What lessons did you learn from your last Crowdsourced Collaboration video and how did you apply them to this cover?

Before “K.K. Cruisin’”, I did three Crowdsourced Collaborative videos: “Home” from UNDERTALE (released November 2015), “Alight (Storm)” from Fire Emblem Fates (released July 2016), and “Big Blue” from F-Zero (released April 2017). I’ve also done a few Jazz Challenges, in which I encouraged members of my community to produce their own jazz arrangements of music and enter them into a competition judged by myself as well as other special guest judges. Doing these various community activities helped me understand efficient ways to convey information to the participants and efficient ways to collect their submission! For example, I wanted to make the “K.K. Cruisin’” submissions as easy as possible, so I simply asked people to record their submissions using their phones and had them listen to a backing track that was provided in the YouTube announcement video itself, so nobody was required to download any files!

You mentioned in your video description that you were inspired by The Consouls cover of K.K. Cruisin’. What about their cover did you find inspiring?

The Consouls’ cover of “K.K. Cruisin’” was one of the first examples of video game jazz being uploaded to YouTube that I can remember. The original version was uploaded on Zorsy’s now-taken-down YouTube channel, but has fortunately been reuploaded on The Consouls’ main channel. I just remember being so struck by this cover when I first saw it, and thought it was the definitive cover of the song. I’ve played this song many times during video game jam sessions, and I always think of this version when I do!

Was it difficult to learn the talkbox? How did the talkbox inform the arrangement?

The talkbox was pretty difficult to learn at first! I watched a lot of YouTube videos and even took a private lesson on how to use the talkbox effectively! The hardest part is matching up the lengths of the notes that you’re singing/saying with the actual note length that you’re playing on the keyboard! Fortunately, I’m already a keyboard player, so I just had to focus on the enunciation of words when performing. I basically arranged this song as if it were a typical vocal arrangement, as I’ve done several vocal arrangements on my channel before.

How exactly did you transcribe K.K.'s lyrics? How accurate do you think your lyrics are compared to the original?

I listened to the original “live” version that K.K. plays in-game and did my best to notate the lyrics that he sings as lyrics in the sheet music! It just took a lot of rewinding and listening, but I think the lyrics are pretty close to what K.K. actually sings. I think my voice through the talkbox ended up sounding a bit more deep than K.K.’s is in-game, but it was still effective and conveyed what I was trying to!