Hollow Knight
Piano Duet Arrangements - Sheet music available on Sheet.Host
What is Hollow Knight?
Hollow Knight is a metroidvania-style adventure game following a nondescript warrior bug through a kingdom plagued by a mysterious disease. The game is available on consoles (Switch, PS4, and Xbox One) and PC & Mac on Steam.
What did you make?
I arranged several soundtracks for piano duet in albums pertaining to battle music and ambience, named Mask and Soul, respectively. I have only made two arrangements so far (as preserving the mysticalness of the music is difficult): Dung Defender & City of Tears.
Hands down, one of my favorite bosses to play against in Hollow Knight is the Dung Defender.
Modeled after a dung beetle and granted the model superhero character trope, the gallant knight dives through piles of poo in an exciting battle.
The percussive woodwinds and running strings made this arrangement fairly easy to capture and retain its original joy and grandiosity.
For the most part, Piano 1 handles the background and Piano 2 the foreground and melody. They switch roles for the latter loop / half of the piece.
Hollow Knight has a fairly nonlinear exploration element, but somewhere along your journey you will find the entrance to the City of Tears.
Closed off from the surface and rest of the world by large city gates, it serves as a memorial to the enormous sacrifice taken to protect its citizens.
The track plays with thin instrumentation and gradually grows in intensity as you approach the city square.
Despite being melancholic, the melody is beautiful and the instrumentation picks up into a swirling fury of emotions and lost grandeur.