EXEC_CHRONICLE=KEY/.

As with the last one, this is also an a cappella arrangement. This time, it has five vocal tracks. I think maybe with a tambourine for percussion and a violin playing some counter-melody, this could also work for a performance, though it'd need a quintet!

I should probably explain the song, shouldn't I? This is Shikata Akiko's EXEC_CHRONICLE=KEY/., a song from Ar tonelico 1, sung by the character Misha. (The game and soundtracks incorrectly put an underscore instead of an equals sign. Due to the rules of Hymns in the Ar tonelico universe, the creators have insisted the underscore there is a mistake.) Rather than being in Japanese, it's in the language "Hymmnos".

This is actually a very very old vocal split, the first one I ever recorded with the intention to share as parts like this, so it's not very polished. I didn't know much about the Hymmnos language at the time, so there are many mispronunciations.

If you don't know about Ar tonelico... I'd suggest you go learn! It's a wonderful universe with wonderful songs. As far as more arrangements from the games, who knows? I have recordings for Misha's Purger, Suspend, and Re=Nation, but I need to fix them up a bit to put in this format. I've created MIDI arrangements for every song in the first game besides Harmonious, but I've also arranged Sphilia. Maybe you'll see another one in a few weeks. I'll try to space them out a bit.

ARIA

This is an a cappella arrangement. I think with the addition maybe of a small hand tambourine, this could be performed as-is by a quartet! In fact, that's a dream I have - to sing Wakana's part on this in a quartet. I'm extremely proud of this arrangement, as it is of my favourite Kalafina song--my favourite Japanese song--possibly even my favourite song ever! (Though it has to overcome Nightwish's Ghost Love Score to make it my favourite song ever, and that's a high hurdle to jump.)

This is the fourth Kara no Kyoukai movie's ending theme. The vocal split is based on the live performance included with the Seventh Heaven DVD. The only differences is that I added an extra vocal part to the harmony at the beginning (and every time it repeats). That harmony actually does exist on the recording, but it not performed live. I referred to the official piano book just to double-check it. The other change was during the second verse. Maya (in the post-Maya 3-part performances, Keiko) sings "wakare wo tsuge hohoemiai" as a bit of a counter-melody. As this is not in the recording, I opted not to include it and defer to the original harmony, which is the same as during the first verse.

As far as listening to it all together, if you so wish to, I recommend the volumes to be, from left to right, 70, 60, 90, 100. I don't know why Maya's track exported so soft from GarageBand. It's supposed to normalize them all, even though I manually set the volumes to be a good mix.

Calendula Requiem

Second opening song to the amazing anime "Shiki". The original vocalist is Wakeshima Kanon, who also played the cello here. It's a rather simple arrangement, with only a single harmony track. Still, I hope you enjoy! As always, drag the volume of the instrumental down quite a bit if you wish to listen to the entire thing all together.

I'll have some more complicated songs coming up with 4+ vocal parts again. :-)

Sis Puella Magica

This is, in my opinion, the most memorable song from Kajiura Yuki's "Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica" soundtrack. The original vocalist was Itou Eri.

Since an official instrumental was never released for this song, you may be wondering where the gorgeous piano came from. There's a wonderful website called Sperion no Sora that has posted an arrangement on this song for piano and two voices. I've used this piano as a base, and recorded the two voices myself for you to learn from. I hope you all enjoy it!