ARMORED CORE VI - Contact With You on Piano (Balteus Theme)

Composer: Kota Hoshino
Arrangement: Moonlapse
Sheet music: musescore.com/...
Hi everyone!
I'm back with another Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon cover. This game is just so amazing and I felt its soundtrack deserved a little more love in the piano cover department. This Balteus fight in particular is probably the standout moment of the experience for me, and one of my favorite bosses in all of gaming. Balteus is the first time the AC6 soundtrack really stood out and gripped me - especially due to how many times I heard it over and over. This fight felt extra memorable as we'd just met Ayre which added a mystic element to the game, while also having us deal with an absurd moveset and being the first intense challenge of the game (Though I will admit I was destroyed by the tutorial boss for about 2 hours).
And that backdrop is gorgeous, sci-fi visual mastery. I think this fight took me a couple of days to get down, and that long struggle and eventual reward is really exactly what I'm looking for from these types of hard games that FromSoftware is so excellent at making. The missile barrage and giant sword attacks are so cinematic and grandiose...I couldn't believe it when this mech whipped out a fire sword. I could gush about it for a lot longer so I'll cap it there. If you haven't played AC6 yet I highly suggest doing so.
This track was a challenging to arrange for piano due to the many synth arpeggios going on throughout, many of which appear quite unpredictably (in the best way possible). Nonetheless, I did my best to bring out the important main melodies and core harmonies in a way that sounds good on piano while also retaining the epic and emotional vibe of the original. I definitely had to take some creative liberties with some of the super fast synth parts but I am really happy with how it turned out, and I turned the longer melody notes of the more intense sections into speedy note whirlwinds to pay homage to the original track's constant blistering arpeggios.
I was inspired by some beautiful piano videos I saw covering songs like First Steps from Interstellar and Can You Hear The Music from Oppenheimer that have very fast right hand parts so I wanted to give that a shot.
Thank you so much for watching/tuning in to my channel, I really appreciate it. I have more piano covers (and original orchestral pieces) on the way. I am really looking forward to getting some new From Software music from Shadow of the Erdtree to cover. I am preparing to have whichever one of those becomes my favorite to be arranged very swiftly after the release! Maybe there will be some lingering Yuka Kitamura tracks despite her departure? Can you imagine if they brought Motoi Sakuraba back for just one deeply disturbing song?
As always, the music theory breakdown for this track will be found pinned in the comments below.
Discord: / discord
Bandcamp: moonlapse.band...
Musescore: musescore.com/...
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