Poke Press Digest Podcast: Episode 51-Discussing the Music of "Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red/Blue Rescue Team"

In this episode, Anne from Pikapi Podcast joins me to talk about the music of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red & Blue Rescue Team. These initial entries in Pokémon's most successful side series have a number of interesting facets, including being the only side games with a full-on remake, which adds a third version to every tune. Luckily, the two of us are more than up to the task of covering this soundtrack. If you still need more though, we have the usual game discussion after the outro:

Links:

Pikapi Podcast

Poke Casters Network

Poke Press Digest Podcast: Episode 49.5-Discussing the music of "Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness"

In this episode, Anne from Pikapi Podcast helps me talk about the music of Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness for the GameCube. While it may seem like a slightly expanded version of Colosseum, there's actually a ton of new audio content to cover, with our selections highlighting new areas, new characters, and of course, Shadow Lugia. On top of all that, there's the usual game discussion after the outro:

Links:

Pam Sheyne Interview

Pikapi Podcast

Poke Casters Network

Poke Press Digest Podcast: Episode 50-Discussing Pokemon Trozei Music/Insert Pokemon Song Here

In the first segment (1:45-15:21), Anne from Pikapi Podcast drops by to discuss the music of Pokemon Trozei for the Nintendo DS. While the soundtrack isn't the most extensive, it's certainly worth talking about, with some interesting stylistic choices. As usual, there's a game discussion after the episode outro.

In the second segment, Anne and I return to bat around some ideas about songs related to Pokémon movies, but not actually in them. I propose putting "Makin' My Way" into the dock scene of Pokemon: The First Movie, and Anne tries to find a place for "I Am A Collector" in Revelation Lugia (The Power of One). Both ideas have their merits, so listen in and decide for yourself:

Links:

Pikapi Podcast

The Soundtrack Show

Poke Casters Network

Poke Press Digest Podcast: Episode 49-Paul Umbach/Neal Coomer

First (1:15-20:25), there's an interview with Paul Umbach, co-producer of Aaron Carter's "(Have Some) Fun With The Funk" from the Pokemon: The First Movie soundtrack. In addition to discussing the song, we cover Paul's lengthy musical career, including his time at Jive Records.

Our second segment (21:40-31:47) is an archival interview with Neal Coomer, co-performer of "It's Always You And Me" from the fifth generation of the anime. We talk about that song, as well as his thoughts on being a background vocalist for other singers, and even his video game work:

Links:

Paul's Website

Neal's Channel

Poke Casters Network

Interview: Paul Umbach (Co-Producer, "(Have Some) Fun With The Funk")

In one of his early assignments at Jive Records, Paul Umbach helped record Aaron Carter's "(Have Some) Fun With The Funk", a song that would later appear on the double-platinum soundtrack to Pokemon: The First Movie. During his time at the the label, Paul had an opportunity to meet and work with several well-known musicians of the era, and has done quite a few things since:

Paul's Website

The most popular Pokémon movies-according to iTunes US search results

While there's no truly objective way to determine which Pokémon movie is the most popular, I thought I could potentially gain some insights by monitoring the order of results for Pokémon movies on the US store. Each day for a 10-day period from 8/22 to 8/31, I did a search for "Pokemon" on the US iTunes store, and noted the rankings:

Movie	Average Rank	Standard Deviation
Pokémon: Detective Pikachu	1	0
Pokémon: The First Movie	2	0
3-movie pack (Detective Pkachu/Small Foot/Lego Movie 2)	3.2	0.422
Pokémon 2000: The Power of One	3.8	0.422
Pokémon: Lucario and the Mystery of Mew	5	0
Pokémon 3	6.4	0.516
Pokémon: Hoopa and the Clash of Ages	6.9	0.734
Pokémon: Arceus and the Jewel of Life	8.1	1.101
Pokémon: I Choose You!	9.4	1.506
Pokémon: The Rise of Darkrai	10.7	1.337
Pokémon: Genesect and the Legend Awakened	11.3	1.059
Pokémon Ranger and the Temple of the Sea	12.1	1.287
Pokémon: Giratina and the Sky Warrior	12.3	3.653
Pokémon: Zoroark: Ruler of Illusions	14.3	0.675
Pokémon: Kyurem and the Swords of Justice	14.8	1.229
Pokémon: Diance and the Cocoon of Destruction	16	0.816
Pokémon the Movie White: Victini and Zekrom	16.4	1.265
Pokémon: The Power of Us	17.6	0.699
Pokémon: Volcanion and the Mechanical Marvel	18.8	0.789
Pokémon the Movie Black: Victini and Reshiram	19.9	0.316
Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution	21	0

Raw Data

Average Rank: The title's average position across all ten days. Lower numbers appeared earlier.

Standard Deviation: Average variance in rank over the 10-day period. Higher numbers indicate greater variability in rank.

Notes:

-Movies four through seven (originally distributed by Miramax) are not currently available on iTunes US and therefore are not ranked.

-Each day's ranking was obtained by searching "Pokemon" on the US iTunes store on my iPhone between 11am and 1pm Central time.

-Based on my long-term observations, search ranking appears to be a function of relevancy and sales. There's no guarantee that all the movies are considered equally relevant.

Observations and theories on specific movies:

Pokémon Detective Pikachu: Unsurprising that the movie with by far the highest box office gross would rank the highest.

Pokémon: The First Movie: Also not surprising given the cultural status of this film.

3-movie pack/Pokémon 2000: These have a tendency to swap places.

Pokémon: Lucario and the Mystery of Mew: Likely benefits from being well-loved by fans, and also being the last 4Kids-produced movie.

Pokémon: Hoopa and the Clash of Ages: Somewhat surprisingly high given the general reputation of the XY-generation movies. It may have benefited from Hoopa-related events in Pokémon Go, but I honestly think Hoopa is one of the more popular Pokémon from that era, and the podcast episode discussing that movie's music is reasonably popular.

Pokémon the Movie Black/White: Obviously at a disadvantage since a large number of consumers will buy just one instead of both. I did find it interesting that "Zekrom" consistently ranked above "Reshiram". Perhaps it benefited from the limited theatrical showing in the US.

Pokémon: The Power of Us: Rather surprising (and disappointing) to see this well-regarded film so close to the bottom. I have heard that it grossed significantly less than "I Choose You!", probably due to having less of a "hook". I still maintain that they should have at least used the more recognizable western version of Lugia's theme in the score, if possible.

Pokémon: Mewtwo Strikes Back Evolution: While it obviously has the (sales) disadvantage of being easily available on and closely associated with Netflix, seeing it consistently at the bottom of the list suggests that despite its popularity on the service, much of the public doesn't feel compelled to purchase it, at least digitally.

Poke Press Digest Podcast: Episode 48-Discussing the Music of "Pokemon Dash"/Nick McKaig

In the first segment (1:17-35:20), Anne from Pikapi Podcast helps me discuss the music of Pokemon Dash, the first Nintendo DS Pokemon game. While this racer certainly isn't the most memorable Pokemon title, that didn't stop us from finding plenty to talk about. As usual, there's a game discussion after the outro.

Our second segment (36:25-43:17) is an archival interview with Nick McKaig, a musician I interviewed all the way back in 2011, when he released an acapella cover of the English Pokemon theme. As you'd expect, we also talk about his musical history, and some of the other songs he’s covered, ranging from TV themes to classical music.

Links:

Pikapi Podcast

Nick's Channel

Poke Casters Network

Why It Works: Holding Out For A Hero

What makes an 80's dance song a good fit for the trailer of a Pokémon movie? As it turns out, "Holding Out For A Hero" has a number of features and parallels to Detective Pikachu, some of which weren't even used:

Transcript:

With a driving beat and dramatic vocals, “Holding Out For A Hero” makes a great trailer song. In the case of Detective Pikachu, it’s used to showcase the more action-packed elements of the film. With shots from the Roundhouse, the lab, and the climax of the movie, the music helps sell that this isn’t simply a low-key crime story. There are lyrical parallels as well-the hook of the song responds to Tim’s statement that he doesn’t need a Pokémon, and the trailer makes a fairly obvious use of “like a fire in my blood”. To be honest, though, they could have gone even further, as “someone somewhere watching me” is definitely true for our heroes, and the references to thunder and lightning are just begging to be used. Then again, there’s only so much you can fit in a trailer. In any case, what are your thoughts on this pairing? Be sure to let us know. Thanks.

Interview: The Consouls

I recently had an opportunity to interview Jonathan Gamra of The Consouls, a video game cover band from Australia. Earlier this month, they posted a version of “Imakuni?’s Theme” from the Pokémon Trading Card Game for Game Boy, and I wanted to learn more about it.

Where are you from, and how did the band get started?

We're based in Sydney. Our keyboard player Zorsy had his own channel about a decade ago where he uploaded solo piano covers of VGM on YouTube. Eventually he found me and the other members and we started the Consouls project in 2014.

How would you describe the overall style of the band? What are your musical influences?

We consider our genre “video game jazz”, but we dabble in other genres too. We’re heavily influenced by a lot of soul, R’n’B, and fusion.

How do you pick which songs to arrange/cover?

We have a monthly show called “Consouls Radio” where we pick a theme and Patrons vote on tunes they would like to see within that theme. Past examples have included JRPGs, SEGA music, vocal anime covers, etc. That accounts for about half of what we cover, the other half we pick ourselves.

Why did you choose to cover "Imakuni?'s Theme" from the Pokemon TCG game?

June was our birthday month and for Consouls Radio the theme was “anything goes”. Our guitarist Jono really liked the tune so we picked it.

Was there a specific philosophy or methodology for how the song was arranged?

Often times we’ll take inspiration from other tunes that we like or think will work over a video game tune, but this was more about expanding on the parts of the original that sound good and would be fun to play over.

How did you get from that to the final product?

Once Jono finished the arrangement, the band got a lead sheet, which is essentially a reduced version of the melody and chords. At that point, we played through it many times to decide how we wanted the whole arrangement to sound.

Are there any specific parts of the song that you wanted to point out?

The solo section follows a 12-bar blues form under the riff which akes it a little easier to play while still holding the core of the arrangement. You’ll see that a lot in a of jazz arrangements, even if the tunes aren’t 12-bar blues, because it’s just a progression to solo over with plenty of room for the band to react to the soloist and build from.

What are some other songs you've covered recently?

Some highlights include a lo-fi cover of “Zanarkand” from Final Fantasy X and a funky take on “Life Will Change” from Persona 5.

How has the pandemic affected the band?

We're working completely remotely at the moment as we’re in lockdown. Since we can’t record as a full band we're experimenting in other genres like the aforementioned lo-fi and soon, chiptune!

Where can you be found online?

Despite the pandemic we're still pumping out uploads every week on our channel and almost as frequently on music services like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music. You can find us on social networks under @theconsoulsband.

Unboxing the "Together With The Wind" Cassingle

Pokémon is an old enough franchise that some of its music was released on cassette when the format was still (somewhat) current. That said, the number of titles released on the format isn't particularly large, especially on the Japanese side, where "Together With The Wind" is one of the few examples:

Poke Press Digest Podcast: Episode 47-Discussing the Music of "Pokemon Colosseum"

In this episode, Anne from Pikapi Podcast drops by to talk about the music of Pokémon Colosseum, the first of many Pokémon games by Genius Sonority. With its western-inspired setting, it gives us plenty to compare to, especially from the world of film. If you want to know what we thought of the game itself, be sure to listen after the outro:

Links:

Pikapi Podcast

Poke Casters Network

Pokemon Colosseum Walkthrough (partial)

Poke Press Digest Podcast: Episode 46-Discussing the Music of "Pokemon Channel"

In this episode, Anne from Pikapi Podcast helps me cover the extensive and varied soundtrack of Pokemon Channel. While the game itself isn't exactly well-regarded, the music gives us plenty to talk about, both in terms of production and style. To find out what we thought of the gameplay, be sure to listen after the outro:

Links:

Pikapi Podcast

First Movie music discussion

Poke Casters Network

Unboxing the "Telepizza" Pokémon Promo CD

Back near the turn of the century, a Spanish pizza chain did a cross-promotion with Pokémon and produced a promotional music CD. I recently purchased one so I could find out what it was like:

Poke Press Digest Podcast: Episode 45-Discussing the Music of Pokemon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire

In this episode, Anne from Pikapi Podcast drops by to discuss the music of Pokemon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire. This Game Boy Advance sequel takes a rather different approach to its soundtrack, but that doesn’t stop us from making some interesting observations. As usual, we discuss the game itself after the outro:

Links:

Pikapi Podcast

Poke Casters Network

Poke Press Digest Podcast: Episode 44-Discussing the music of Super Smash Bros. 64 & Melee

In this between-generations discussion, Anne from Pikapi Podcast drops by to analyze the music of Super Smash Bros. for the N64 and Melee for the GameCube. While these early entries don't have the sheer volume of content featured in later iterations, there's still plenty to cover, even if we did have to include a "wish list" song. As usual, we discuss the games themselves after the outro:

Links:

Pikapi Podcast

Poke Casters Network

Accelerating Premiere Elements rendering using an external GPU

Back in 2020, I decided to finally get with the times and attempt to start putting out videos in 1080p. I've had cameras capable of filming at 1080p for a long time, but I've generally downscaled to 720p since that's a common phone resolution (and it allows me to easily fake a multi-camera setup by zooming in on the footage-hope you never noticed), but with larger phone screens and TV viewing of online video becoming more common, I decided I needed to put in the effort to make the jump.

After reworking some elements (the zooming logo and a number of titles needed to be remade), Why it Works: The Chosen One became the first of my 1080p uploads. While the video turned out fine, the rendering time was much longer-1080p does have roughly twice as many pixels as 720p, after all. I wanted to do something about that, but having upgraded the memory and internal storage of my computer (a Lenovo T420) in 2019, I wasn't too keen on buying a new computer that seemed sufficiently fast for everything except rendering video.

Basically, I had two ideas: I could either upgrade the CPU in my machine (in addition to the officially supported dual-core options, it's also possible to use a quad-core processor in my computer), or look at the possibility of using an external GPU. When I first looked in 2020, the former wasn't appealing for various reasons, and the latter (or rather, GPU acceleration in general) wasn't supported by my video editing software.

After a few more excruciatingly long video rendering sessions, I decided to take another look. As it turns out, within the last year Premiere Elements (I'd need a computer with a newer processor architecture to use Premiere Pro) added GPU acceleration support. While I couldn't find any confirmation that an external GPU would be supported, I decided to take the plunge and see what I could do. It involved buying a number of new pieces of hardware:

1. JMT EXP GDC Notebook External PCI-E Discrete Graphics Beast Series External Laptop Docking Station Mini

Not wanting to open my computer to fiddle with the wi-fi card, I decided to go with the ExpressCard option (I do have a USB 3.0 card for that slot, but I've rarely used it).

2. NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti

According to Adobe's documentation, only a fairly limited set of GPUs are supported for acceleration. I cross-referenced this with a list of known builds, and narrowed things down to a few possibilities. Given my computer's relatively old CPU, it wouldn't have made much sense to buy a super-high-end card since it likely wouldn't have been used anywhere near its full potential. Additionally, the current GPU market has some rather high prices (due to a combination of factors), so moving to the lower end of the spectrum was prudent in that regard as well.

3. Dell DA-2 power supply

While there are multiple options for powering the GPU dock, this seems to be the preferred one. Luckily, it wasn't too hard to order one, and I was able to get a unit that was basically unused.

4. 6-pin power cable and extension

The graphics card I bought requires additional power, so I needed cables to connect it to the port on the dock. Apparently 6-pin-to-6-pin connections aren't common outside of this context, so the cable I needed was a bit of a special part. Additionally, since the power port on the top of the card is actually on the other side of the card from the dock's output, I realized I would need an extension cable to reach it.

Altogether, this hardware cost about $270-$300. Once everything arrived, I was able to assemble it and attach it to the computer. The biggest hurdle there was getting it to be recognized as a specific graphics card rather than a generic display adapter. After trying a few things, I eventually found that choosing to "uninstall" the generic adapter from the Windows device manager caused it to be recognized as the card it actually was.

Following an upgrade of Premiere and Photoshop Elements (another $100 or so), I opened some existing projects and went to the settings to verify the graphics card was recognized (it was), then went to do some performance comparisons. In each case, I rendered the video at 1080p with 1-pass VBR at a target bitrate of 18 mbps.

Why it Works: The B-52's and "The Chosen One"

Duration: 1:07

Render Time (No GPU): 11:18

Render Time (With GPU): 2:33 (77% reduction)

This video consists largely of still images and overlays, so it's not surprising that it would improve significantly.

Bonus: Peter Moshay talks creating music for media, recording in a studio, and more!

Duration: 1:59

Render Time (No GPU): 10:22

Render Time (With GPU): 7:17 (30% reduction)

Premiere Elements doesn't appear to use the GPU to actually encode the video, so it's not surprising that this video saw less of a benefit.

Would the music from "Streaming Stampede" fit a Japanese game show?

Duration: 2:28

Render Time (No GPU): 16:57

Render Time (With GPU): 14:00 (17% reduction)

With the fewest overlays and transitions, it's not surprising this saw the least improvement. It is worth noting, however, that I used a separate project to scale the footage from Vegas Stakes and Pokemon Stadium 2, which would have greatly benefited from the GPU acceleration, so I would have saved significant time on the project as a whole.

Other notes:

-The graphics card doesn't actually need to have a monitor attached for Premiere Elements to use it, either for rendering or editing.
-The major constraint in this relationship is definitely my CPU-Task Manager showed that it was still working near its capacity, while the graphics card had no trouble dealing with the data being sent to/from it (outside of some long passages with multilayered video). My only real option here would be to go for the quad-core upgrade I mentioned earlier, but the time saved from just the GPU is probably good enough for now.
-I've run into some system stability issues when using the card. Notably, I've gotten blue screens on startup after shutting the computer, removing the card, and booting it back up. The computer then works fine after the next reboot. I also encountered one crash while the card was plugged into the computer, so I'm leery of using it to improve videoconferencing or other live tasks.
-While the output is generally pretty consistent visually between rendering with or without the GPU, one difference I have noticed is during the end card sequence, where the fade-in of the video and the white matte behind it progresses a bit differently. It's a bit hard to describe, but basically the white matte is more visible underneath the video during the transition when GPU acceleration is on.
-The lowest-end graphics card that seems to be supported for this feature is the GT 730, which is available new under $100 in some configurations. While definitely not considered high-end for gaming, it might be the best choice if you are primarily concerned with improving video editing on an older laptop.

Interview: Ingo Korb explains the GCVideo project

The following is an interview with Ingo Korb, one of the developers behind the GCVideo project. GCVideo is an effort that analyzed the GameCube’s digital AV output in order to produce a more affordable way to get high-quality video out of the system. As a user of one of its implementations, I wanted to know more about the process.

Where are you from, and how did you get into video games?

I’m from Germany and I was gifted a Commodore 64 in the late 1980s, which has a pretty great selection of games. An SNES with a few games joined the collection sometime in the early 90s, but except for an N64 that I bought for exactly two games (Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask), I stayed on the PC side for gaming for a bit. When the Dreamcast went on clearance, I grabbed one and a few cheap games and got back into console gaming, picking up the other contenders in that generation whenever I found a good offer.

How did the GCVideo project get started?

A long time ago, I happened to be sitting in the games room of a convention talking with ikari_01 about that pesky [GameCube] component cable and how it was ridiculously expensive already (he was lucky because he bought one much earlier). Since we both knew our way around FPGAs[1] (he from the SD2SNES, me from dabbling with them over the years), we both wondered why nobody had yet tried to decode the digital video from the console and feed it to a DAC[2] to clone that cable.

What were some of the most interesting technical challenges?

Making the product easily configurable required some work. For example, the original release of GCVideo-DVI did not have an on-screen display. Instead, you had to select line-doubling and scanline settings using jumper wires to various pins of the FPGA board. I had expected that users would just choose one set of options and be done with it, but someone announced on a forum that he planned to add switches for everything to his console-or maybe he showed a completed version, I don't remember exactly. I didn’t want to encourage people to do that, so I decided to put the flexibility of an FPGA to good use by adding a CPU with enough peripherals to the system to build an OSD. The nice thing about doing that on an FPGA is that you have full control over these peripherals-with a standard microcontroller, if some part of it does not work exactly how you need it to, you can only work around it, but with an FPGA I can just make it work exactly as I want.

Other times the challenges were more annoying than interesting. For example, when you have a digital AV interface, most consumer devices will just show a variation of “no signal” if you don’t get it mostly right. Debugging that can be a pain because the only option is to capture what your design generates and then comparing it manually to something that is known to work. There are professional analyzers that could tell you what you did wrong, but they are pretty expensive even on the used market, if you can find one at all.

One of the biggest challenges overall that I can remember was the ICAP[3] interface of the Spartan 3A though. It is an internal interface of the FPGA that is used to reboot the chip into another configuration, and while the documentation looks good at first glance, it glosses over lots of tiny details. There are some other projects on the internet that also access that interface, but they mostly just to tell the chip to reboot with a different configuration, which only needs to write to that interface. GCVideo needs more than that though: The internal flasher tool can be started either when the console is turned on, in which case it should just silently start the main firmware, or it can be started on user request to upgrade the firmware. The only data in the entire FPGA that survives that reboot is in the ICAP interface, so I had to be able to read data back from it that was written before the reboot. I have not found a single project online that does that on a Spartan 3A FPGA, but some old discussions on the chip vendor's forums pointed me in the right direction. It took me about two weeks to find a sequence of accesses to make that thing work reliably and I still can’t fiddle with that part of the code too much because it breaks easily.

What are your future plans (GCVideo or otherwise)?

That’s a secret. =) I find it easier not to talk about future plans for a project because that allows me to scrap them if they don’t work out. Announcing plans in public creates expectations on the user side that such plans are eventually realized and it is much nicer to suddenly hear that there is a new release with some new feature than to hear that the feature you were waiting for will never come.

I’m tempted to do a release with 720p HDR capability on the first of a certain month in the near future, but I'm not sure if I have enough spare time to make that happen. ;)

[1] Field-Programmable Gate Arrays-a technology that enables mimicking other hardware without having to build an exact replacement.

[2] Digital-to-analog converter-converts a digital signal to its analog equivalent (or vice versa).

[3] Internal configuration access port-does pretty much what the name says.

Poke Press Digest Podcast: Episode 43-Discussing the Music of Pokemon Stadium 2

Anne from Pikapi Podcast joins in to discuss the music of Pokemon Stadium 2 for the N64. While not as well-known as its predecessor, there’s still a lot of material to cover, both on the battling side as well as in the minigames. Honestly, it’s pretty impressive for a game with only a single composer. If you want to know what we thought of the game itself, be sure to listen after the outro:

Links:

Pikapi Podcast

Poke Casters Network