Saturday, October 03, 2015

New Mewmore interview following tomorrow's Top 25

I recently had a chance to interview Mewmore, a prominent video game remixer (who happens to currently have two songs currently on the station).  That interview will debut following tomorrow's Top 25 Countdown, which starts at 4pm Eastern/3pm Central.

If you like, you can also listen here:



Editor's note: Mewmore and I had to kind of guess how to pronounce "Lisia", since we couldn't find an official listing.

Transcript:

Steven: Hi. I’m Steven Reich, here at the Poke Press studios in Madison, Wisconsin. I’m on the phone with Mewmore, who is a video game remixer, and does a variety of things. You may know that he has done a couple songs that are on the station currently. “I Wanna Say Goodbye” which is from the Mystery Dungeon games. And, Lisia’s theme from Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. Before we get to those, Mewmore, where are you from and how did you get into doing music?

Mewmore: Hello, guys. I’m Mewmore and I’m from Finland, North Europe. And, how I got into music, I think I was like got into it pretty late. I think I was like 12-13 years old. My dad used to be a professional drummer, playing in this one band. And, I think he tried to get me into music when I was little, but I wasn’t too interested back then. But, when I was like 12-13, I started to take piano lessons and then started to play guitar too. And, I understand that music, hey it’s pretty fun, it’s pretty interesting, I like it. And, from there on, music has taken my heart. And, besides guitar and piano, I also play drums and bass. But, for me, composing and producing music is more of my passion. I don’t like playing as much. Making what I want is more my thing.

Steven: How did you get into doing electronic music? How did that get started?

Mewmore: Well, I got into electronic music at the same time as I got into remixing. It was late 2010. I was at my friend, Dasgust’s place for the new year. And back then, he used to make these Pokémon remixes with this program called FL Studio. And, I thought it was pretty awesome. I mean, with electronic music, you could do quite a lot of things you couldn’t do with instruments. And, I decided to give it a try. I made this remix of Pokémon Gold and Silver’s song called Union Cave. From there on, I’ve been making this Pokémon remixes. But also, I’ve been branching out to make original electronic music, for example.

Steven: Alright. Yeah, that’s pretty neat. Now, you mentioned Pokémon there. You were actually a little late in coming to that. You had watched the TV show, but how did you actually get into the games?

Mewmore: That also was because of Dasgust. He used to have, I think it was Emerald on Game Boy. And each time I was in his place, like back in 2005-2006, I used to play it quite a lot. And, before that, was only like the TV show for me. But, then I realized that the games, they were awesome. And as soon as DS came out, I think I bought it and then I bought Diamond/Pearl/Platinum. From then on, I’ve been playing the games as well.

Steven: Alright. That’s neat as well. So, there’s two songs that we have, of yours, that are on the station right now. The first one is Lisia’s theme. Lisia is from the contest portion of Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. Can you kind of explain how you ended up remixing that song?

Mewmore: Yeah. I think it was back in December. Back then, I used my Alpha Sapphire and I was at the part when the contests were introduced the first time and you got to meet Lisia. And, I thought that her theme was quite good. It was a bit all over the place, but the main melody was pretty cool. And, I decided to remix it because there was something good in the song. I wanted to bring it out. It’s quite a quick remix. I made it in the same style as I made this Battle Hall remix from Platinum. Both have these kind of piano chords and crispy bass, house beats and vibraphone as a lead. I think it turned out pretty fine.

Steven: Yeah, it is pretty good. It’s definitely gotten some good feedback on the station. And then, the other one you have is actually a collaboration with Dasgust, which is the “I Don’t Wanna Say Goodbye”, which is from the Mystery Dungeon game. How did that come about?

Mewmore: The demo of the song was made back in the beginning of this year, was Dasgust’s remix which he made before he went to Army. Then, on the summer time, me and Dasgust met. Usually, when we meet, we want to make music together, because we don’t meet as often. And, we were thinking what should we remix? Then, I said that you use to have that “I Don’t Wanna Say Goodbye” remix which you made. We could maybe take that. And he was like yeah, let’s do that. And yeah, we changed quite a lot of instruments. And of course, produced it a bit better. The cooperation usually with us goes like [we] send the song to each other and we like work. And usually, we do it in turns. Like, Dasgust makes something then he says now it’s your turn. I’m done with this. Then, I do something. Then, I send it back to Dasgust and so on. And, I think Dasgust mixed it and mastered it, because it has better plug-ins for that. And, he’s a bit better, I think, in production-wise.

Steven: Alright. And, of course, these are just a few of the songs you’ve done. Some of them, Pokemon related. But, also some other stuff. Why don’t you talk about some of the other songs you’ve worked on that you really like over the last couple years?

Mewmore: First of all, I want to mention Driftveil City from Black & White, which I uploaded just a week ago. I think it’s, so far, my best work in terms of production. It’s pretty good, I think. Of course, it’s just a week old, and it’s Electro-house type of music. And, I think it’s the best kind of view of what I’m capable of doing right now.

Then, I’ve got also this remix, also from Pokémon Black 2 & White 2, called Virbank City. And, I think that is my best work, composition-wise. Of course, since it’s made in 2013, it’s production of the song’s not as good as most of my others. But, I think it’s just something in the song.

Steven: Yeah, definitely. In the games, they do a very good job of giving each city its own character with a theme song for it. Which, is a great feature there. What other games have you done remixes of that aren’t Pokémon related? You’ve done a few out there.

Mewmore: Yeah. Recently, I thought about keeping Mewmore just as a Pokemon channel, Pokemon remixes. But lately, I’ve gotten into remixing music from other series as well, such as Zelda, Mario, Professor Layton, Animal Crossing. I’ve also remixed a song from Castlevania. And, on this other channel of mine, which was before Mewmore, I used to have songs from Final Fantasy, Earthbound, as well. But, Pokémon has usually been the game in which I work on the most.

Steven: That’s really neat. Obviously, it’s good to branch out. But, really like to hear things like that. Alright. Well, you mentioned your YouTube channel. You have a few other social media outlets. Why don’t you go over those right now?

Mewmore: Okay. First of all, Twitter, it’s @mewmore. I use Twitter quite a lot, and I think that’s the best way to contact me if you want to. I usually update about my future remixes, other stuff I’m going to do, on there first. So, be sure to check it out. And I also have SoundCloud where I upload some other songs. Usually song ideas, remixes of other songs than video game songs. I’ve got about 90 songs there. If you want to check that out as well, go on SoundCloud and type ‘Mewmore’. I’ve also got Tumblr, which I don’t use as much. I usually just post links on my YouTube songs there. And, I also think I’ve got Ask.fm. That’s also under the name Mewmore. If you want to ask me a question there, just go ahead. I don’t get too many questions in the first place. But yeah, those are pretty much the social accounts I use.

Steven: Well, hopefully you’ll get some more feedback in the future, after this interview. But, alright. Thank you very much, Mewmore. This has been Steven Reich from the Poke Press studios in Madison, Wisconsin on the phone with Mewmore, a remixer of video game music.

Transcript by GetTranscribed.com

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