Q: Alright. Who are you and what do you want?

A: My name is Gabriel (Gab) and I am a 20 year old musician who makes video game music covers on the Internet under the username « gabocarina96 ». People can listen to my covers on YouTube or follow/tweet at me on Twitter.

Q: Knew it… another digital dork. Go on then, what’s that lump of wood you strum at?

A: My main instrument has been the guitar for nearly 7 years now but I also play bass, ocarina, a bit of piano, and ukulele.

My passion for music started at a very young age through video games. Being only 4 years old back then, you would always find me humming tunes from my favorite games Ocarina of Time, Super Mario 64, and Banjo-Kazooie. When I was around 7, my dad came home with a Nintendo Power magazine for me. Going through it, I came across this Ocarina of Time replica advertisement by Songbird Ocarina and being the Zelda fan I already was… I wanted it! So that Christmas, my parents got me my very first music instrument, the ocarina of time! I then started learning how to play songs on it, gathered a little ocarina collection over the years and there was the beginning to my music journey.

In 2010, I was now 14 years old and I loved rock/metal music. I was spending countless hours playing Guitar Hero and trust me… I was good at it! One day, my friend started playing guitar and I thought it was the coolest thing ever! He would go at his guitar lessons and teach me what he learned right after. It didn’t take long from there for me to give up the plastic buttons and start to learn how to play the actual guitar instead.

In 2012 began the whole video game cover thing. Being inspired by YouTube guitarists such as CSGuitar89, FamilyJules, and Jam2995, I decided to give it a shot. I mean, I love video game music and I love guitar so it was the perfect match. I slowly started to learn how to record music, edit videos and in July, I uploaded my first cover to YouTube. It wasn’t very good, but it was a start. I was uploading a new video every 2 months or so and wasn’t really taking it seriously but in 2015 I finally started making weekly videos and my content really started to improve from there.

Q: Zzz… hmmf! Are you still here? Err… what sort of games do you play?

A: My favorite games to play have always been the 3D platformers, Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie being my favorite games of all time. I am also a massive Legend of Zelda fan and I love a huge variety of games.

Q: You still haven’t explained why you’re on my property.

A: Banjo-Kazooie again being my favorite game of all time and playing Rareware games all my childhood, I’ve been extremely excited for Yooka-Laylee ever since the reveal of Project Ukulele. Grant Kirkhope is easily my favorite video game composer and I covered a lot of his songs on my channel over the years so with him on the project… I just already knew I was going to cover that game! As a big fan and supporter of Playtonic’s work on Yooka-Laylee, I thought I would show my love and support for the game through my covers while at the same time maybe getting more people into the game.