A Cruel Angel’s Thesis, from Neon Genesis Evangelion, music by Hidetoshi Sato, piano arranged by Animenz, played by Richard Yang on Yamaha N1X with Garritan CFX VST.
This is one of the most iconic anime opening music, and Animenz did it justice. Although not easy, this is not supposed to be too difficult. But for me, being rhythmically challenged, it was quite tough (I tend to go faster). So, I decided to play along with Animenz to get the tempo right. This was done by putting on my AirPod in noise cancellation mode. As such, I really couldn’t hear myself playing during recording and some spots did not come out quite right (especially the G-F-G’s). I wanted to record a better take, but the back of my thumb can only take so many glissandos in a row; these are extremely taxing on the skin just behind the thumbnail. I seemingly did close to 20 glissandos in an hour, and my thumb was already at its limit. So I had to live with the best take from this session.
There were a few pain points, if I had known what I know now, the learning journey would’ve been much smoother. I’ll make sure to address these in the upcoming piano lesson for this 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.
