Ashes on the Fire, from Attack on Titan, music by Kohta Yamamoto, piano arranged by Animenz, played by Richard Yang on Yamaha N1X with Garritan CFX VST.
This is my second piece from Animenz’s etude series, after Swordland. As epic as it sounds, it is definitely easier than Swordland, which was a left-hand torture. Ashes on the Fire features some pretty intense 3-hand technique (as Animenz calls it; I personally don’t). Some of the 16th jumps require you to have a good feel of the keyboard. The good thing is that there are only a few variants in the piece so the difficulty is kind of limited. Also, it’s important not to rush the piece. Although not an excuse, but slightly larger hands will really help; my hand size is a bit borderline acceptable for this as I have a smaller margin for error. In any case, this makes a great show piece.
As with all of my performances, I have my own interpretation, so the tempo, dynamics, etc may feel quite different from the original recording. Simply put, I play the way I like it.
