There is a large body and tradition of European Classical Music being used in electronic music going at least as far back as Wendy Carlos’ Switched-On Bach in 1968. As we all do from time to time, I went down a YouTube rabbit hole and got into the “challenging piano pieces” YouTube community.

I bumped up against a performance of Étude Op. 10, No. 4 by Chopin and I forgot how interesting this piece is. So I’m thinking about making a trance version of it. The original score calls for “presto con fuoco” (literally “quickly with fire”) which is 168-200 bpm, and is full of 16th notes. It’s not for the faint of heart. The version that caught my ear clips along at a bouncy 180bpm or so, right in the middle of that. Incidentally, that’s a new note every 83.3 milliseconds. I will probably gun it down to the 138-142 bpm range which is slower than Chopin intended, but this isn’t a study. I’m trying to make a track. I don’t think I’m ready from a technical perspective to mix a full-on psytrance or hardstyle track, so doing it at “presto” is pushing my luck. So “molto allegro” it is.

To be clear, this is considered a challenging exercise for professional level classical pianists (“Étude” is French for “study”). I am barely a keyboardist so please don’t be impressed with my “playing” on this one when it comes out. It’s all going to be the computer! I couldn’t even play it live at larghissimo.

I have not yet started production work on this, so I am holding to my 7 day promise.