Katawa Shoujo Piano Collections

For the past 8 months, I’ve been working on recording the official Katawa Shoujo Piano Collections (available now at https://materia.to/KatawaShoujoPianoCollections). Here’s a little background on how this project came to be:

Back in September while I was at Twitch Con, I received a message from Sydney Kjerstad (whom I’ve had the privilege of collaborating with and am a big fan of!) about working on a piano project for the record label Materia Music. It involved recording all of the piano collections for a visual novel game I’d never heard of called Katawa Shoujo.

The music was composed by Sebastien Skaf, a highly skilled pianist himself, who had arranged elaborate piano versions of 14 of his songs from the soundtrack.

This would be a different type of project for me. I’ve recorded my own albums, written my own music, made my own arrangements and recorded on lots of other artists albums before, but this would be the first time I’m learning an entire *album* worth of solo piano classical-style music composed and arranged by another artist. It would be my job to interpret the music and bring it to life in a way that fans of the game (or just fans of classical piano music) would enjoy and would be something I’d feel proud to have my name attached to.

Initially they asked if I could get the album done in a month (which, looking back, is kinda insane considering the scope of the work). Not only did I already have commitments but there was over an hour of challenging and detailed classical-style piano music that I would have to learn and know deeply before being able to record it. Additionally, I would also be the recording engineer rather than going into a studio. I preferred this as I know my piano well (a Boston 6’4” Grand) and how to mic it. I said I couldn’t hit that deadline but maybe 2 months? We came to an agreement and I started working on the music in October.

After beginning to work on the pieces, it was immediately clear that in no way would I get this done in 2 months, and we extended the deadline to the end of December. Materia wanted to release the album on the 13th anniversary of the games release in January but there just wasn’t a real understanding by either party of how much time this album would take. After recording a few of the pieces and getting an actual scope of how long each piece would take to learn we settled on a release date of June 6th.

Since I thought I would have been done with the album in January, I’d already booked a full schedule for 2025 including performing at events MAGFest, the JoCo Cruise, GDC and the GANG Awards, performing with No Exit, subbing on the Mamma Mia National Tour, associate music directing for the Dazzle Awards, and releasing music of my own. So, I had a pretty full dance card.

In order to complete the album on time, between all of that I was practicing around 8 hours a day and learning this music as quickly as I could, recording and filming everything in my home recording studio. I’d usually work on 3 or 4 pieces at a time and record them as a batch. I left the hardest piece for the end - “Friendship - Variations and Fugue” — a 14-minute beast of piece with, just like the title suggests, a theme and variations plus a fugue in the style of Beethoven which I learned in just 2 weeks.

By mid May, I got the final recordings submitted and just a couple weeks later, I approved of the final masters. The album is already out and available everywhere you listen to music. CDs and a double vinyl are also currently being pressed available for pre-order.

Additionally, while learning the music, I would give notes and edits on the sheet music trying to catch any wrong notes and suggest ways to make things clearer. The updated score book is currently available on the Materia Store.

Whether you’re fan of the game or just classical piano, I encourage you to give the album a listen. It features some of my best classical piano playing to date. Romance in Andante, Raindrops and Puddles, L’Etoile, and Wiosna are some of the highlights. Jitter is a virtuosic ball of fire. The most beautiful moment might be the coda of Concord. Red Velvet and When It’s Hard to Smile have a jazzier feel including an improv section on Red Velvet. Air and Innocence are some of the catchier melodies. All of the pieces have their own charm and the album as a whole is an enjoyable listen.

Although it felt rushed at times, I enjoyed learning the pieces and recording the album. I remember listening to piano albums by like Horowitz plays Scriabin, Glen Gould’s Goldberg Variations, The Beethoven Sonatas by Schnabel and thinking “How does someone learn this much music at such a high level?” Completing this album taught me a bit about how to achieve such feat and gives me to confidence to do more albums like this in the future.

I do want to thank Sydney, Jamie and everyone at Materia for giving me this opportunity to record this music, to Sebastien Skaf for the beautiful pieces and answering all of my questions about the music, to Paul Blakemore for his attention to detail in mastering the whole album, and to my very supportive and talented partner Kim Sutton who not only supported me in multiple ways throughout the very busy past 8 months but who also helped film and beautifully edit the videos you’ve seen lately on YouTube and social media. Thank you all so very much! 🙏

If you do take the time to enjoy the album, feel free to leave a comment or reach out directly. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Listen to or order the album here - https://materia.to/KatawaShoujoPianoCollections