Dreaming Galaxy:
After getting @Purrvoice_Hotdog Piano Sheets write Anthem of the Savannah together, I found it would probably be better for him to write Natlan, but he said he would do something else so I have to go myself bruh (
It's, to be honest, quiet difficult for me to arrange a piece like this, containing both storytelling and pop elements, and with tons of vocals. So this time I found @zyglisfer8109 for help.
As for the Arrangement itself, there's not actually a lot to talk about. I've posed many of them with expressions, since it's still a storytelling piece. By the way, I've written my longest expression so far, which is like "grandioso, brillante, come il sole che sorge" xD
In the beggining I arranged the finale with bunches of Large Chords but we both think it not actually a good way to deal with it, so Zyglisfer redid the entire phase and I changed a little bit. There's still a few problems I've noticed in this piece of arrangement, but I'm now too lazy and have run out of thoughts (
I also want to talk about the soudn resource we are using. I heard the album "Rachmaninoff for two" from Sergei Babayan and Daniil Trifonov, a well-known pianist as well as a Bosendorfer 280vc user. So I decided to redo my mic mixing with VSL Bosendorfer 280vc, and upload to my channel. Zyglisfer upload CFX ver. to his channel. But of course, it should be able to get a even better result with the incredible piano Bosendorfer made, but I'm still lack of knowledge about that bruh(
Here's what I want to say about this Arrangement, hope you all love our new arrangement, as well as loving Dimeng Yuan's storytelling musics.
zy:
When I first heard this theme song, I didn’t pay much attention to it (since I was more focused on the battle tracks).
Later, @Dreaming-Galaxy invited me to arrange the theme, so I thought I’d give it a shot (cuz I have finished the exploration in Natlan, LOL).
However, after listening more closely, I realized that arranging this into a piano adaptation would be much harder, in my opinion, because there’s so much vocal layering. The piano, being an instrument with a natural decay, isn’t easy to handle in this context.
Looking back at some of the more famous orchestral piano arrangements, most of them don’t have vocals. Furthermore, it's quite rare even in ACG music! So, there wasn’t much to reference, and I had to figure it out on my own! Finally, I still managed to write a few sections, like the intro and outro, which were primarily my responsibility.
Unfortunately, my free time and Dreaming Galaxy’s didn’t quite overlap, while I mainly arrange with sheet music, Dreaming Galaxy arrange in a DAW. At one point, He mentioned that he was struggled with the pop music sections, and I thought about helping out. But honestly, I couldn't come up with any better ideas for certain parts of the song....
So, after finishing the intro, I handed the reins over to Dreaming Galaxy, and in the end, the middle section turned out quite well, especially since I’m not used to using tremolo. We spent quite a bit of time discussing the outro, which went smoothly until we hit the ending.
Dreaming Galaxy originally wanted to continue with the thick chords and slowed down the BPM a lot, but I thought it would be better to delete that.
Of course, we could have followed the original string section, doing constant sixteenth notes, but I personally felt it lacked tension. I ended up writing two versions, and this is the first one, which is more extreme and expressive.
The second version was supposed to have a low bass arpeggio, but I scrapped it because the storytelling aspect felt weak. I also checked out how others interpreted and adapted the ending, but I tend to lean towards more extreme styles, haha.
I feel this approach better conveys the heavy vocal sections, especially in the climactic final part. It doesn’t seem unreasonable (I think?). Of course, MIDI playback is quite different from a live performance. Some sections could be refined in terms of dynamics and tone color, and a real grand piano played by a professional would likely sound more natural and humanized.
To be honest, my original draft of the last part was way more abstract than what you’re seeing now, haha. After a lot of simplification, we finally achieved the effect we were aiming for.
That’s the thought process and arrangement concept behind our adaptation of Natlan.
We hope you enjoy it!