart Stadium (Mario Kart 8)
This tune is played on the first track of the first cup in Mario Kart 8. This was my little mini celebration showing how excited I was to hear live musicians in Mario Kart.
Dragon Boy (Sprited Away)
Joe Hisaishi writes such beautiful music, and with his background as a pianist, his scores have a way of gracefully including the piano. I took a section from the extended version of “Dragon Boy” and played around with a scherzo-feel.
Clumsy Kirby (Kirby’s Dreamland)
This tune is from the first level of the Gameboy game Kirby’s Dreamland, and has appeared a hundred-billion times since its debut in 1992. I slowed it down, added some chord tensions and realized that I have awkward fingering in C#…
Stage of Death (Xenogears)
Just like previous arrangements, this came out of messing around at the piano. Originally I couldn’t quite remember where it was from! I hadn’t really heard the song since the late 90’s-early 00’s. I continued on and eventually had enough of an idea that I wanted to write it out. I get music-nerd-happy knowing that I put a quintuplet in there near the beginning.
Time Circuits (Chrono Trigger)
I had been improvising that afternoon and decided it might be nice to post a little waltz-y version of this Chrono Trigger melody. After receiving some encouraging compliments from friends, I decided to commit to posting a new piano video each week. Not only would this keep me arranging new material, but it had also been a long time since I sat down to play piano, and I was pretty upset with how out of shape my playing had been.
Consider this my piano/arranging work-out routine.