What makes an 80's dance song a good fit for the trailer of a Pokémon movie? As it turns out, "Holding Out For A Hero" has a number of features and parallels to Detective Pikachu, some of which weren't even used:
Transcript:
With a driving beat and dramatic vocals, “Holding Out For A Hero” makes a great trailer song. In the case of Detective Pikachu, it’s used to showcase the more action-packed elements of the film. With shots from the Roundhouse, the lab, and the climax of the movie, the music helps sell that this isn’t simply a low-key crime story. There are lyrical parallels as well-the hook of the song responds to Tim’s statement that he doesn’t need a Pokémon, and the trailer makes a fairly obvious use of “like a fire in my blood”. To be honest, though, they could have gone even further, as “someone somewhere watching me” is definitely true for our heroes, and the references to thunder and lightning are just begging to be used. Then again, there’s only so much you can fit in a trailer. In any case, what are your thoughts on this pairing? Be sure to let us know. Thanks.
I recently had an opportunity to interview Jonathan Gamra of The Consouls, a video game cover band from Australia. Earlier this month, they posted a version of “Imakuni?’s Theme” from the Pokémon Trading Card Game for Game Boy, and I wanted to learn more about it.
Where are you from, and how did the band get started?
We're based in Sydney. Our keyboard player Zorsy had his own channel about a decade ago where he uploaded solo piano covers of VGM on YouTube. Eventually he found me and the other members and we started the Consouls project in 2014.
How would you describe the overall style of the band? What are your musical influences?
We consider our genre “video game jazz”, but we dabble in other genres too. We’re heavily influenced by a lot of soul, R’n’B, and fusion.
How do you pick which songs to arrange/cover?
We have a monthly show called “Consouls Radio” where we pick a theme and Patrons vote on tunes they would like to see within that theme. Past examples have included JRPGs, SEGA music, vocal anime covers, etc. That accounts for about half of what we cover, the other half we pick ourselves.
Why did you choose to cover "Imakuni?'s Theme" from the Pokemon TCG game?
June was our birthday month and for Consouls Radio the theme was “anything goes”. Our guitarist Jono really liked the tune so we picked it.
Was there a specific philosophy or methodology for how the song was arranged?
Often times we’ll take inspiration from other tunes that we like or think will work over a video game tune, but this was more about expanding on the parts of the original that sound good and would be fun to play over.
How did you get from that to the final product?
Once Jono finished the arrangement, the band got a lead sheet, which is essentially a reduced version of the melody and chords. At that point, we played through it many times to decide how we wanted the whole arrangement to sound.
Are there any specific parts of the song that you wanted to point out?
The solo section follows a 12-bar blues form under the riff which akes it a little easier to play while still holding the core of the arrangement. You’ll see that a lot in a of jazz arrangements, even if the tunes aren’t 12-bar blues, because it’s just a progression to solo over with plenty of room for the band to react to the soloist and build from.
What are some other songs you've covered recently?
Some highlights include a lo-fi cover of “Zanarkand” from Final Fantasy X and a funky take on “Life Will Change” from Persona 5.
How has the pandemic affected the band?
We're working completely remotely at the moment as we’re in lockdown. Since we can’t record as a full band we're experimenting in other genres like the aforementioned lo-fi and soon, chiptune!
Where can you be found online?
Despite the pandemic we're still pumping out uploads every week on our channel and almost as frequently on music services like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music. You can find us on social networks under @theconsoulsband.
Pokémon is an old enough franchise that some of its music was released on cassette when the format was still (somewhat) current. That said, the number of titles released on the format isn't particularly large, especially on the Japanese side, where "Together With The Wind" is one of the few examples:
In this episode, Anne from Pikapi Podcast drops by to talk about the music of Pokémon Colosseum, the first of many Pokémon games by Genius Sonority. With its western-inspired setting, it gives us plenty to compare to, especially from the world of film. If you want to know what we thought of the game itself, be sure to listen after the outro:
In this episode, Anne from Pikapi Podcast helps me cover the extensive and varied soundtrack of Pokemon Channel. While the game itself isn't exactly well-regarded, the music gives us plenty to talk about, both in terms of production and style. To find out what we thought of the gameplay, be sure to listen after the outro:
In this episode, Anne from Pikapi Podcast drops by to discuss the music of Pokemon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire. This Game Boy Advance sequel takes a rather different approach to its soundtrack, but that doesn’t stop us from making some interesting observations. As usual, we discuss the game itself after the outro:
In this between-generations discussion, Anne from Pikapi Podcast drops by to analyze the music of Super Smash Bros. for the N64 and Melee for the GameCube. While these early entries don't have the sheer volume of content featured in later iterations, there's still plenty to cover, even if we did have to include a "wish list" song. As usual, we discuss the games themselves after the outro:
Anne from Pikapi Podcast joins in to discuss the music of Pokemon Stadium 2 for the N64. While not as well-known as its predecessor, there’s still a lot of material to cover, both on the battling side as well as in the minigames. Honestly, it’s pretty impressive for a game with only a single composer. If you want to know what we thought of the game itself, be sure to listen after the outro:
In the first segment (1:18-12:33), I interview Veronica Weygandt, a percussionist who's done several covers of Pokemon music. Despite being relatively early in her career, we still had a lot to talk about, including how percussion is much more than just drums, how those instruments have been brought into the digital realm, and how she's revisited some of her earlier work.
Our second segment (13:43-1:10:11) is a discussion of the music of Pokemon Puzzle Challenge for the Game Boy Color. While most of this title is similar to its N64 counterpart, the music definitely isn't, and Anne from Pikapi Podcast was happy to help me cover it. As usual, we have a game discussion after the outro:
Percussionist Veronica Weygandt (V-Ron Media) joins me to discuss her history as a musician, experience with Pokemon, and recent covers of music from Pokemon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire, and Pokemon X/Y:
Transcript:
Steven: Hi folks, Steven here. I'm on the phone with Veronica Weygandt, who is a percussion teacher, but more directly relevant she has been doing a number of Pokemon covers. We're going to talk about a couple in particular. She recently did a cover of the "Duskull Graveyard" theme from "Pokemon Pinball: Ruby and Sapphire" for Halloween a few weeks ago, but that's just one of the things we're going to talk about. But first of all, Veronica where are you from and how did you get into doing music?
Veronica: I'm from Spartanburg, South Carolina and I actually got into music...my father just retired as a band director, so when I was growing up, like if we were cleaning the house, instead of just whatever's on the radio we would have music such as 80's pop or jazz or classical or romantic era music playing in the background, so I grew up listening to a large variety of different types of genres of music.
Steven: And what was your sort of formal training like? Did you take instrument lessons as a kid, or how did that work out?
Veronica: So I started-dad and I would kind of play around at our piano in the living room, but then I did start band in fourth grade and I played percussion in band class through high school, and then in high school I actually joined a class called "percussion ensemble" so instead of sitting in the back of the band room every day. we all played on percussion instruments the whole time, so it was only percussionists in the class, so we got some specialized instruction, which is always kind of nice.
Steven: Yeah, it's always nice when you can get that sort of specialized training there. What were sort of your main instruments because a lot of folks they think, "percussion? Oh that's just drums," but it's actually a fairly wide array of instruments. What were some of the ones you learned back then?
Veronica: Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that, because sometimes people just say, "I need a drummer," or you'll get piano players that can only play mallets, but I'm thankful that I get to play a lot of them, such as the marimba, the vibraphone, xylophone, bells/glockenspiel which are all under mallets, and then I did some snare drums, some concert snare drum and rudimental marching snare drum, and some bass drum and other auxiliary...or the toy instruments like triangle and tambourine. I also learned to play timpani and drum set.
Steven: That's a really great variety there. I think you mentioned a little bit about marching band there. Have you ever had to perform at sporting events? What's that like?
Veronica: So, my freshman year of high school I was in the front ensemble, and I played marimba and then I marched a bass drum for one year and snare drum for two years, and now I actually work at that same high school and now I teach for the front ensemble.
Steven: That is a neat little circle of life there, I suppose. All right, well let's talk about the Pokemon side-how did you get introduced to that franchise?
Veronica: So, funny enough I was actually obsessed with "A Bug's Life" as a kid, and my parents couldn't get me to watch anything but "A Bug's Life" and then one day they showed me the first Pokemon movie and specifically the "[Pikachu's] Vacation" special, and then I became obsessed with Pokemon. That was followed by the whole movie, starting the cartoon or anime, and then I got a little bit into "Pokemon Silver" and "Pokemon Red and Blue", but I mainly played a lot of the side games, such as "Pokemon Stadium", "Pokemon Stadium 2"-I love the minigames-and "Pokemon Snap" is always dear to my heart.
Steven: Yeah, especially that first generation, they did really experiment with what they could do with the Pokemon franchise, and the side games really do show that. We're hopefully seeing more of that now with the "New Pokemon Snap" and whatnot, but moving on let's talk about your little YouTube channel that you created-how did that get started?
Veronica: I started it back in college-my junior year, I believe my third year of college-and I just started out kind of messing around on the piano figuring out what I could do and what I couldn't do, and then I would put that into a music writing software or notation software-I use Finale, some people use Musescore or Sibelius but dad had Finale, so I just always learned Finale-and then I would export that when I finished it. I would export it as a MIDI file-it's an electronic sound font or so-and I would import that into Garageband, and then I would mess around with the library samples to see what instruments those sounds sounded on the best. Then I would just upload those to YouTube, so it was all electronic based when I started, but last December I got what's called a Vibekat, and it's actually an electronic vibraphone that comes with a bunch of different sounds such as xylophone, bells, and a bunch of other things that I've mentioned previously, and now instead of filling up a room with a bunch of different big percussion instruments, I can just change the channel on this one Vibekat, so it's really useful for recording, and now I can perform in my studio and have it feel more like a live recording.
Steven: Yeah, one thing if folks look at your more recent videos, you do that sort of split-screen thing where you're performing each part of the of the composition and stuff like that, so it's it's really interesting how that's evolved over time.
Veronica: Yeah, and I do want to point out one more thing is that a lot of different percussion instruments-specifically mallets-use different mallets on the mallet instruments, such as the xylophone uses harder mallets whereas marimba you use yarn mallets-it's just softer mallets. And so, even though I'm performing on the same instrument, I still use the different mallets in each part so you can tell the instruments apart on the screen, such as the top left or bottom right.
Steven: That'll be a great thing for folks to look for the next time they watch one of your videos. That's pretty interesting. All right, well let's talk about one of your covers in particular. The one you put out at the end of October for Halloween was the "Duskull Graveyard" theme from "Pokemon Pinball: Ruby and Sapphire". Now, I do know that you had earlier done a cover of "Lavender Town" from "[Pokemon] Red and Blue" which is sort of the default Halloween thing that a lot of folks do. So. aside from having done that already, what made you choose this one for for this year's Halloween?
Veronica: I've always loved the spin-off games-like i mentioned previously with "Pokemon Snap"-and I was actually watching a live stream on YouTube of someone playing "Pokemon Pinball", and that sort of gave me some inspiration because I had been looking for something I was thinking maybe "Jack's Theme" from "Animal Crossing" because I've done a bunch of "Animal Crossing" arrangements, but I just really love "Pokemon Pinball Ruby [and] Sapphire", and when I heard the "Duskull Graveyard" theme, I was like, "oh, that's it." I mean I get that feeling and that you pulled into it and then suddenly you lose a couple days in the studio. That's how that works.
Steven: Yeah, inspiration can often strike in a manner like that where you just happen across something and you realize it's exactly what you've been looking for, and it sounds like that's what happened there. Are there any particular parts of the cover that you wanted to call out that were interesting or difficult or you learned something from?
Veronica: Yeah, a couple things come to mind. The first thing is in the original version that's in the game, some of the instruments are actually a little bit out of time in the melody. The clarinets are not with the bass part-the bass line per se. It's electronic so it's a little hard to figure out what instrument it is sometimes in the older games, but in my arrangement I still played it in time, and at first I wasn't sure if that was going to work out or not, but in the end it did and I'm really glad that it did. I think it sounds better from a 2020 performance.
Steven: Yeah, it can be a little difficult sometimes to tell exactly what they meant there. Obviously they were trying to have a little bit of fun-we're talking about a graveyard you know in a Pokemon game not Silent Hill, so it's going to be a little bit different there, but yeah it sounds like you did some experimentation there and took some risks and sounds like you're happy with the result, which is you know an important thing for musicians to do sometimes.
Veronica: Yeah, one thing I'm really happy with is the part where the drum set comes in because before it's just kind of spooky and ominous with [just] the auxiliary instruments-the triangle, the claves and the wood block and and just the marimba and the bass marimba part and xylophone on the melody, and you're like, "oh, is that it is it over?" And then the drum set comes in and the melody doubles on vibraphone and bells and it just kind of builds, and then towards the end the marimba changes to four mallets and it just becomes an epic ending of sorts, and I'm really happy with how it built up the entire time.
Steven: Yeah, you had a great experience, which you know given that making a video like that is a is a lot of work, I'm glad you have some positive emotions to show for it. All right, well you did another Pokemon cover recently. Do you want to talk a little bit about that one? It's from "[Pokemon] X and Y".
Veronica: So, "Laverre City" was actually the very first arrangement I did for my channel, and after graduating college and growing as both a musician and an arranger, there are some things I felt like i could do better, especially now that I have microphones and proper recording equipment and the Vibekat. Now I could do it for my main instrument-percussion ensemble-rather than just plugging it into Garageband and figuring out what kind of worked the best but wasn't really what I wanted, now I could really do what I wanted, so I upped the tempo a little bit and I had some fun with that. I had a pretty challenging marimba part-I had to practice those notes quite a bit-but I'm really happy with how that turned out at the end. I had a nice blend with the bass marimba and piano as well. I've gotten a lot better piano this year too. so I was able to put all those things together, and I was really happy with that.
Steven: Absolutely-the more you practice the better you get. That's true for pretty much anything. Alright, well anything else you're planning on doing in the near future that you wanted to share with the audience?
Veronica: I'm planning on doing "Snowbelle City" sometime in December or January to fit the wintry theme. It's going to be kind of similar to "Laverre City", but I'm going to have a lot more auxiliary instruments in this and I'm really excited to show some of those off for sure, and I'm probably going to do some Animal Crossing too, maybe "Turkey Day" hopefully I can get that out on Thanksgiving, and a couple others as well, one that I'm really excited for.
Steven: Yeah, "Animal Crossing" another big one on your channel there, so if folks are interested in that great place to look. Speaking of which, why don't you go ahead-what's your YouTube channel name and also why don't you tell us, do you have any social media accounts yeah you can find me on YouTube at "V-ron Media" , and if you go on my YouTube channel you can find my social media in my banner or you can look it up on site so on Facebook it's @vronmediamusic at Twitter it's @vronmediamusic and then if you want to follow me on Instagram my personal account is @vlweygandtand it's mostly updates on my channel along with pictures of my cats.
Steven: All right, well thank you very much Veronica-it's been great having you on.
Veronica: Thank you for having me-I really appreciate it.
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