To Zanarkand (from Final Fantasy X) by Nobuo Uematsu - Day 960 Progress

If ever there was a piece that made me want to quit the piano, this is it. I am very glad this boss battle is over.

Sadly Nobuo Uematsu is of ill health and is no longer composing. 😢

I attempted this piece one month to the day after I started learning the piano. This is an intermediate arrangement and needless to say it did not end well. I put the better part of 70 hours into it very early on and managed to produce a mangled version of the first page only despite all of that effort. Keeping accurate time records is a double edged sword. It keeps you accountable but also you know exactly how much time you’ve devoted to something and in this case back then, with very little / nothing to show for it.

Somewhat amusingly I clearly recall thinking how comprehensively sh1t I was at the piano based on how horrible the piece sounded after working on it for a week… and whether I should just can this whole piano thing. I failed to notice that the left hand plays the treble clef so I was playing the left hand with the bass clef notes. lol FML. 😆

It was very interesting returning to this piece after so long. I remember agonising over the runs at the start of the piece (looking at a sea of black and white and rote learning which key to press next). Now when I look at it I can see it opens with Em, D, etc and it is very straightforward to comprehend with a couple of years of practical and theory under my belt.

Carousel #3 was a really good exercise in re-learning a piece ‘properly’. I used counting throughout. I am highly engaged with the score (if you stopped me at any time and asked me to point to where I am I could do so easily). I have a fairly good understanding of what subkey I’m in most of the time in that piece.

On the other hand, To Zanarkand is a masterclass in how not to learn a piece:
✅ Complete reliance on muscle memory.
✅ Completely disengaged with the score. No idea where I am.
✅ If anything hiccups… everything collapses with no chance of recovery.

Anyway, it is done now and I don’t intend to play this arrangement again.

I will look to relearning a more advanced version of this piece down the track with proper technique. Next piece I will 're-learn' will be Comptine d'un Autre été: L'Après-Midi. I learned that around the 6 month mark and could play it end to end (unlike To Zanarkand). It will be very interesting to approach this piece again from a score analysis/theoretical perspective as opposed to rote learning.