Piano Cover: On Your Mark (Gundam Unicorn)

Hope Thanksgiving weekend was great for everyone! My own Thanksgiving weekend was one filled with lots of shopping; I finally decided to try out that Black Friday thing again for the first time in many years, and consequently am the happy owner of a new PlayStation 3. Since then, it's like I've been rediscovering my gamer side hidden away for several months; SO MUCH GAMING. Enough gaming, in fact, that I nearly forgot to post an entry about my latest piano cover, the piece "On Your Mark" from Gundam Unicorn.

Here's an uncharacteristic confession: I don't actually know anything about the Gundam franchise, save for the ten minutes or so I've seen of the first OVA. I can't even pretend to know enough about it to write a paragraph's worth of blog post about Gundam Unicorn. Rather, I came across this masterpiece of a piano solo on a recommendation from a friend, and immediately fell in love with it.

To me, this piano solo is further proof that an arrangement need not be complicated or difficult to be beautiful. Not that I didn't struggle when attempting to transcribe or learn the piece, but the structure and texture are fairly simple, but not simplistic (yes, there is a difference!). In fact, I think the straightforward nature of this piece makes contributes to its beauty, really providing the listener with the time to absorb each beautiful chord. I can't actually find the piano arrangement anywhere else on the Internet, but here's the (even more beautiful, if possible) original orchestral version of "On Your Mark." And here's my piano cover:

On Your Mark (Gundam Unicorn): Piano Cover



Composer: Hiroyuki Sawano
Date Completed: 2011-11-24
Software: Audacity, Movie Maker
Number of Takes: ~15
Instrumentation: Piano

If you're interested, here's my arrangement of this piece (also featured on Josh's Anime Music website!). Since I've little else to say here, I'll keep this one short. Thanks for dropping by, and look for more (possibly video-game-related!) content coming soon! Happy December!

Oyasuminasai,

xds