Thought Process When It Comes to Picking the Songs

Dear Mom,

Hey. So I was driving around the other day listening to Glen Campbell. I know, there's nothing cooler than a Subaru blasting songs from a 60's Pop/Country star. I assure you I do actually have friends. It was making me think about something that Dad showed me a lot about, though.

A lot of my musical heroes exhibit the ability to pick good material. While there are many songwriters I really love, a lot of my favorites don't write and instead are great pickers and arrangers. While Glen was a great songwriter, a lot of his biggest hits were written by other people, namely Jimmy Webb.  Webb's version of Wichita Lineman and Galveston are very different from Campbell's versions and reveal a lot about Glen's talent for arranging songs. Other artists like Tony Rice showed this kind of musical talent. Tony played stuff written by everyone from Gordon Lightfoot to Bob Franke. He was a master of not only picking songs that fit his style but also turning them into his own music. There are a ton of other bands that I love (like the New Grass Revival, J.D. Crowe and the New South, Alison Krauss and Union Station, etc) that do this same thing. Picking amazing obscure material that will suite their style and arranging it to fit beautifully.

Dad taught me a lot about this when we'd listen to music together and it's a musical skill I really value. No one in our band writes very much so we try to practice this as much as we can. We put some weird stuff on our new album and I'm really proud of what we did. We took stuff from people like Jimmy Webb, Gordon Lightfoot, and Willie Nelson and broke them down and rearranged them to fit our style. it's really one of my favorite things to do as it presents a really satisfying music challenge.

I tried to do the same thing with these Zelda songs. I mean, part of the whole reason I picked Zelda was that it was still recognizable but not the obvious choice. If you mention video games around someone with an instrument they'll almost immediately play the super Mario theme. Which is a great tune but it's so over done. There are so many other interesting songs in the video game world! Even in the Mario world! If I was going to cover a Mario song it'd probably be the Character Select Screen from Super Mario Brothers 2. The songs I picked for this were a mix of classics and some pretty obscure ones (I even got a song from a game about Tingle, Link's mid-30's fairy hunting cartographer friend). I went back and forth with different lists for months and I cut a lot of really popular and maybe obvious songs for different reasons. While the strummy happy feel of the Dragon Roost Island theme might seem like a good choice, I really couldn't find a way to recreate it without just doing a straight cover. In other words, I couldn't think of a way to arrange it that would make it sound any different than the original recording. And that's really boring to my musical tastes. While there are some songs I picked and intend to arrange really close to their original versions, songs like Dragon Roost Island or Geurdo Valley just seemed too obvious. Songs that I think don't need to change much (because they're classics) like Zelda's Lullaby or the Title Screen from Link to the Past (but maybe the Link Between Worlds revamp because it's amazing) will still hold their undeniable music valley and have an obvious twist in that they're on acoustic instruments. But I'm really excited about adding subtle twists like turning Laruto's Lament into a progressive bluegrass instrumental or using twin fiddles to bluegrass-ify song like the Shooting Gallery or Horse Race.

What I'm really trying to do with this project, is show the value of two things I love. I want to show that video games and the music created for them is a valid art form worthy of respect and I want to show that it's possible to cover something so far removed from bluegrass in a style that completely honors the traditions of the music and style makes an enjoyable product both for people who already like bluegrass, and people who have never heard it. I really spent a lot of time going through the entire series picking songs and trying to strike a balance between songs that I know fans of the series would want to hear, songs that would translate well, songs that were good anyway, and songs that I could really do something special with. I know you won't know any of the songs but that's ok because I really want to make a stand alone product that isn't just a gimmick. I'm trying to make an album that is so good musically that it is simply enjoyable musically. But I also want fans of the series to hear these songs that they know and love in a new way that might make them see bluegrass music in a new light.

Love, Tristan

What uh, what is this?

I've been having a lot of trouble writing this blog. I have a lot of trouble writing in general. I think one of my biggest problems in general is not knowing who to address. So. I think I'm going to pretend that each blog post is me explaining this to my mother. my mother's scarce knowledge of both bluegrass and video games really makes her the perfect audience for a blog explaining a full length bluegrass cover album of songs from the Legend of Zelda. Which is what this is. By the way...

Hi Mom,

You know how you asked if I was doing any projects of my own yet? Well I've been working on this thing for awhile now that I'm really excited about. Those games I used to play all the time actually had really great music written for them. A few years ago, just for fun, i learned some of the songs on the mandolin. Like a particularly nerdy party trick. Some of them seemed cool and I had thought about one day maybe putting one on a CD or something. But about a year ago I thought "Why don't I just do a whole album of these songs". So I started trying to make it happen. I decided to do songs from one franchise I enjoyed in particular "The Legend of Zelda". It's the one with swords and castles and fairies and a wolf that one time. The music is really something special and a lot of those early songs I learned are from those games. I've been working on it for about a year now and have made. some progress. It was a situation where I learned from my mistakes. I'd never tried to organize something from the ground up like this and probably the biggest problem i ran into was managing other people. i have enough time managing my schedule and I do it almost entirely by tricking my brain into making responsible choices. This maneuver is much more difficult to use on other people. But it's getting there. I have a lot of the music written out. Ellie, the girl playing fiddle in our band is helping me transcribe and is going to do the fiddle parts. I have some wheels turning to get everything to line up and I'll keep you updated on how it's going.

Ok. I love you. Sorry I don't call more. 

-Tristan

P.S. Did you take those shoes to the cobbler yet? It's ok if you didn't but if he can get all the dust out of the suede it'd be cool. I liked those shoes. probably won't take them hiking again though.