Hello everyone! It’s been a while since the last blog post (oops!) This time I’m going to touch on the seasonal songs, Crossing Road (Shokugeki no Soma 5th Season ED). You can listen to the original song in TV size here:
What really attracted me to this song is the piano intro honestly. I really love it for anime songs who use acoustic piano so powerfully, and the intro is just so… wonderful.
This ends up as a near carbon copy of the original, as much as possible, since it’s perfect on it’s own already.
The first verse highlights the solo piano part again, and I didn’t really want to remove it or re-arrange it. Listening to it closer, I wondered if it was possible to transcribe the accompaniments and melody wholesale into the arrangement, and so I tried by writing the base and piano accompaniment in, then slotting the melody in between.
The second part brings more juice inside, so I couldn’t repeat the trick I did for the first half, hence the compromise by moving the melody an octave higher and mixing the piano adlibs in.
The leadup to the bridge is filled with more adlibs to provide the meat in the arrangement to not make it too empty. Since the rhythm in the original music is more punch-y and a steady rhythm, I left the left hand accompaniment simple as well to draw attention to that beat.
Triplets were inserted in the right hand to add the complexity while retaining the solid and steady beat by the left hand.
Beyond this, it’s just standard arranging for piano, and is less interesting, so I’ll just stop here. The main interesting parts of arranging this piece for me is the front parts, where it’s one of the easier songs to do a 3-hand melody arrangement in my opinion. Hope this gives some insights into a slightly out-of-the-norm arrangement of mine!
You can check out the finished arrangement here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGo_yqNCkbg
Sheets are available at: https://gum.co/CrossingRoadPiano
