Tag Archives: video game music

Tormented Souls: Office – Tutorial

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Hello, everybody.

This week’s video was made by request – someone commented on one of my other videos, a piano transcription of a piece from the game, Tormented Souls. They asked if I could do the same for their favourite piece from the game and present it in a way that it can be learnt. I’m happy to take requests for making piano arrangements – I can’t promise that I’ll do every single one that I’m asked to do, but will take all of them into consideration.

The original piece has some tremolando strings that I found difficult to work into this arrangement – in the end I included them as single notes, though I’m sure someone with more experience of making piano reductions of orchestral works could find a more inventive solution than I did.

Upcoming Projects – August 2022

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Hello, everybody!

I haven’t stuck to my usual upload schedule recently as I’ve got a lot of projects in progress but nothing finished. This week I still don’t quite have anything finished, but I made a teaser for some of my upcoming videos! There are bits of three covers that I’m working on (from Tombi, Dark Souls II, and Final Fantasy IX) and also snippets of three original pieces of mine. The video description has timestamps. I hope you enjoy!

Final Fantasy VIII – Balamb Garden (piano performance)

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Hello, everybody!

This week’s video is a piano arrangement of Balamb Garden from Final Fantasy VIII.

In this composition, Nobuo Uematsu managed to capture a number of different moods – studiousness, positivity, peacefulness and safety. He did this by modulating between keys that are often not related F lydian, D major, and B major, before heading back to F lydian (a tritone away!). This variety is important because it’s a track that players will hear a lot during their time in the game.

I didn’t really have to do much to arrange it for the piano – the different instruments are already so well orchestrated that it practically arranged itself.

Time to Rest – new composition and performance

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Hello, everybody!

Today’s video is a good demonstration of why choice of instruments matters. It’s my latest composition, a Safe Room theme called ‘Time to Rest’. I’d been working on this for a few days with piano as the main instrument but wasn’t satisfied with that version. I decided today to rework the whole thing after finding a synth preset that grabbed my attention. I then performed both parts and put them together in this video.

It’s interesting for me how finding that particular synth sound changed my perception of the piece – I hadn’t intended it to sound sci-fi originally, but it sounds so right like this. I’ll definitely explore more sounds with future compositions before settling on a final version.

I hope you enjoy it as something to relax to!

ZERO – Resident Evil Zero (piano solo cover)

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Hello, everybody!

This week’s video is a solo piano arrangement of ‘ZERO’, a piece of music that plays in the opening cutscene of Resident Evil Zero. The original is piano and some kind of bowed string (possibly violin, though it is raspier than most violins are played, so might be a bowed string that originates outside of Europe).

There are a couple of chord movements in this piece that I really like. Both are similar ideas – moving minor chords a third up or down. The first one is Gm to Bm, a movement of a major third. This is a very strong movement as there are two semitone movements involved (B-flat up to B and G down to F-sharp).

The second movement is from Em to Gm – a minor third in this case, so only one semitone movement, but it still has a strong effect.

I’d be interested to hear whether anyone think that having the string part on piano lessens the creepiness.

Performance of Loss

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Hello, everybody!

This week’s video is another performance of one of my own compositions, Loss. It’s my take on a funeral march/death scene, which I released last year on my solo piano album, Let the Journey Begin!. The slow tempo is pretty standard for this kind of music, but I experimented with using phrases of varying lengths, so as not to have it feel too measured – I wanted the instability of losing someone.

The piece starts off very diatonic, but as it goes on there is more chromaticism and countermelodies are introduced, so although there’s repetition of the main melodies and long sections over a tonic pedal, there’s always something new being introduced to add variety and interest. I’m believe that repetitions are a useful tool when writing music, but I’m not a fan when they’re used unnecessarily or if they don’t add anything new to a piece.

Performance of Innocence

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Hello, everybody!

It’s been several weeks since I last posted a video – I’ve been working on quite a few things musically, but didn’t have anything finished. This week’s video is a performance of my composition, Innocence. This is one of my favourite pieces from my album, Let the Journey Begin!, as I feel that I captured the feeling I was aiming for succinctly.

I had to work on my technique for this one, as I discovered that my arpeggiated chords were nowhere near as good as I’d thought previously – I had to thoroughly explore how to play them well enough to be accurate while dropping them into the main melody. There’s still some work to do before they’re really good, but I’m happy with how they developed during my practice.

I learnt a lot about different arm movements that can help or hinder rolled chords and how some of them can be combined to make them easier. Developing a technique that allows us to express ourselves as we want can take a long time and there’s always room for improvement but it’s a fascinating journey!

If you’re interested in buying this piece, it’s available on my Bandcamp page as part of an album. The album comes with sheet music: https://nicholasowen-petch.bandcamp.com/album/let-the-journey-begin

If you prefer Spotify, you can find it here: https://open.spotify.com/album/1sSwz4peeRTZPRMprLfhMR?si=kWK4HGkiRWm54KA7ekeW1Q

An Ill Presence~To Arms! (orchestral and rock mix)

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Hello, everybody!

My latest video is a combined version of two of my compositions – An Ill Presence (orchestrated) and To Arms! (rock version). They were originally written as a pair and were released that way on my solo piano album, Let the Journey Begin!.

When I was working on the orchestrated and rock versions, I made and released them one at a time, and while I think they can stand alone, I also thought it would be good to recombine them as originally intended. Music can take on a different feeling depending on the context that it’s in, which is why the original release had them combined into one track, and why I released a whole album rather than individual singles.

A big thanks to Ainsley Stones, of Girl Gone Bad, for the guitar solo in To Arms!. Please check out their music: https://www.youtube.com/c/GirlGoneBad

Many thanks also to Thomas Slimm for writing and programming the drums.

The artwork is by my wife, Iryna Zastavna.

Onimusha 2 – Oda’s Army Attacks~Intro (arranged for two pianos)

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Hello, everybody!

This week’s video is an arrangement of the music from the opening cutscene of Onimusha 2, arranged for four hands. I’ve been wanting to make for a while, but felt like I needed to do some simpler arrangements before jumping into this one. I specifically decided on two pianos rather than four hands on one piano so that one part could use the sustain pedal without interfering with the other – this is very important in this piece as some parts are very percussive.

This is the first time I’ve arranged a piece for four hands. It was a great learning experience but I’m sure that someone with more experience could make an even more interesting version of it. I plan to do more arrangements like this in the future, in addition to more for a single player.

Orchestration – An Ill Presence

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Hello, everybody!

This week’s video is an orchestrated version of one of my piano pieces, An Ill Presence. As with the previous orchestrations I made, I leant a lot from this. I limited myself to violin, flute and oboe in addition to the piano part. I’m happy with the result, though feel like I need to learn more about the production side of things as occasionally it sounds a little muddy.

My wife drew the colourful tree that I used as an image for the video. I asked her for a tree with unnatural colours and I’m really pleased with the result!