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.
Steven: Alright folks, thanks.
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