I've been playing so much of Animal Crossing New Horizons since it came out, and I recently got the upgraded Town Hall! And with that, came the hourly music! As nice as that short little guitar loop was, having the hourly music added back into the game was such a great way to spice things up. I think it was a great decision to withhold that new music from the player for a while at the start of the game, since it really highlights just how great the hourly music can be!
I had a few people hit me up on Twitter about this particular song, and I fell in love with it as soon as I first heard it. This is such a great \"the workday is done!\" kind of tune, and is right in my wheelhouse genre-wise! Because of the song's relative simplicity, I decided that I didn't want to do anything too crazy with this arrangement, and mostly just stuck to the original song's instrumentation and form, but with a few slight twists. The EWI made a PERFECT lead instrument sound for this cover, since it replicates the lead that's used in-game but with a bit more dynamic variation. I added in a melodica, since it's reminiscent of the accordion sound that was often used in past Animal Crossing games (but seems to be missing in New Horizons...)
I also had a ton of fun with some in-game instruments in this video! I was gifted a tambourine and an alto saxophone by some of my friends, and I thought that it would be SO cool and fun to somehow use them in the cover. I used my capture card to record my Switch gameplay footage while listening to the backing track I created, and effectively played the instruments in a way that would work to use in the cover! The tambourine was pretty straight forward, since there was no pitch control, but the saxophone was a totally different story! If you've never played Animal Crossing, you can interact with the in-game instruments, but you can't control their pitch! You just control note start and note end. At least with the alto saxophone I had, it turns out that it was just playing random notes in the key of G major, so I figured I'd try my hand with playing an improvised solo on the sax! I modulated to G major at around 3:10 in this song, so I'd have the best luck possible with choosing random notes on the saxophone. In the end, I ended up comping a few different takes together to come up with something that doesn't sound too bad! Was a fun use of my time :)
I streamed a decent bit of the recording process of this song on Twitch! If you're interested, the VOD is available here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/577030652
\"5 P.M.\" from \"Animal Crossing: New Horizons\"
(I couldn't find the exact composer in my research, but Wikipedia lists the following composers as contributors:
Yasuaki Iwata
Yumi Takahashi
Shinobu Nagata
Sayako Doi
Masato Ohashi)
