My Recent Violin YouTube Covers
Ever since February 2012, I've been making small violin YouTube covers of video game tunes or pieces I was learning or that I wrote. With having known several violin YouTubers like StringPlayerGamer or Patti Rudisill and several general music YouTubers like insaneintherainmusic and my good harpist friend Caitlin Thom, I've always been inspired to try making regular music covers on my YouTube channel again. This is to start to make more professional videos using Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro, give me a good reason to pull out my violin (and hopefully start doing it every day), keep up my transcribing chops, and inspire myself and maybe a few others musically in the process. While lately I've also been adding piano, guitar, and melodica to the mix, as well as occasionally small percussion instruments I have lying around the house, the one consistent thing is my violin, and it's so great to be able to choose something I want to learn, and produce a video for it.
In this post, I thought I'd just chat a little about my three most-recent covers I've done thus far. While I was hoping to continue these every week, I also have lots of projects I want to work on, so we'll see how it goes. You can also check my YouTube channel homepage (CityFolk66) to see all my covers organized in playlists, as well as lots of Animal Crossing videos... sorry... Nintendo just announced a cafe and other features for a free update in November, so I'm very excited...
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"Fi's Theme" - Zelda: Skyward Sword
This track was actually a spur of the moment thing, and I just played by ear. I just finished playing through the Skyward Sword HD remaster on Switch, and this was one of my favorite themes from it, so I knew the melody well. Plus, for the middle section when the four violins come in and the melodica has the melody, I was inspired by the lovely wash of strings for this game's Fairy Fountain/File Select music. I tried to make it sound somewhat "ancient" and a little melancholy.
"Pounce Bounce Isle" - Bowser's Fury
I adore this game's soundtrack! There's tons of violin/strings moments featured alongside lots of big band instruments here, so I did my best to capture that super fun feel that makes me smile to hear it - a perfect "Mario" representation! I made my arrangement as close to the source material as possible, with the solo violin and pizzicato moments exactly how they were there. I had to improvise the orchestration for the melodica and piano parts, as I did not have a trombone or flutes handy. I'm still pleased with how it came out, and had fun with some quirky editing to (again) fit the Mario mood.
"Searching for Friends" - Final Fantasy VI
This was my first Final Fantasy I watched through after being introduced to the series through its music - I even blogged about it here in September 2014, the month I started watching the game! Anyways, back then, while I loved the entire soundtrack Uematsu crafted, this was one of my favorite tracks. Like with the Mario track, now with 16-bit sounds to go on, I arranged it as close to the SNES original as I could. The strings were simple chords, where I just recorded myself multiple times and layered it all together. A tedious process to record, but sounds great in the end! Then, I played the melody in my guitar, and for the keyboard I wrote in numbers to change the output sound. I added some of Logic's software instruments with it because it sounded just like when I record a game from the 3DS or TV speakers, seeing as my keyboard output its sound from its speakers. Still, I'm happy with the final result here, and am excited to cover more Final Fantasy music in the future.
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I hope you enjoyed some of these! Again, I've done plenty more in the past and have plenty more for the future - check my YouTube channel for the details! It's fun to have a list of things to pick from and record. I may also get back to recording excerpts from the classical music world, such as Paganini 24 I started teaching myself through earlier this summer. But yeah, I'm super excited for the rest of this year of music-making through arranging, composing, and performing. We'll see where any of this may lead in the future!
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