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Thank you very much Indigo & 13umm for your kind, positive feedback.
His finger dexterity is a legacy from a decade of speedcubing. He is also fortunate with his paternally inherited height and proportionately long digits and maternally inherited joint hypermobility.

PS: He has modified his arrangement, so has taken down the original video and uploaded a new video:

Delightful! Love dropping by to hear his progress.

I realize he has progressed from essentially piano reductions to true piano arrangements, so this might be perceived as a step backward in some ways, but I wonder if he might enjoy experimenting with fresh arrangements of songs (or originals) for multiple instruments. GarageBand has a surprisingly high level of functionality for this, and upgrades very smoothly to Logic, which is a professional-level tool for writing and recording. I notice that he is making very nice use of voicing to pull out distinct lines, and at some point he may find himself with an inclination/need to express more timbres and textures than can be physically managed with ten fingers and one keyboard!

Thank you for your kind feedback and suggestions Aeh. He really wants for more hours in a day.

In 2022, his final year at school, he chose music as one of his HSC subjects and composition as his major. He retrospectively learned that he was unintentionally misinformed by his high school teacher that he had to compose a piece for a small instrument group as his major work (when in fact a piano solo would have been just as acceptable), so he dedicated many potential study hours to self learn to play the guitar, in order to produce the best composition he could. He achieved an overall mark of 96 for music, but as STEM subjects are given greater weight, his marks for music were not even included in his Australian Tertiary Admissions Rank (ATAR) despite a disproportionately large number of hours dedicated to achieve that mark, but like speedcubing, no skill is ever a waste. He did declare that he intends to focus on the keyboard until he feels a need to stretch himself further, but I suspect with all his other commitments, that is unlikely to happen.

He would, however, benefit from being less stubborn about his use of free and subscription apps. We are financially well resourced, but he only ever uses free versions of apps and always declines my offers to pay subscriptions to upgrade his apps. He used the free version of Flat for a long time and often had to spend a lot of time to work around its limitations, but again, the effort he put into creating workarounds are honing his problem solving abilities, so as many gifted folk, especially polymaths know, no effort is ever really wasted.

DS just uploaded a short, energetic arrangement of the Game Theory Intro theme, before he had to head back for a busy year of college. He wanted to try out some free falling note visualisation software:

He proposed doing this semester’s research project on mathematical functions of music composition, which did pique the interest of the professor who taught a second year maths function course which DS aced as a first year elective, but regrettably this professor is already over his quota of research students (DS should have contacted him at the end of last semester), so DS may have to pick a project from options in the fields of AI or alloys. The topic of math functions of music composition piqued my interest and I found the following paper to be an interesting read, not least for the URL links, at the end of the article, to some astounding palindromic classical compositions: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2020-10-13_Hart-MusicalComp-T.pdf

The arrangement is really cool; I love how it sounds. I hope that he still does an interesting project; I hope that he can work on the mathematical functions of music composition next year.

Thank you 13umm, for both the kind feedback on the arrangement & well wishes to DS. Do you play an instrument?

I don't play an instrument but I used to play the ukulele.

The ukulele is a fun, portable, inexpensive instrument for enjoying music.
My youngest bought herself one a couple of months ago and taught herself to play. Currently in her final year of high school, she spends many of her study breaks singing and playing her ukulele and I can tell that she is in overall good spirits despite taking on a demanding study load.

Your posts, in another thread which you originated, suggest that you have broad interests and great ambitions, but I do hope that, at your age, you are enjoying your various pursuits in the present, rather than mainly focusing on future outcomes.

I'm studying interesting courses and watching Elizabeth Filips on youtube for study topics. I'm having a lot of fun; I just find music harder than other things and want to study Aops more intensely now. For art, I plan on doing drawing and art history this semester.

EM,

I missed this earlier (somehow I was having trouble loading the forum for a while)...and will have to check on the YouTube link in a bit when it decides to work!

But I love the way your DS is combining two of his passions! Some time ago, our DC1 randomly bumped into a post-doc on the bus who combines STEM research with serious classical composition. So others have found paths forward.

And 13,

Just keep prioritizing the joy of learning and growing for its own sake! I'm glad you're enjoying your current interests and explorations.