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This is the first piece I'm attempting where I have little to no history or familiarity with. It's called Sahori and it comes from the video game Shin Megami Tensei V. The game's soundtrack was mostly exhilarating rock music, but this piece is one of the more slow, somber ones. It's the theme for a girl in Japan, named Sahori, who experiences bullying in high school. Her life takes a tragic turn when a demon takes advantage of her immense sorrow and possesses her.

I finally learned a full piece all on my own! The last third of it was more difficult than I thought it was gonna be, but I eventually locked in and got it down. I feel really proud that I was able to do this.

I pretty much have this one down at this point. I've got the fingering down for all of the sections. The expression is really good. I just have to lock in and play the full thing without pausing during the end.

I'm making slow, but gradual, progress with this piece. I feel like my hand independene is pretty decent, especially considering this is my 4th week of replaying the piano. Playing scales with the left hand feels a bit awkward, but it's still manageable. I remember the first time I had to play scales with the left hand in a piece. It felt practically impossible. Once I got it down, I could pretty much do it comfortably. The scales would feel like one distinct action instead of a series of small steps. I'm really proud of the dynamics with the right hand. I always make sure to add subtle nuances so the performance doesn't sound too dull, like playing the first note of a measure the loudest or really emphasizing the loud and soft parts of a crescendo. I'll see if I can learn the full piece next week.

This is the first piece I actively learned how to play during my first year at Amherst. I was taking an intro music theory course, and one of the components of the final grade was performing an actual piece on the piano. I decided to choose a piece I really like from one of my favorite video games: Song of Healing from The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Since I had never played the piano at that point, I had to choose a simplified version of the piece. My professor helped me out with the fingering as well.

For the second week of playing the piano again, I finally relearned the entirety of Prelude In C Major. I felt really proud. I was proud not only because I was able to play the full piece, but also because I commited myself to practicing instead of this just being a "one and done" kind of thing. As I played the piece more and more, I could feel my skills and touch coming back to me. Playing softly and loudly is a really simple thing, but it felt satisfying to redevelop my touch for dynamics.

I finally got to play the piano after almost two years on May 3rd, 2025. I remember sitting at work one day wondering if there was some way I could play the piano again now that I finally had a job. I really miss playing on my keyboard that I used for piano lessons in college. The keys stopped working so, I had to through it away and decided to check out if there were any libraries that had music rooms. Fortunately, I found one that lets you reserve them for up to a hour.

Since this was going to be my last recital at college, I was honestly more sad than nervous. The difficulty of the pieces definitely should've made me feel stressed, but really I was just amazed at how my time at Amherst, and performing at recitals, was coming to an end. I was more disappointed that I couldn't perform more pieces that I was also interested in. So this one has always been bitersweet to revisit.

I was really nervous going into this one, but still felt really good about it too. There were snacks available, but I didn't eat anything because I didn't want to risk more nauseous than I already was. That being said, I told many of my friends and even one of my professors, who brought his wife along as well, about it and I was excited for them to see me play.

I played three pieces for my second recital during the spring of my junior year in college. The first two are the classical pieces Ave Maria composed by Charles Gounod and Für Elise composed by Ludwig von Beethoven. The last piece is a video game piece called World 3 from Super Mario Galaxy 2 composed by Koji Kondo. There's a lot of new things that happened with my second recital. I played the first piece as an accompaniment to a violinist. I also had my first instance of freezing while performing.