Music

I've been playing piano for almost eleven years; the violin nearly three. I'm also a piano teacher. To me, music is one of the most important things in my life. I honestly would not be able to live without it.

It's only been until recently that I've recorded my songs in my own house (which, because of all the usual background noise, I thought was an impossible task), but the recordings ended up being better than what I had in mind. The recordings aren't the most professional, but it's a little something to hear in the mean time. Maybe when I get better at the violin (yeah, like a few years from now! Ha ha!), I will put some of that up here, too.

All the music I play is by Japanese composers, who create music for video games and anime. As many of you video game musicians out there may have already found out, video game music generally doesn't get a lot of respect in the music industry, and so, instead of playing for music competitions (where all the other pianists play is Bach or Beethoven), I prefer playing my music for people who have the same passion and enjoy the same kind of music I do. It's always a treat when I get to play for those encouraging people.

Music from Japan is my favorite (video game music, specifically), but some of my other favorite genres are techno/dance/trance, celtic, blues, jazz, j-pop, j-rock, etc. I'll listen to practically everything, except for rap and screaming metal.

And again, no redistribution of this music. Believe me, I have ways of tracking you down, so don't try it. You may download this music for your own personal use only.

I LOVE Yuki Kajiura's works. She is one of my top 5 favorite composers. Her beautiful style never ceases to amaze me.

To be honest, I'm not very fond of Fullmetal Alchemist, but I loved a few tracks of its soundtrack. The way they use the strings and the touch of piano is just really pretty. The second version of this song of me playing piano and my violin teacher playing viola as a duet. If you're wondering why there is a crowd cheering in the end, it's because we played this at a local recital. Ha ha!

Nobuo Uematsu is amazing. I am amazed at even though he's created hundreds of songs, nearly every one has equal quality of beauty. Zanarkand is a piano solo that I instantly fell in love when I first heard it. I heard it before, but my spark to play this song was when I heard it at the first video game concert I ever went to. To make a very long story short, they played this song in a full orchestra and when I got home, I was like, "I have to get that sheet music!" And so, I found it, learned it, played it, and arranged it to my liking. I love to play this one.

Lufia II is my favorite video game ever created. I'm more of a classic video game player (almost all my favorites are for Super Nintendo). Because I love the game so much, I looked up sheet music online and chose to play this one. Very pretty. This composer really makes some awesome songs. This is one of my older songs that I played years ago when I began playing video game music on the piano.

I really love Saiyuki, and I really love the character Hakkai. I heard this song somewhere (can't remember where), and thought it would be fun to play.

Because the soundtrack had both Motoi Sakuraba and Shinji Tamura's names, I wasn't sure which one to credit for this one, so I put both. This is another fun one to play.

Wow. This is an arrangement by Shiro Hamaguchi and was in the Final Fantasy VIII Piano Collections album. Because I'm the musician that needs to practice a song a lot and work hard at it, it took months to perfect this one. I think it was well worth it.

This is a fun song to play. It's simple, fun to mess around with, and sounds really neat. I like to play this one when I test out pianos or keyboards at music stores. Ha ha!

A very simple, very pretty song. It wasn't a challenge to learn, but I think the song is nice in its simplicity.

A memorable piece to anyone who has played Lufia II. (I HIGHLY recommend this game for any of you RPG players out there. Wonderful story, wonderful characters, wonderful puzzles, and did I mention, a wonderful soundtrack.) This is an older song; one of my first video game songs I learned to play.

A simple song from my favorite Final Fantasy game. It makes me reminisce about "back in the day", for any of you Super Nintendo lovers, you may understand what that's like. This is one of my favorite songs out of the many in this amazing soundtrack.

This is another old song I learned years ago. I don't play it as often as I used to, but I play the chorus every once and a while. Way back when, this was a song I played a lot for friends and relatives, who wanted to hear me play.

I apologize that it's a little short and very simple; I could have at least repeated it again, but oh well. It's still a pretty song.

Here's another extremely short piece almost not even worth posting up here. Like the one above, this is short, simple, yet pretty in it's own way.