Here's a solo piano arrangement of Absolunote, one of my favorite Vocaloid songs of all time. This arrangement was inspired partly by a similar arrangement by Sondai Nishijima (西島尊大) on Nico Nico Douga.
I've provided downloads for the sheet music (PDF), MP3, MIDI, and Musescore 4 file at the bottom of the post.
Absolunote is an interesting song in many ways. For one, it has a metric modulation scheme where it changes between 3/4 and 4/4 time signatures while keeping the measure length the same. That is, a whole note in 4/4 takes up the same amount of time as a dotted half note in 3/4 and vice versa. The resulting modulation is interesting if you pay attention to it, but natural enough that it doesn't call attention to itself.
In a similar vein to its metric modulation, Absolunote features a near-constantly shifting tonal center. We almost never get more than eight measures in the same key, and the chord progression jumps around the circle of fifths like there's no tomorrow.
These constant shifts, combined with the whimsical atmosphere of the song, presented a bit of a challenge in adapting the piece to piano. The first page was simple enough, but I had a good challenge in store for me with the rest of the arrangement.
One of the hardest things about this arrangement was the presence of a drum track in the source. To capture this rhythmic feel, I used a lot of syncopated lines in the bass, and emphasized them with interjecting chords.
Arranging the harmonies also required a lot of discretion, as the original song has so many voices that you can't come close to capturing them all with ten fingers. I enjoy working with harmony, though, so I had a lot of fun doing that. Picking the most important notes of a chord is really important in my eyes—less really is more in a lot of these cases.
The most difficult section of the arrangement was probably the section after the first chorus. The mix suddenly becomes very wet and very sparse, before going into a freeform section without much rhythm. Even with the original song using lots of piano in this section, I felt that the atmosphere was really hard to capture without the luxuries of audio post-processing. That being said, I think I managed to capture the echoing and twinkling well enough through arpeggios. Plus, I got an opportunity to do something really funny:
Interestingly enough, the free time section takes up a whole number of measures, if I remember correctly.
One other measure that I thought was particularly interesting was the one leading into the last chorus, which I transcribed as being in 11/4. That being said, I can also see it as being a measure of 5/4 followed by 6/4, or a sequence of eighth note groupings following 2-3-2-3-3-3-3-3.
In the end, I wrote an arrangement that I'm decently happy with. Is it playable? Probably. I'm not skilled enough to pull it off, though, so I can't truly verify that. Regardless, I hope you enjoy listening to or trying to play it—let me know if you do! And keep an eye out for more music in the future.
Downloads
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