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). Anyone familiar with my piano album will be used to hearing them as one track, and they were written as a pair. 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.

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, I made 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 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.

Let me know what you think!

Memento Mori – Main Theme (cover)

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Hello, everybody! This week’s video is a performance of the piano solo version of the Main Theme from the film Memento Mori. Memento Mori is one of my favourite films – while it’s classified as horror, it’s more of a ghost story. It’s part of the Whispering Corridors series – the films are only loosely connected, but each one deals with the issues that were taking place in the South Korean education system at the time.

The Main Theme is a beautiful piece of music, and I plan on making a piano arrangement of the orchestral version at a later point (including the orchestral parts on piano alongside the piano parts).

An Ill Presence (orchestrated)

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Hi, everybody!

This week I have an orchestrated version of one of my previous compositions, An Ill Presence. I was working on it before I had to flee Kyiv and finished it recently. Rather than posting a video of my recording software playing through the track, I asked my wife to draw an image for it – a tree that has unnatural colours. I think what she produced looks really good!

Main Theme from Tormented Souls (cover)

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Hi, everybody! Today I’d like to announce the release of a new video – the first performance video I’ve made since returning to England from Ukraine. This is a cover of the main theme of the survival horror game Tormented Souls. This game became one of my favourites in the last year as it engaged me more deeply than most others have recently. One reason for this is the fantastic music.

I’d already covered another piece from the same game, Anna’s Theme, and actually had requests in the comments to play this one as well. I’d actually already considered learning it as it has a really nice atmosphere.

If you’ve enjoyed the video, please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel!

Piano arrangement of ‘All That I’m Living For’ by Evanescence

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Hi everybody!

Today I’d like to announce the release of a new video – this one is a piano arrangement of All That I’m Living For by Evanescence, based on the 2006 AOL Music Sessions performance. It was originally made for one of my pupils, who wanted to learn how to play it. That version was a little simpler, but also quite repetitive – I added a few things to create this version. Let me know what you think of it!

In the future I might do an arrangement of the song ‘Hello’, my favourite by Evanescence. I also have some other videos in the works, including some performances of my own music and some new compositions that got delayed due to the war in Ukraine.

Piano arrangement of an excerpt from Metal Gear Solid 3 Main Theme

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Hello, everybody. I glad to post a new video – the first since having had to leave Kyiv due to the war. This one is a piano arrangement of the music from my favourite scene in the Metal Gear Solid series of video games.

I hope to have some more performance videos up soon, though you can imagine, a month without access to a piano for regular practice slowed me down with that.

To Zanarkand (cover)

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Hello, everybody! I have a new video this week – a cover of one of my favourite piano pieces – To Zanarkand from Final Fantasy X. If you know any fans of the game, please share this with them. There’s a brief harmonic analysis in the video description, if anyone’s interested – I might do a video explaining it in more detail in the future.

If you enjoy the video, please consider subscribing to my channel.

New performance and composition – A Moment of Safety

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Hello, everybody!

This week I have a performance of my latest composition, titled “A Moment of Safety”. It’s inspired by the safe room themes of the Resident Evil games, which provide a few safe areas in the games. The music reflects this but simultaneously creates a sense of tension, a small dread that you’ll have to go back out into the danger eventually. That’s what I’ve tried to capture with this composition.

The chords used are Am11 and Gm11 – they don’t relate to each other, but being so extended softens the contrast between them as they actually share a lot of notes. I chose them for this reason, as together they sound pretty relaxed.

The sense of unease comes from the rhythm between the hands – only occasionally do they sync up. While they aren’t actually playing in different time signatures (although the left hand sounds like it moves between 6/8 and 3/4), there are enough stressed notes falling apart from each other that some rhythmic dissonance is created, in my opinion. Let me know whether you agree or not!

Piano arrangement of The Landing from Final Fantasy VIII

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Hello, everybody!

This week’s video is a piano arrangement that I made of The Landing from Final Fantasy VIII. It’s one of my favourite pieces from the game and I feel that it captures the chaos and excitement of the SeeD exam wonderfully!

Let me know what you think of it! I’d be glad to hear your thoughts.