Corridors of Time - Chrono Trigger (piano cover, v.2)

Hi everyone!! Is 2023 literally evaporating into the annals of history in record time for anyone else, or is it just me? How the heck is it December already??

ok so you might be wondering, "WHY, when piano god Yui Morishita just recently released his magnificent solo piano arrangement of Corridors on the SQEX Music Channel, is Purpleschala even bothering with her outlandishly amateur version" which is honestly an excellent question I keep asking myself 😭 Well, I'll tell you (myself lol) why. It's been a decade or so since I last recorded this, and it was absolute garbage. It's been lowkey at the back of my mind to revisit and redo literally all of my Chrono stuff, which I started with Scars of Time last year, and one I'll be pursuing more actively in the coming year, so there's going to be the oddball Chrono track cropping up here and there. (And while I'm at it, if I'm not working on Legend of Mana stuff next year, someone come over and bonk me on the head please)

This is (mostly) the famous Zohar arrangement, which I reworked the first time I recorded this years ago to suit my own tastes. I decided to keep my improvised ending with some very minor tweaks, and added in Zohar's little arpeggio during one iteration, plus some other little additions and tiny little reharmonizations, but otherwise it's pretty intact. Though upon listening to my recording I don't know why I didn't take the melody into the midrange like Morishita did--I had TOTALLY set up that interlude in the repeat for it, and I TOTALLY didn't do it!!!!! 😭 well Morishita's completely to blame for not coming out with his version BEFORE i started relearning this and heard what an awesome job he did in retaining the original registers of original lines lmao (melody is supposed to go into the mids, and that accompanying ostinato into the treble).

In any case, Zohar's contribution and mysteriously sudden disappearance from the vgm piano scene in early 2000 is now the stuff of legends. Their Chrono Trigger piano arrangements were some of the first widely distributed arrangements of this caliber done by seemingly a random, very talented fan--FF Piano Collections was just starting to reach awareness in the West, since the internet was still in its infancy, and the quality and artistry of these Zohar Chrono Trigger arrangements set such a high bar for what vgm piano arrangements could be. We owe a lot to Zohar, whoever and wherever they are. ❤️

Relearning this was rather painful, but easier this time around since I completely redid the score notation condensing it into two staves instead of three, because I'll be damned if I'm reading three staves for anything other than Prokofiev 2 lol. Pedaling was probably the trickiest part of this, trying to maintain the legato of the melody line but the rhythmic clipped articulation of the ostinato and bass. I did half pedal throughout as a compromise. The lovely thing about this one is that when you get it pretty well under your fingers, it's rather hypnotic and almost therapeutic hahaha.

Anyways I hope you all don't mind me revisiting my back catalog, I had to re-record this one for me, and I hope you all like the new version! Also btw, second episode of the FFVII podcast is up on Andrew's channel, in case you all wanted to hear us ramble for 90 minutes on Opening - Bombing Mission lol (   • Multi-player Mode, Episode 2: Final F...  ).

Also def check out Morishita's incredible rendition of Corridors on the SQEX music channel, it's...so, SO good:    • [CHRONO TRIGGER] Piano Cover: Corrido...