The digital recording is available to purchase in my store! karacomparettomusic.com/store/
Well it's finally here, after over two years of writing, practicing, filming and recording. Since some of you haven't heard any of the story, I'll share it here and hope it will help you appreciate even more the beauty of what you see and hear! I'm so proud of this work.
Rewind a few years ago when I was uploading a lot of classic Final Fantasy tracks to KZfaq. As you would expect, many of you told me I should cover Dancing Mad. At that point I had probably never even heard it. Many of the pieces I was recording at the time were brand new to me, since I never really had a strong connection to Final Fantasy when I was child, except that my brother played the games and I would watch him sometimes. Eventually I discovered the Distant Worlds performance of Dancing Mad and fell in love, to the point that I would say it's Uematsu's greatest achievement.
So, naturally I thought I should make a recording. But when I tried the piano opera version (basically the only version except for the one from the original sound version which is pretty puny), I was not thrilled. There are so many inner and outer voices all happening at the same time, it was impossible to make sense of them all on just one instrument! At the time, I was taking organ lessons, and thought it might be cool to make an arrangement of the piece for both piano and pipe organ, since the organ is such a prominent part of the piece. I've never enjoyed writing music, so I knew this was going to be a huge endeavor. But somehow the inspiration came at me and I pulled most of the arrangement together two years ago.
Last year, I started asking around about videographers who would be able to film and record the project. I was receiving enough support from my fanbase at that point that I decided I wanted to go big. I wanted to cosplay both Terra and Kefka and make the video appear like a battle between the two instruments- Terra on the piano and Kefka on the organ. I finally found someone.....and then Covid hit. The church where I was practicing organ closed, and all my plans for the project were put on hold. Eventually I came to grips with the fact that it may not ever happen the way I had planned. I started thinking of ways to record and film it myself, however crude it might turn out.
Within the past few months, I stumbled upon @jimmyonguitar, who lived in my own state- a photographer who loved Final Fantasy music and was just starting to upload his own guitar covers on KZfaq. We filmed a project together- Midnight Rendezvous from FFVII. After this, it became apparent that he was the one I should ask to make Dancing Mad happen! He had owned his own recording studio in the past, and had every type of amazing camera you could imagine.
We started first with the piano part. We used my sister's studio, which has a Steinway and a larger space. Finding a place to record the organ was a bit trickier, but Jimmy did some asking around and found a place willing to let us use the space if he would shoot some photos of their building. The historic pipe organ used to be in Washington DC before it ended up here!
You can imagine how thrilled I am to finally present this to you, who are the reason I even do this to begin with. Your constant encouragement and enthusiasm for what I do inspires me to keep playing, keep working hard, keep sharing. I wouldn't be the musician I am today without you, so...thank you. Also thank you to Jimmy for being the mechanism behind this project, and making it happen in a timely manner. I couldn't have done it without him.
Hopefully I will have many more projects like this in the future! My brain is going crazy right now thinking of a piano and pipe organ arrangement of the last boss themes from Chrono Trigger. Maybe along with the complete soundtrack for piano? We shall see!
PS- Hopefully by the weekend I'll have some phone and desktop wallpapers for you to use of me as Kefka and Terra! Just go to my website and sign up with your email to gain access to them karacomparettomusic.com
Consider supporting this project financially by donating on Kofi!
ko-fi.com/karacomparetto
Live streaming weekly on Twitch! Taking requests with a song list of over 2,000 songs:
www.twitch.tv/karacomparetto
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Here’s where my music is available to stream:
www.amazon.com/s?k=kara+comparetto&ref=nb_sb_noss
open.spotify.com/artist/3OPaBcNIu8oINzPWMi8p5E?si=lZiryufwS5ScZEFnvz2rTA
music.apple.com/us/artist/kara-comparetto/1401573524
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