I took piano lessons as a kid.

At the time I found it frustrating. I have a strong sense of musical texture, so the idea of playing something and it feeling wrong was anathema to me. I didn’t have much interest in the classical pieces being taught, and beyond that it was mostly expensive piano books full of arranged Disney tracks which just didn’t sound right.

I picked up the piano again in 2019 - buoyed by the availability of high-quality arrangements of videogame soundtracks, music I actually wanted to learn - and this time I actually learned to play the instrument, rather than treating “getting a note wrong” as a failure state. This year I’ve progressed far enough that I’m no longer embarrassed by my playing, and started figuring out how to record my playing and get it into a polished state.

Nobuo Uematsu’s Zanarkand, the title track from Final Fantasy 10, is one of those pieces that just hangs in the air. It was the first piece I learned to play by heart as an adult, and is my go-to warm up whenever I sit down at the piano.