Next To You - Parasyte the Maxim OST (Piano Cover)

Подробнее о видео

My first arrangement. Ever. Yeet.

But it’s kinda bad. I didn’t even have the motivation to go and memorize it because I just didn’t like it all that much. Like I hated the transitions, the harmonies are meh, and the structure just feels very random. It was literally as though I had an idea for each part, but didn’t bother stringing them together into a cohesive piece.

I will say though, the more I played, the more I slowly came to enjoy it, but still not enough to grind it through and make it perfect as evidenced by my performance. I played pretty sloppily, the tempo was messy in a bad way, and the execution simply wasn’t there. In fact, if this wasn’t such a “milestone”, I either would have dropped the piece or not uploaded this. But I guess I finished and now it’s out.

This OST is actually what got me into arranging in the first place. My friend, who is a bit of a closet weeb, managed to convince our whole house full of guys, none of whom watched anime except for me, to watch all of Parasyte with him because he loved it. I actually missed the first few episodes, but despite it being dangerously close to finals season, the 5 or 6 of us binged the whole series in a matter of 2 or 3 days.

And this OST was definitely the most memorable. Like every time it came up, it was so dope and emotionally charged. Especially because it plays when ___. If you know you know.

But the melody is hauntingly, soulfully beautiful. It feels like it just sticks with you, and it’s the kind of sadness that carries with it a sense of deep gravitas.

I remember literally waiting for it to play again the rest of the series, but I don’t think it came back until one of the last scenes with Izumi and Murano, and it was the really nice, soft electric piano version.

Afterwards, my closet weeb friend and I were reminiscing about the series and how much we loved the melody to Next to You, and I started playing some of it on the piano. I’m pretty good at making out melody lines, but chords are pretty hard, so I thought to myself that I needed to find a good piano cover.

Half an hour later, my friend popped into my room and was like hey I found a piano cover. Lo and behold, I was listening to the same Theishter cover as well. But even though it was pretty good, I was like, I can do better.

And so I started writing my own arrangement. I mean, as a producer, I’ve written some parts for songs before and done 4 bar loops, and as a pianist, I knew some music theory and stuff like that. Ultimately, it took like 3 months to finish, and I also basically wrote none of it with a piano/keyboard in front of me. As a result, by the time I got to actually playing the sheets, I found that the end part was actually unplayable and other parts were really meh, too.

The biggest struggle of course was figuring out how to best keep the vibes of the original while making it doable on the piano. At first, I erred on the side of making it as accurate as possible, which is why it took so long. But then, when I decided I wanted more movement, I added random arpeggios in the left hand, wrote like variations for the theme in the second chorus, and added some fat chords and more random fast arpeggios in the last two choruses. Also, moving the melody into the alto was harder than I expected because then something had to be added on top of it that wasn’t too overpowering.

I actually had to memorize the last chorus after the key-change because it was pretty impossible to play without looking at the keys because it’s so fast. But even so, the chords were kinda beefy in a bad way, so my fingers got caught a lot, and the arpeggios were similar. In the end, I decided to keep them as a memento of my first, poor attempt at arranging.

I tried an outro for this video because I want to connect more with all of you! As a musician, I feel like you’re getting to know me pretty well through my music, but you’re not really getting to know any other aspects of me. So, awkward as it was and as it will continue to be, I think these outros will be a nice way for you to get to know me just a bit more beyond what I’m already telling you through the music.

But anyways, I really do hope that you found this somewhat enjoyable. The more I listen to it, the less egregious my mistakes sound, but I still can’t get over some of the parts. I guess that’s just the life of a performer.

Until next time!

- WattKeys

Title: Next to You
Original Artist: Ken Arai
Anime: Parasyte the Maxim
Arranger: WattKeys

Sheets:


Get exclusive content!


General support:


Follow me on Instagram!


Produced and mixed by me!


#Parasyte #Piano #OST #NextToYou

Migi, handle the defense.