Live MissingNo. gig in Joensuu, Finland May 6th 2013 (audio)

[Kraus]

Hi the good people of OCR!

I once asked around about what would happen and what should I take into account if I would like to play some OCR songs live. That was half a year ago in this thread: http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?t=41130

I also sent quite a lot of emails to a lot of people about MissingNo. project if they could help me with some of their songs, and if they'd be okay with us playing their songs. Not a one said they'd mind. (: And some very special thanks to ProtoDome for enormous help! With such a tight schedule we were running on all of those sheets you provided me helped loads and loads. Too bad we couldn't have time to fit Rain Prayer into the mix! It would've been great, but would've required two more weeks of time to practice to even near-sufficient levels.

So, well, what to tell you... I practically grew up (during my late teenage years) with OCR songs, and when MissingNo. hit the internet I instantly fell in love with the general quality of the album. It's a real tight package, so it is. I wanted to experiment with stuff, and pay some tribute to the community.

This is what's the result of it:

This gig was a part of mine and our guitarist's second year's exams at school. We decided to shock people a wee bit with something completely different than what's usually done. We went through some songs by ear and I transcribed many of them, Visa did the rockier stuff and led their practice, ProtoDome helped me loads with his songs by email and we also arranged a couple of songs ourselves. I'll discuss those in the comments of the tracklist in some detail.

Note: the gig was completely free! There were no entry fees, no salaries paid, no money at all went to the restaurant nor us. Well, people bought drinks, but that has nothing to do with the music. (:

It was all great fun, and people were pleasantly surprised. Many didn't really know how to react to what we were doing when we tried to explain it. The restaurant was full of people though! We did a lot of advertising and I asked a lot of pokemon fans in town to come and see the gig, and everyone was thrilled to get together with new people with similar interests. Great success.

A wee bit about me:

I'm named Petrus Makkonen; student of English and translation studies at the University of Eastern Finland, and recently a student of Joensuu's conservatory as well, on the pop/jazz department. Majoring flute, with a minor of tenor saxophone. Applying for the conservatory was probably one of the better ideas I've had in a couple of years. I thought I'd need to drop music altogether soon if I didn't start going somewhere with it. Luckily I did.

I hope you'll enjoy the audio. Too bad it's pretty bad. There was a video filmed as well but I haven't gotten my hands on it just yet.

Here's a tracklist with some comments on each song.

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0:00 - Game On!

We had a lot of fun trying to figure out how to deal with the first sounds! We went for the same opening as with the MissingNo. album. It's very effective, so it is. Thankfully the piece went pretty well as well; no huge mistakes or mishaps!

00:20 - Might Mighty Pokemon

Personally I struggled with this a lot; for some odder than odd reason the should've-been-piece-of-cake theme eluded me way more than I would've hoped for, and you can hear it in this version. Both me and Blue missed a lot of notes and other stupid little things. Annoyingly audible. We're doing a lot of longer than life solos here; at least we managed epic measures in length! All in all this definitely wasn't one of our best runs with this song. We were pretty nervous I think. The balance in the recording isn't too great either. I hope it was better live.

07:02 - Shades of Red

I love this song! It's fun and energetic, and really fun to play; it has some surprisingly tricky things to it however, as do almost all of the songs in MissingNo! A great song, and I think we played it well enough. Too bad you can barely hear the piano picking up the melody in the last verse.

I'm taking my time doing the speech there; don't mind it! It's just I had to explain what the whole thing is all about.

12:25 - Home Is Where the Luvdisc Is...

Another one of my favorites! I love how it's not exactly jazz, but kinda is however. I was pretty nervous about this song 'cause I've played the sax for just a year now, but I think this was probably our best piece of the whole set. Everything worked exactly it was supposed to. We're all doing some solos here as well. Not that bad even.

18:05 - Battle Theme

Ooooh boy. Do I even have to say it? This piece is hard as HELL to play, and we practiced it for just three weeks or so. Oh em gee. I messed the my part on the second voice somewhat. I was supposed to have the sheet for the very last things in the song but our drummer hit the counts before I had the time to turn the page! Well, stuff happens, and it could've easily been way worse; It actually sounds rather okay here! Basically all of the mistakes were my doing, everyone else did a wonderful job.

22:20 - Precious Metals

This was preeeety tricky as well! Halc, you're one hell of a composer with the stuff you're doing. This was also the last song we practiced, so once again put it together in two or so weeks. Broke sweat, this song did! Also, yeah, the ending was swell. We messed it up so bad. //facepalm

And yes, it's a real pikachu in there! Katju's as near as you can get to pikachus.

26:30 or so - Lavender Town

Blue got a lot or praise for this one. Listen to it. It's great.

32:45 - May I Have This Swordsdance?

Blue got to show off with his looper in this one again. We were supposed to have strobo lights and stuff, and people were supposed to go crazy with the beats. Too bad they were sitting down, kind of an anticlimax! Anyways, it sounds good on the .wav, and that's important at the moment. Also, once again with the sax.

38:18 - Divine Olivine

The start takes some time 'cause I thanked peeps at this point. In addition to the band I thanked Inkeri Utriainen who kindly wrote lyrics to the song full of friendship and summer. We always loved playing this song! I still can't make up my mind if it's great because it's so cheesy or great because it avoids the cheesiness by an inch and becomes awesome and original instead. We all loved it in anycase. I could've propably made a better job personally, but hey, then again, you always can...

45:05 - Repeatedly Press A

This one was mine own doing. A very simple rearrangement I put together in an afternoon, but easily effective enough to serve as an encore. It was super effe-- sorry, sorry, just had to... Anyways, I messed up some, but the overall piece went real well. It's fun to listen to after the gig really.

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So, basically, this is my thanks to OCRemix and all of you guys! Your work has been a really integral part of my life. Thank you ProtoDome for the enormous help with digging up for chords for songs and all that jazz. Har. Yeah, sorry about that...

I'll be trying to get my hands on the video that was filmed as well, but most likely that won't happen anytime soon. The audio's quality is sucky I know, but what can you do. Hopefully the video's audio will be better.

Thanks again, and all the love

-Petrus "Kraus" Makkonen

The Band:

Shades of Red/Blue

Petrus "Red" Makkonen - Flute and tenor sax

Visa "Blue" Forsblom - Guitar

Katju "Pikachu" Lindqvist - Keys and vocal

Sanna-Mari "Slowpoke" Savolainen - Bass

Heikki "Onix" Salminen - Drums

Edited June 12, 2013 by Kraus

[Eino Keskitalo]

This is an incredible thing to do. The audio quality is indeed pretty bad, but not worse than some other live recordings I've enjoyed. Energetic playing, nice to hear some jazz rock flute action. Now the only thing that's lacking is me being a fan of Pokemon, and really knowing the sources/arrangements, but looking forward to the video anyway!

--Eino