DELTARUNE Piano and Orchestra - Friendship

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Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Everyone please remember to show appreciation to friends, family, and even your enemies, because they built your character. For now, let's talk about Friendship. I always get the urge to just churn out a ton of piano covers for easy views, but I think about the possibility of missing out on an elaborate arrangement like this one, and convince myself not to.

I went full Studio Ghibli on this one, and took a lot of inspiration from Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. The phrasing at 3:55 is the first thing that came to my head, and I totally got that from the Spirited Away theme. In addition, the my instrumentation pulls a lot from the symphonic arrangement of Princess Mononoke. Just so I don't leave out any other familiar influences, other pieces I might have subconsciously took ideas from include Love Grows from Final Fantasy VIII Piano Collections, In my Life from Les Miserables, and some Chinese Christian hymns!

In contrast to my previous piano arrangement An Ending, I decided to have the orchestra play a more active role. Friends come in all shapes and sizes, and having a variety of instruments surrounding the piano like people making themselves known seems very fitting. The melody here appears almost everywhere in the game, and to me the world in Deltarune is a generally peaceful place that's just unfortunately ruled by a BAD GUY. It's a relief at the end when all the subjects come to save you from the king after he takes advantage of your mercy. Slower and softer songs are still a challenge to me, and I can't just cover everything up by having the piano take center stage like I did in An Ending. I find that I have to always keep changing it up with the orchestra, and avoid using the same harmonies or rhythms. To enhance expressiveness of the music, I spent a lot of time agonizing over the ritardandos in the piece, which in a virtual setting is impossible to get just right. You would have seen me air-conducting the music like a maniac, trying to see what exact bpm I need to slow it down to. The tempo chart in my DAW looks like a seismograph!

I made the piano parts much easier to play compared to An Ending, so you're all welcome for that. I didn't feel it was right to make it too show offish, because you shouldn't be overshadowing your friends. For some portions I gave the melody to the orchestra and just have the piano playing a supporting role.

MP3 and FLAC available for Patrons. ►   / thesecondnarrator  

Arrangement by Jeremiah Sun

Original Song composed by toby fox
DELTARUNE Chapter 01 is currently free to download on PC and the Nintendo Switch