[PC] Deltarune - "Checker Dance" by Yug Guy

[Latios212]

approv

[mastersuperfan]

The gap between the composer and the arranger feels kind of big. Personally, I would move the composer info down a little. But that might just be me...

It's a peeve of mine that Finale starts its 8va's too far to the right. Whenever I use 8va's, I tend to drag the left end a little bit more to the left so that it clearly covers all notes. They don't look bad in this case, though, and definitely not unclear, so this is less a legitimate concern and more just me being obsessive.

I thought that "D.C. x2" meant to actually to D.C. twice (e.g. repeat the whole thing twice, for a total of three times played) until I saw Libera's comment of adding a "2nd time D.C." So that definitely threw me for a loop, and I would suggest trying to abbreviate or rephrase it in a different way to make it more clear. Unless it's common notation that I'm just not aware of.

m9–16 feel kind of empty to me. So I thought of this...



...Which is a possibility to make it less empty-sounding and preserve the percussion rhythm. But it looks pretty cramped, and the tonic starts getting a little annoying. So I doubt you'll use it, but in case you like, I'm just putting it out there.

I think the eighth notes throughout the melody could use some articulations, like so:



It makes it much clearer to the pianist how to play the eighth notes, since some of them are staccato'd and some of them are slurred. The staccatos also help to keep the fast, bouncy pace of the track.

I don't actually think there's an F where I've highlighted below in m20, 24, 28, and 32:



Yes, if you slow it down, you can hear an F there, but I'm fairly certain that's just the the same background F from m9–16, and even when slowed down, I don't hear the melody playing another F on top of that. I definitely don't hear the F as part of the melody when listening at full speed, anyway.

For m25–31, these are the Layer 2 chords I'm hearing:



Now, you had F as the base for all these chords, which I imagine was probably an intentional decision? Personally, I would arrange it just like I have it written here, but you're fine to keep the F's if you like them. *However,* what I want to point out is that, whether or not you keep the F, the chords in the second half of m25 should have an Ab that's missing on the sheet. (Also, now the natural on the D is clashing with Ab in layer 1, so you might want to move some stuff a little bit. Also make sure that the dots on the C-E dyad / F-C-E chord aren't clashing with the high F in layer 1.)

Same goes for m33 onwards:



If you prefer, you can keep F as the base, but add Ab into the chords in the second half of m33 and m34, plus the rest of the section.

In the last two systems, I think it's a bit of a waste that the left hand isn't playing anything half the time. I also miss the "melody" in the background with the weird... monkey-sounding noise... so here's my idea:



I definitely like this better than the emptiness of the current last eight bars.

Finally, this is what I'm hearing for m36 and m40:



I listened as closely as I could, and I can conclude that there is definitely not a high E in the first chord, nor is there a high B in the second.

[mastersuperfan]

Oh... one other thing. The bassline in the first four measures repeats again at the very end of the loop... before the D.C. Which is currently missing from the sheet.

So I'm not sure this will fit on two pages unless you do something unconventional at the beginning like a repeat sign with "Repeat only on D.C." Given that you already have a "D.C. x2" that confused me, I'm thinking that it might just be better go onto a third page, but it's your call.

[Yug_Guy]

Updated with the fixes. Not gonna go into detail because it's a lot. 

[Libera]

Cool stuff, thanks for the extra help there msf!

Closing this one off now and accepting!  Nice work everyone.

[Zeta]

This submission has been accepted by Libera.

~Zeta, your friendly NSM-Bot