Oath Sign - Fate/Zero OP 1 - LiSA (piano cover)

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It’s time to get fired up for more Fate, and this time it’s the first series that started it all.

The first time I listened to Oath Sign was several years ago when I first started getting into JPop independent of anime. I was on a LiSA tear and ended up coming across the song. At the time, I thought it sounded ok, nothing super hype or distinctive about it, if not even a bit plain. And so it ended up being a song I back-burnered and didn’t listen to all that much.

Fast forward about a year and I’ve hit my anime phase in stride. I remembered that LiSA sang Oath Sign as the OP for Fate and that Fate had a lot of material, so I decided to give it a watch.

To say that I was unprepared for what awaited would be an understatement.

Everything about Fate had me riveted, from the characters to the magic system and lore to the philosophical questions it raised and never answered. Fate/Zero in particular featured a clash of ideologies, characters that served as foils to one another, and a heaviness towards the realities of life, death, and dreams that is often missing or mishandled in other shows.

This song in particular reminds of Kiritsugu and Saber’s hope to actualize their dreams of saving their respective worlds. The pain of the lyrics and the drive of the song creates a feeling of continuous, unceasing striving through a world that stands against you, unable to trust anyone but yourself to get the job done.

That’s why the song slaps so hard for me now. And that’s why I had to write an arrangement for it.

I wrote this about a year ago. The overall approach was originally much more straightforward - I had just intended to use simple left hand patterns and replicate the melody in the right hand. But I quickly realized that the verses were much more bare than I thought (just vocals and bass at points), and that getting the choruses to sound big would be hard as well. And, of course, the guitar solo was going to be hard to write as well.

The first verse is simple, but I introduce the quick arpeggios in the left hand in the second half of the verse as punctuations and movement. The chorus is straightforward, but I chose to mix it up by adding a subito piano section for contrast and surprise, just so that it didn’t end up being a wash of forte.

Verse 2 (1:26) is where it started to get interesting. I didn’t want to repeat something similar to verse 1, but it’s also very sparse in the original so I had to come up with some new ideas. Then I realized that the melody in the opening 8 measures literally never comes up again in the song, and since the verse switches back to E minor anyways, why not see if I can write it in?

So I stuck it into the left hand as a third layer to see how it would go, and it made for some interesting voicing. In the second half of the verse (1:39) since I wanted a more shimmery texture with the right hand run, the melody had to move to the left hand so I was relegated to just including the introduction as split up motifs, but it still works. This also ended up being the most difficult part to play since it was so unnaturally high and required some weird coordination.

I’m actually probably most satisfied with the instrumental in the bridge. I thought there was a lot of energy, and also I was again able to slide the intro motif into the left hand to create more layers. The final chorus also has more movement for more energy, so the whole song feels like it builds and is structured the way that I want it to be.

My playing has taken a bit of a dip recently both because of where I’m currently living and because I’m focusing on other things, but I hope it still conveys the energy in the piece. This was recorded early January 2023.

So yeah, I hope you enjoy my Oath Sign! I just need to arrange and play Memoria and Manten before I finish the Fate/Zero songs, which is pretty exciting.

Until next time,

- Watt

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