Tigran Hamasyan - Piano Cover - Entertain Me

This is a piano cover of Entertain Me, from Tigran Hamasyan's upcoming album Mockroot, due out Feb. 3 on Nonesuch Records. All rights to the music belong to Tigran and their respective owners, I did not write it, just covered it.

Listen to the album version here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-GUNcSWSko

About this cover:
Oh my goodness, I realize I'm a little late to the Tigran party, and that this song from the album was posted a couple weeks ago, but I just stumbled across it for the first time earlier this week, and have been obsessed with it ever since. Polyrhythms for days, and I couldn't be happier. I've been looking for music that implements piano like this for quite some time, because aside from Hiromi, I can't think of much it reminds me of. Usually when piano tries to be 'heavy' or anything, just sounds cheesy, but this successfully avoids that. Also have been working on my own e.p. that sounds nothing like this in terms of quality, but sort of like this in terms of rhythmic goals, so it's great to hear products other than (and better than) my own.

Anyway, I needed to cover this, since for once I didn't have to steal guitar parts or something and can learn an actual Piano part! It's funny, a couple drum covers have popped up on Youtube, and even a guitar cover of the piano part, but no actual piano covers yet, despite that being the main part! My playing is certainly not perfect, but the general gist is intact.

During the main texture at the beginning and returning at the end, I wasn't sure if there were two layers to the piano or not, since the loud hits I was pretty sure were doubled in octaves in the right hand (as seen in the video), but there's also the quieter inner voice that plays B-C# in between the G# hits. Either I could play the G#s in octaves, OR I could play just one octave, but add in the B-C#s. Figured due to the volume discrepancy that the inner voice was a different layer of recording, or perhaps played by another performer/synth, so I went ahead and prioritized the octaves, but I could certainly be wrong. Hopefully once a live video pops up of Tigran himself I can double check it, just thought it was worth mentioning in case I'm wrong, was just a decision I had to make!

Also wasn't super sure about some of the texture around 1:45, sounded like maybe there's a layer of the recording with some dampening inside the piano? Also could be some more chordal accompaniment? Couldn't hear it too well, so I just went ahead and doubled the melody in the left hand, figured it would be Something, at least.

Washed out a lot of the color in the video, to sort of go along with the dreary greyscale aesthetic of the album cover.

Thanks for checking it out!

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