Mor Ardain (Roaming the Wastes) - Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (ft. MusicontheDLo/Rahul Vanamali/Animevivi

While I'm practicing my ass off on the last FFT arrangement--IT'S XENOBLADE TIME. AGAIN!!! =D =D

So one weekend in pre-pandemic 2019 ‪@animevivi‬ was visiting and we were fooling around with Xenogears/Xenosaga/Xenoblade themes like we always do because that's who we are, and this absolute banger from XC2 was one of them. Probably the most addictive track in the game, it's to XC2 what Gaur Plains is to XC1 lol. Unlike Gaur Plains though, I HATED Mor Ardain in the game, dark dreary town where I kept getting lost because I couldn't see where I was going and that orangey industrial wasteland where mobs of overleveled scorpions and spiders coming out of nowhere would do me in countless times, but I digress lol.

Anyways during the sightreading session it had surprising potential for piano and viola so i mentally filed it away for some future cover. Fast forward to pandemic times 2020 when one night after being hunkered down for months i decided to try to pull it together. Once I started arranging/transcribing it for real, I couldn't NOT hear ‪@MusicOnTheDLo‬ doing that killer bass line. But if you're gonna have bass you're gonna need drums, and an incredible percussionist named Rahul i got to know over that past year came to mind. I was in awe of his vibes playing on some of his kickass Xenoblade covers, but didn't know if he played set, so I inquired and was THRILLED to find out not only does he know his way around a kit but plays in a prog band that does Dream Theater covers from time to time!?!?!? AAAAHHHH

Anyways I was so excited i immediately contacted Danny for bass, knowing this was very much in his wheelhouse, though as you have doubtless seen from his channel and mine that he is a veritable Swiss Army knife of upright bass, bass guitar, classical bowed bass, bluegrass bass, jazz bass, trap booty bass, K-pop and all things generally low end lol. It wasn't until I added the bass and drum staves to the piano and viola ones on my Musescore where i was like omg wtf is this instrumentation. OTL

It was too late to back out, so I broke the news to Joe that I added a badass rhythm section to the original plan thus making this essentially the Danny and Rahul Show lol. Which we wouldn't have any other way, frankly--they're just simply incredible, amazing players who brought so much improvisational flair to this cover that as soon as I got their stems back I was so blown away I immediately rewrote the piano and viola parts to try to sound as cool as the stuff they were doing!!!😭😭 I had a transcribed bass part but Danny came up with his own stuff that sounded way more awesome, and the only directive I gave Rahul besides my lame attempts at drum notation was for a cool solo outro, like full-on Mike Portnoy in Metropolis Part I going nuts on the toms for a minute and a half kinda thing. He came up with something so badass I had to write an accompanying Chick Corea-esque piano fill to highlight it. So this is ALL THEM, my original arrangement would have been totally boring and stupid otherwise and I'm so grateful and honored for how they truly elevated this!

Also super grateful to Danny for the crash course on how to write lead sheets and jazz notation and even though I despaired writing chord changes it was good for me lmao, Rahul for taking pity on my pathetic attempts to write a drum part and doing it himself lol, and Joe as always for learning the most ridiculously difficult and unnatural viola part ever. It was 10x harder after my rewrite and he took it like a champ. And very special thanks to ‪@IsrafelCello‬ for gluing us together so cohesively with his powerful mixing skills--he spent so much time meticulously crafting the mix and did an insane job!! We're all so thrilled with the outcome and hope you will be too!

(Morag and Brighid are best girls don't @ me)

Viola: ‪@animevivi‬
Bass: ‪@MusicOnTheDLo‬
Drums:    / rahulvanamali  
Piano: ME

Thank you all for the love and support, as always!!! So grateful to all of you for somehow coming back here in spite of all the random stuff I'm doing hahaha. Final Fantasy Tactics stuff is wrapping up I swear! I'm practicing the heck out of it daily!!!! Thank you for your patience and hope you all are staying safe!!!