東方紅魔郷 11. Dial Selena (月時計 ~ ルナ・ダイアル Piano Arrangement)
Channel: Mushyrulez
Date: 2013-10-16

東方紅魔郷 11. Dial Selena, arranged by Mushyrulez from ZUN's 月時計 ~ ルナ・ダイアル on Tuesday, October 15th, 2013.

Performed by Mushyrulez in Vancouver on Tuesday, October 15th, 2013.

東方紅魔郷 ~ Upsurgence playlist:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEVTkPx5iJ55ie0mr7WP19YvwTigZmJmv

Sheet music available on Sheethost:
http://sheethost.com/sheet/aRz5fD

This is an example of aleatoric music. Six different right hand melodies, randomly coupled with six different left hand accompaniments, in a random order. Why?

Well... you see, I had camp from the 16th to the 18th, and an English presentation due on the 21st. If I wanted any chance of finishing EoSD before November, I'd have to squeeze in three pieces in two days. Unfortunately, I hadn't actually started arranging any of them by the 14th, so I rushed through Sakuya's stage theme and made the Final Stage really slow (hint, hint: slower pieces = fewer notes = easier to play, faster to arrange!). Finally, on the night before I left, I still needed to arrange this.

My original intent was to emulate marasy's Night of Nights—perhaps the first Touhou song I ever played—but it was too monotonic on its own. I had no other place to include it, and I didn't feel like arranging something just for Flowering Night in PoFV, so I sought to mush them all together somehow.

Then, it hit me: if Sakuya controls time, I can suddenly vary the tempo between sections to give a disorienting effect. Even better: I could divide the sections entirely, making the entire arrangement disjoint. Then, it hit me: what could be more disorienting and disjoint than randomness?

....Well, it was disorienting, to say the least. I don't think I'll try this experiment again without weeks of practice beforehand, and actual accompaniments that mesh with the melody (instead of all those major 7ths at 4:23). You'll notice that I didn't really change the tempo too much, either—the frustration of rerolling the dice for the umpteenth time the night before leaving to camp just got to me. I sincerely apologize for the quality of the video; at least the idea was... different. Sorry.

P.S. Title's a pun on Luna. I suppose it could be a bit better, but it was late, c'mon...

P.P.S. My way of finding randomness is first rolling the dice until five different numbers come up, writing the corresponding letters in that order, and then rolling the dice again to find the order for the numbers. You write them down, line them up, play them in order, and voilà—you get... something, I guess...

P.P.P.S. i really wish i had less flimsy printer paper :(