[DELETED] [PC] Hollow Knight - "Reflection" by PlayfulPiano

[Zeta]

Submission Information:
Series: Other
Game: Hollow Knight
Console: PC
Title: Reflection
Instrumentation Solo Piano
Arranger: PlayfulPiano

[PlayfulPiano]

Console should be updated to MUL btw. It's on Switch now.


Anyways, here's another arrangement. Quick note, the playback isn't piano but a combination of harp and viola (to match the ingame audio). If this isn't uh, allowed for the submission, I can easily change it to piano.

Layers are based on the instruments because of this as well, and aesthetically it shouldn't matter since pdfs won't have color.

[PlayfulPiano]

Alright, just updated the sheets so it no longer has the split layer and playback is now a piano.

[Libera]

Some things before I check notes.

-With regards to bar 1: on a piano you cannot crescendo on a single note unlike on wind/string instruments.
-You have a lot of space between the two staves.  Finale sets it by default to 1 inch and I think that usually works pretty well apart from in some circumstances (which I don't see here.)
-I don't really know anything about Hollow Knight, but just to check I thought I'd mention that you haven't written a loop in (I assume that this is because the piece doesn't loop in-game.)
-The mezzo-forte in bar 2 is too close to the barline.

Ok those are all of the small comments, here's the big ones: now I think you did this in response to my comments on discord, but I don't remember saying to change this piece to entirely be in one layer in each hand.  The way it is now means that it's impossible to make out any of the original melodic lines which makes phrasing very difficult.  Sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, my comments were purely about the playback. 
Related to this is the lack of any directions aside from the first two bars.  This is quite an expressive piece and the way it's written out at the moment looks, to put it bluntly, not very interesting.  Where does the piece draw you in?  Where does it pull back?  How do you differentiate the strings and the harp in the piano part?  How do we get around the fact that strings sustain, whereas piano does not?  There is more to a piano arrangement than notes; on some sheets you can get away with it because of the nature of the piece but ... this really isn't one of those.  I really think that part of the cause of these issues is that you were using playback of the actual instruments when making the arrangement (and from when I was working with you on that Celeste piece, I could tell that you use the playback a lot when working on a sheet.)  There's nothing wrong with making a direct transcription and trying to get it to sound exactly like the original, but when you're making a piano arrangement I think it's important to always be thinking about the intended instrument and it's own limitations (for example, I think that the reason you have that crescendo in bar 1 is because when you had strings as the playback, finale was performing that crescendo correctly.)

Sorry if this seems like a lot, or seems harsh, but I think this arrangement does need quite a bit of work as is.

Console should be updated to MUL btw. It's on Switch now.

I think we set the console as whatever it was when it came out, so I don't think we'll change this.  Otherwise we'd have pretty much everything as MUL.

[PlayfulPiano]

Some things before I check notes.

-With regards to bar 1: on a piano you cannot crescendo on a single note unlike on wind/string instruments.
-You have a lot of space between the two staves.  Finale sets it by default to 1 inch and I think that usually works pretty well apart from in some circumstances (which I don't see here.)
-I don't really know anything about Hollow Knight, but just to check I thought I'd mention that you haven't written a loop in (I assume that this is because the piece doesn't loop in-game.)
-The mezzo-forte in bar 2 is too close to the barline.

Ok those are all of the small comments, here's the big ones: now I think you did this in response to my comments on discord, but I don't remember saying to change this piece to entirely be in one layer in each hand.  The way it is now means that it's impossible to make out any of the original melodic lines which makes phrasing very difficult.  Sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, my comments were purely about the playback. 
Related to this is the lack of any directions aside from the first two bars.  This is quite an expressive piece and the way it's written out at the moment looks, to put it bluntly, not very interesting.  Where does the piece draw you in?  Where does it pull back?  How do you differentiate the strings and the harp in the piano part?  How do we get around the fact that strings sustain, whereas piano does not?  There is more to a piano arrangement than notes; on some sheets you can get away with it because of the nature of the piece but ... this really isn't one of those.  I really think that part of the cause of these issues is that you were using playback of the actual instruments when making the arrangement (and from when I was working with you on that Celeste piece, I could tell that you use the playback a lot when working on a sheet.)  There's nothing wrong with making a direct transcription and trying to get it to sound exactly like the original, but when you're making a piano arrangement I think it's important to always be thinking about the intended instrument and it's own limitations (for example, I think that the reason you have that crescendo in bar 1 is because when you had strings as the playback, finale was performing that crescendo correctly.)

Sorry if this seems like a lot, or seems harsh, but I think this arrangement does need quite a bit of work as is.

I think we set the console as whatever it was when it came out, so I don't think we'll change this.  Otherwise we'd have pretty much everything as MUL.

I'll check about spacing and the mezzo forte. It does loop but the loop ends in a pleasant way so I didn't add in a repeat bar.

When I arrange things, my style tends to be less improvisations and more transcriptions. In turn, it sometimes doesn't sound the best on a piano compared to their original instruments, and I don't really have that sort of ability to make it feel "good" like other arrangers have. The only time I've ever made things different compared to the original is because the original is too difficult for me to play, and in turn I simply it slightly, but not change it drastically.

In turn, I really don't know what to do to make the sheets "fit" your description, because I simply don't have that arranging viewpoint ingrained. If you can provide image examples or something along those lines, that might help me get a better specific idea, but I'm not that good with generalizations.

[Khunjund]

I don't know what you've discussed previously, but merging everything into one layer definitely causes some legibility issues.

The only way to have a crescendo on a "single note" on a piano is to play it repeatedly while increasing the volume each time. In your case, this could be done with a tremolo between the left- and right-hand chords, or just repeating the chords (e.g. every quarter note for the whole measure). If this isn't the effect you're looking for, remove the crescendo.

Also, I really think you should try to write down some dynamics. You can take some liberties here and there, but that would go a long way towards making the piece feel "good" as you say. (A lot of getting to that point is knowing the instrument you're arranging for, but every little bit of musical intention—dynamics, articulation, phrasing, etc.—contributes.)

If you think you could do with some inspiration, here's an arrangement I made of this piece: [PDF] [MID] [MUS]. (The playback isn't great, but trust me, it's better on an actual piano.)

[PlayfulPiano]

Thanks for some inspiration death, I'm a little busy rn but I'll update this once I get some free time.

[Libera]

Bump for Playful.

[Latios212]

Archiving for inactivity as requested; feel free to resubmit with changes at a later time.