Oreburgh Gate & Oreburgh Mine (Year of Sinnoh Patreon Exclusive) (Patreon)

tl;dr: Year of Sinnoh is resuming! Will be uploading covers every other week on main channel, and releasing Patreon-exclusive audio-only covers every week or so. I removed the $5 Year of Sinnoh tier since I wasn't able to keep up with providing the rewards for that tier, but I hope these Patreon exclusive tracks make up for it!

Hi all! It's great to be coming back with some more Sinnoh tracks! I've been taking a break lately from Sinnoh music (simply due to burnout reasons), but now that I've been stuck in quarantine, I feel ready continue on with the Sinnoh music! I still plan to release the Year of Sinnoh album on September 8th of this year (my 8 year channel anniversary), and I've got a lot of work to do before then!

Here's how I'm going to be progressing forward with the Year of Sinnoh:

1. I'll be keeping the upload schedule on the channel locked to every other Saturday. I'll be reserving these upload slots on the channel for Sinnoh songs that I know quite a few people want to see and will likely perform well as individual videos, such as Champion Cynthia, Eterna Forest (Remake), Veilstone City, and Giratina Battle! All these uploads will be Sinnoh uploads - I know this will alienate some viewers, but I've got to finish this album, it's very important to me!

2. In addition to these bi-weekly uploads, here on Patreon, I'll also be posting exclusive audio-only covers of some less popular songs from Sinnoh that I still want to cover and include on the album! Making these audio-only covers will enable me to fit in more themes that I want to cover without needing to go through the effort of editing a video and setting up to film a video for every song (for example, I finished recording this Oreburgh Gate / Mine cover in just a day, which would have probably taken 2 or 3 days if I had also shot video!) All the songs uploaded on Patreon will make their way to the full album when it's released on September 8th, but only Patrons will have access to them before the album's release. These audio-only covers will ideally be released weekly on Wednesdays, but depending on what I'm working on for the main channel, that might have to be pushed to bi-weekly.

I structured this system intentionally to create an accountability system for myself to keep producing these Year of Sinnoh videos! I think a full video every two weeks, and a smaller audio-only cover every week or two weeks is certainly manageable (especially since I'm stuck at home), and will help me finish this album in the way I want!

I've removed the $5 Year of Sinnoh Behind the Scenes tier, since I was unable to maintain the rewards that I promised at that tier. If anyone was pledged at the $5 tier specifically for Year of Sinnoh, you're free to unpledge or change your amount! I hope that these exclusive audio-only tracks will be worth your while!

As for some commentary on these specific tracks that I put together: Oreburgh Gate and Oreburgh Mine are some of Sinnoh's spookiest songs. They play when you're going around various caves and dark areas in the Sinnoh region. I've always really liked these themes since they have great melodies and very colorful harmony, so I wanted to retain all of that in my arrangement! I knew that in my arrangements, I didn't want to go over the top with either of these tunes, so I decided to put them together in a medley of sorts to depict the experience of going through a cave in the Sinnoh region. I was particularly inspired by tracks such as Black Narcissus by Joe Henderson (that's where I got the bass, brush drums, and rhodes texture from), as well "I Asked" from Snarky Puppy's Family Dinner Volume 2 record (I took some techniques that the percussionist used in that recording including putting objects on top of my drums, and using brushes on a set of congas!). I'm glad that I got to arrange these two tracks; it was so much fun transcribing the cool harmonies that these tracks use. It's no wonder why I like jazz harmony so much considering I played Diamond and Pearl so much as a kid, haha...

Thanks all - see you with a new video on Saturday and a new audio-only Sinnoh tune next Wednesday!