Cascade (Plini), for percussion ensemble

"Cascade", by Plini. Mixed by ‪@JuliaHenderson‬ Arranged, recorded, and produced by Rahul Vanamali Here's a video that's been a long while in the making! I've been listening to Plini for more than a decade. I think I first discovered his music when YouTube's recommendations led me from Dream Theater (which I was listening to exclusively at the time) to his song "Atlas", which I instantly loved, and resulted in me following his releases over the years. Some of you may have seen me post a lot of guitar covers on vibraphone over the last few years -- it's something I've really enjoyed, both as a way to improve and develop my own technique and style of playing, as well as being an outlet to experiment with sonic possibilities on my electric vibraphone, particularly with NeuralDSP's plugins. A year or two ago, after having spent a few months posting guitar cover reels, I thought to myself "Why not try a full cover with a percussion ensemble?" and Cascade was my first pick, being my favourite Plini song, and one I thought would translate well to percussion. Needless to say, the lead part is my electric vibraphone running NeuralDSP's Archetype: Plini plugin! I bought the tabs for the album from SheetHappens Publishing, and started to work on it, but as life got busy, I ended up postponing it until a few months ago, when a sudden surge of inspiration demanded I resume the project and complete it as soon as I could. The arrangement itself was more challenging than I expected -- while there were some parts that felt fairly straightforward, such as translating the rhythm guitars to two "rhythm marimbas", and the lead guitar to the electric vibes, others were less so, especially given the limited range and textures of the acoustic instruments I used. In addition to the tabs I purchased, I also transcribed the bass and any orchestral/other elements I could hear from the track, and did my best to arrange them for the instrumentation I had, and I'm extremely pleased with the result! I was very conflicted about whether to include drums or not -- I initially wanted this to be a more "traditional" percussion ensemble arrangement, but the lack of drums made certain sections feels quite empty, and since I'm a drummer, I felt obligated to add them in. I considered recording at a studio - since my kit isn't really setup for this kind of thing - but ultimately decided to go with MIDI. In my experience with drum set within percussion ensembles, it often takes a very specific kind of drum sound to blend with the rest of the ensemble, and since the focus here was on the mallets, I wanted to keep my options open while editing and not lock myself into an acoustic recording that I couldn't edit later. This was definitely the right decision, as I had to change both the grooves and the drum sounds quite drastically after initially reproducing the original and realizing that it didn't fit with the mallet percussion textures at all. I did decide to record video for the part though, since I'd already practiced a lot of it in preparation for the recording I'd initially planned on doing and wanted to include it in the video! This was an absolute beast to record, and the idea of mixing after spending so many hours recording was quite daunting. So I decided to have my friend ‪@JuliaHenderson‬ mix it, and I absolutely could not be happier with the result! She really made it come to life. I think that's all there is to say about this for now! This is by far the biggest project I've ever attempted, and I'm really pleased to finally put it out there. Until next time!