Patreon Peeks 17: Goldenrod Highlights (Patreon)

Hello! As the month comes to a close, I like to go over my favorite thing about creating the monthly music arrangement. This time it was a suite of Goldenrod City/National Park themes from Pokémon Gold/Silver/Crystal. I've included four example files of my favorite parts!

This was a big undertaking, both technically and narratively. Technically, this project contained so many complex instruments that I needed to render the first half of the piece and start a new Logic file just so that my audio driver wouldn't crash every time I added something to National Park! But narratively, these are two really important locations to Pokémon players, and if you've followed these arrangements so far, you know that I like to add a little extra to each of these to spice up the story that the music tells.

Thus, off the heels of Lavender Town last month, you start by taking the Magnet Train from the Kanto region to the Johto region, where Goldenrod City would be revealed to you as you walk out of the station. After the Magnet Train motif plays, I have Goldenrod City first unveiled through a Henry-Mancini-esque cue in orchestral strings, playing a harmonic variation of the first few seconds of the Gold/Silver opening theme. This is the first attachment, labeled "Goldenrod Strings."

Then, after a cinematic playthrough of Goldenrod City's true theme, things are suddenly interrupted as the entire track gets put through a radio filter, and the radio frequency starts to tune erratically. This foreshadows Team Rocket's takeover of Goldenrod City's Radio Tower. During this little sound effect, plenty of radio static goes by, but I hid a few other sounds in there, which you can hear in the next attachment, "Goldenrod Radio Secrets." There's a hint of the trainer battle theme, and a hint of Porygon's cry, before the piano comes in and introduces the next theme. I recommend going back to the full arrangement and hearing these in context!

Next, Team Rocket plays out their theme for their radio tower takeover. I used rock band instruments to interrupt the previous theme with this more bombastic, energetic melody, and one of my favorite instruments prevails: the Wurlitzer keyboard. It has a lot of character, ranging from an aggressive, distorted, front-and-center sound, to even a mechanical beep reminiscent of a Morse code machine. I took advantage of this and preceded the Team Rocket theme with a rhythmic Morse code transmission, which you can hear in "Goldenrod Wurly." Several people in the comments of the original upload were apt to point this out, but the Morse code reads "R O C K E T." Because, of course it does. :P

And finally, that commotion cools down to return to Goldenrod City, and eventually leads to National Park. I stuck with the original orchestration from Gold/Silver, although I prefaced it with a bit of the piano flourishes from the reimagined theme in Heart Gold/Soul Silver. The original is very economical, though: it gets its point across very elegantly with very few instruments playing relatively simple parts. I translated those parts to flute, violin, and harp, rather nature-evocative instruments. But as the melody goes on and repeats a good deal of content, I slowly started to grow the ensemble and reinforce or harmonize different parts.

Eventually, a beat comes in for a B section, and here's where I could build for a climactic finish to this suite. Rather than loop back to the beginning where the original does, I continue the B section with a key change, and introducing full orchestra parts to stand by this decision. Once the orchestra reaches its climactic Bmaj7/F# chord, everything fades back into the piano to conclude my thoughts. But I wanted to share the orchestral parts by themselves, I feel they lend emotional power to this already elegant melody. They're all East West orchestral instruments (except the solo violin, I found a free soundfont for that) with various pannings and reverbs to broaden their sound. You can hear them in "Goldenrod Orchestra," the final attachment.

And that's the piece! I'm happy to answer any other questions about it in the replies below. It's been one of my more ambitious arrangements, but that's because these melodies were big shoes to fill! And they make me look forward to next month's arrangement, which we'll be voting on shortly! Thanks for reading!