Ori and the Will of the Wisps - Ku's First Flight (Piano Arrangement)

My arrangement of Ku's First Flight from the soundtrack of Ori and the Will of the Wisps, originally composed by Gareth Coker.

I'm pretty happy with how this turned out - it's definitely one of my cleaner performances.

The left hand of the arrangement is fairly basic/repetitive, consisting mostly of triplet arpeggios for almost the entirety of the first half. My goal here was to let the pedal blend the lower notes together, creating a richer, more sustained "orchestral" sound (hopefully that makes sense), while also not taking away the spotlight from the main melody. This also enables the dynamics to really capture all of the nuances of the piece. My favorite example is at 0:58. It's the moment in the cutscene where Ori and Ku rise above the clouds, and I think the sudden decrescendo along with the shift in left hand to rising arpeggios evokes that change quite well.

At 1:28, there are two considerations to balance. First, this is the moment in the original when the singer stops and the transition to the end begins. As such, there needs to be some change beyond just the energy of the piece (which should already have decreased leading up to this point) in order to signify this. The benefit of having used triplets almost exclusively is then that switching to a slower left hand creates this contrast. But at the same time, the shift can't be too sudden. I like to think of it as the recovery period after all of the excitement - there should still be some leftover energy/tension which gradually dies down. In particular, I think using whole notes overdoes it, and leaves no more room for the final notes at 1:43.

I really wish more people arrange the ending. Those tremolos are so much fun :)

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Game: Ori and the Will of the Wisps
Track name: Ku's First Flight
Composer: Gareth Coker
Arranged for piano by: Theal An

Piano: Kawai CA-79
Audio: recorded internally by the piano
Video: iPhone 6S Plus

Sheet music: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v0iV...
MIDI: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AHtV... (Note that this is the MIDI version of the sheet music, not the recording.)

Thanks for watching!