In a Twitlonger post today, insaneintherainmusic announced his plans to create a Pokémon Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum cover album “that presents every song in its fullest manner”. He plans to work on the album over the course of the next year, and while that means interrupting his usual upload schedule, I’m optimistic that the sacrifice will be worth it, especially considering that Alola That Jazz is one my favorite VGM albums ever. Carlos has shown that he’s eager to push musical boundaries whenever possible, and given that Pokemon DPPt is his favorite soundtrack of all time, I think we’re in for a treat. If you need further proof of Carlos’s exceptional ability, look no further than his latest Pikmin 2 cover.

For a full description of Carlos’s plans, read below:

It's no secret that Pokémon Diamond, Pearl and Platinum have my favorite game soundtracks of all time, as I’m very vocal about this. I’ve wanted to do an epic Sinnoh album for many years now, but have put it off time and time again after feeling that “I’m not ready or prepared enough to do justice to my favorite soundtrack of all time.” I’m honestly tired of feeling this way and having to answer people who ask when it’s happening with “someday!”

After completing big recording projects such as the Jazz Video Game Medley and other cool unreleased projects… I think I’m finally ready to dedicate myself to this gigantic labor of love. My vision is to create an arrangement album of music from Pokémon Diamond & Pearl that presents every song in its fullest manner. This doesn’t mean it’ll be an album of the entire OST, but it’ll likely be larger in scale than any album I’ve ever worked on. This process includes writing new arrangements and re-recording old ones.

This album has been a bucket list idea for me for so long, so I want to do it justice. I run my channel in yearly cycles based on my YouTube channel creation anniversary (September 8th), and have been doing biweekly videos on Saturdays for the past few years. Through my attempts at backlogging, I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no way I’d be able to maintain my normal upload schedule and simultaneous work on this album as a “background project” - this project deserves my full attention and care. Because of this, I am considering dedicating the entirety of Year 8 (September 8th 2019 - September 7th 2020) to making this album.

What would this mean in terms of uploads? The uploads would mostly be Pokémon Diamond and Pearl songs, mixed in with a few other miscellaneous tunes here and there just for fun (probably an 80/20 balance of these two types of content). I’m aware this could be pretty divisive among my listeners, but when it comes down to it, I care much more about making the best dang Pokémon Diamond and Pearl album that I possibly can than trying to appease any algorithms. I’m very fortunate that services like Patreon and Spotify are sufficient enough revenue streams for me to free me from chasing trends or popular games, and instead focus on making quality projects that will stand the test of time.

Additionally, I’m thinking of relaxing the upload schedule a bit to a “when it’s ready” kind of schedule. Saturdays would still be my upload days, but I would only upload a new video if I have one that’s done and I’m proud of. This could mean having a few Saturdays in a row with a new video, and maybe a few Saturdays in a row without a video.

Lastly, I’m considering doing this in the 2019-2020 timeline because this is my last year of college. I’ll be graduating from the Berklee College of Music in the Spring of 2020, and moving on to other musical things. I’d like to record with as many incredible Berklee musicians as possible for this project to ensure the best quality final product I can make. This would be one hell of a portfolio piece, haha!

I think those are all my thoughts so far. I’d love some feedback on these ideas! I’ve got 3 more videos to release before the end of Year 7, and they’re all shaping up very nicely!