Man, this was SUCH a fun cover to put together. It came together in a way that's so different from how I normally do my videos. Normally, I'll spend quite a bit of time transcribing and arranging the tune in question in Sibelius, and then record/sequence all the parts individually. For something in the typical acoustic jazz idiom, that usually works pretty well. For this particular video, though, the approach I took to arranging it really made it unique!
The emotional inspiration came from happening to come across an old friend's cover of the Pokmon League (Night) theme, which reminded me of how tranquil this song is. I was originally thinking about doing this video as a solo rhodes cover, but I didn't think I was pushing myself to my full arranging potential with that... so I ended up going on the lo-fi hip hop route, which I've done a couple of times on this channel! This is the first time I'm doing it without the help of a collaborator, though! (Well, if you don't count Splice, haha. I used a few Splice samples in this that were _instrumental_ to getting the sound I wanted, lol.) My vision for this cover as far as the Sinnoh story was imagining Cynthia was the girl in that lo-fi beats to study/relax to YouTube livestream... and creating the music that she'd be listening to in that context.
I started off this arrangement by doing a full performance of the Pokmon League Night theme as a solo rhodes piece, exactly how it was in the game. Then, I went to that solo rhodes rendition, and chopped it up into various samples. I used those samples to build a Kontakt instrument that I could play using the drumpads on my MIDI keyboard so I could get some cool lo-fi chopped sounds going, and it worked out super well! I had to build a drum sample library in Kontakt for one of my classes at Berklee, so that skill turned out to be really really useful here. It was so interesting to be able to turn a recorded performance into its own instrument, sort of. I did that exact same process with some of Adriana's vocals, to get a typical lo-fi chopped vocal sound.
From there, I just added new layers and new sections! It was nice to be able to add instruments / textures freely, rather than stick to the pre-arranged sheet music. I do think that having that sheet music really makes the recording process easier, since I've already made all the creative decisions, but having this change of pace was quite nice. I used a casette emulator plugin to get some vintage wow and flutter (Izotope Vinyl doesn't work right now on MacOS Catalina :/), and used a waterfall sample from Splice to reference the waterfall that's right in front of the Pokmon League! Finally, I asked Adriana to contribute some harmonized vocals and a couple of vocal riffs towards the end. I'm quite pleased with this rendition, and I think there's room for some more lo-fi experimentation in the future. I think I'm so fascinated with lo-fi because it's a way to take vintage jazz sounds and place them in a modern context where they're more appreciated. Enjoy the video!
\"Pokmon League (Night) from \"Pokmon Diamond & Pearl\" composed by Go Ichinose
