As the third requirement of my year’s resolution, I would perform any song of my choosing. It took me some time to think and settle on one so this one, which was meant for January, was long overdue. The song I chose to perform was a cover of Plastic Love by Mariya Takeuchi.

The reason why I chose this song is because it’s catchy. I like this song for the same reason I like old songs–it has a funky/nostalgic sort of vibe and it just makes me happy. It’s hard to put into words what I specifically like about this song but it’s definitely an earworm. City pop/vaporwave is a fun genre.

This would be one of the songs I would listen to on my night drives back from Alameda to SJ if I was driving solo. There’s a sort of dreamy, timeless feel that this song generates, especially when one drives underneath the many rows of streetlamps.

So, here’s my take on this.

Y’all, this song was hard. I was very heavily inspired by this cover of Plastic Love. This is probably one of the best covers I’ve heard for any song. To an extent, I like this cover more than the original song itself.

I tried my best to adapt the song to the best of my ability. As my housemates can attest to this past week, I’ve been thumping on my keyboard, trying to nail this down. At a certain point, I became realistic about my actual skills and tried to simplify it down to my skill level…and still struggled.

The most challenging part of this was to figure out the cadenza in the middle of the song. In the aforementioned cover above, the cadenza is what really sold the song to me, arguably the best part in my opinion. It is a series of jazz scale riffs over some syncopation. It sounds cool and the performer looks like he’s having a lot of fun while playing it. After listening to it a number of tedious and painful times and figuring out the gist of the riffs the performer did, I was able to hash out a simplified version of this song. I had fun playing this riff too.

Though it ends up sounding a little rough and something that I choked up a bit while playing, I’m still proud of it because it was my first attempt at a jazz riff. It was something new that I always wanted to try but never got around to doing until now.

Everything about this song is pretty upbeat and unlike my usual style of playing, which is usually a lot more subdued and flowing. It gave me the feeling that I was playing both the piano and the cajon at the same time. Because of the thumping notes and rhythm throughout the song, it forced me to keep up a constant tempo and confidence to make sure that I was hitting the notes that I should be hitting. There wasn’t any of the room/time for me to figure out what the next notes are, that is usually available with my usual style. I just had to stay in time with the music and hit the notes.

This is also the first arrangement where I did a glissando! I never got the chance to try doing it in a song. It sounds a little clunky but I did it!

Overall, I had a lot of fun trying to figure out this song. It was like a puzzle for me to solve! It challenged me to try out some new things that I’ve never tried before. Recording this song was a bit difficult since there was always something I was unsatisfied with. Eventually, I settled on a half-decent recording, which isn’t the greatest but isn’t the worse, as attached above.

I love the jazzy/almost R&B notes of this song. I’m glad I got to strike off this song from my bucket list.

Also, I realize that I don’t have a placeholder image for these music goals so I’m just gonna upload a photo of something from my week instead. Here is a photo from a wedding I attended—it’s the signature of a child in the wedding’s guestbook.

Noice.