PREPRODUCTION

How did you develop the idea for The Jazz Video Game Medley?

I released a video on March 9th where I covered the theme from Wii Music (one of my favorite games as a kid) with my friend Emily Gelineau, a fellow Berklee classmate. Shortly after, her friend Cristobal Cruz-Garcia reached out to me on Facebook and offered me time in Berklee’s Studio 1. Cristobal was an MPE (Music Production & Engineering) major at Berklee, and because this was his final semester, he was able to book Berklee’s Studio 1, which is Berklee’s largest space for recording music.

Initially, I was thinking about just doing a few tracks with a relatively small band of other musicians. At some point, though, I got the idea to go even grander than that! Inspired by the 8-Bit-Big Band, who had been posting their arrangements in the second half of 2018, I wanted to try my hand at a big arrangement, but still do something a little bit different. I knew that the 8-Bit-Big Band mainly did arrangements of single songs, so I thought I’d try my hand at a medley.

After thinking about what I could possibly do with the amount of studio time I was given, I initially planned on a five-movement video game medley, with each movement covering a different emotional focus of game music. This was narrowed down to three in the final product.

Approximately how long did the medley take from planning to final upload?

The last movement of the medley was uploaded on June 15th 2019, and the first conversation with Cristobal regarding the medley that I can think of must’ve happened on March 10th or 11th, shortly after the Wii Music cover came out. So, all in all, it was about a three month process!