Top Picks - Ro Panuganti
For this article, I reached out to prog-metal guru Ro Panuganti to share some of his favorite covers that he’s written along with his inspirations and anecdotes. What follows is an illuminating look at the development of an artist, a person, and a friend.
2012 - Cartoon Network Rock Medley
My first “hit” on the channel to really branch out of video game music, this was a random idea I had after wanting to be a bit different with my video choices. I put this together with my favorite 90s cartoons, bringing in my friend Jake McCoy to do whistling for Ed, Edd n' Eddy since I didn't have a microphone. A high school friend of mine posted it on Smosh, and, lo and behold, it took off to become my biggest video, along with a Nickelodeon counterpart I made shortly afterwards.
2013 - Cloud Cuckooland ft. Insaneintherainmusic
My 3rd collaboration with Carlos was naturally during one of his larger projects—the “Summer of Covers”—where each week he worked on daily covers from different series. We both adored the Banjo-Kazooie/Tooie series, but especially this song that bounced in and out of a scale. We decided to just cut the song into every little musical section we possibly could. The really aged mixing and loud lead guitars are unfortunately a remnant of that era, but the fact we did this in just a few days speaks to how eager we were back then.
2014 - Athletic Theme (Yoshi's Island) ft. CSGuitar, ArtificialFear, RichaadEB
This collaboration was for the first Multiplayer VG Album, a charity project run by David Russell and myself, where every musician had a song starting with a letter of the alphabet. While David and I expected to scrape by with 26 musicians at most, we had a surplus and had to start assigning numbers too. I really wanted to show the spirit of collaboration in my track, so I invited three guitarists who had more impressive and diverse soloing skills than myself! I ended up adding RichaadEB in at the last minute, but his contribution was superb nonetheless, and I eventually re-used this arrangement with Dixie Jazz bebop vocals in my Yoshi's Island medley.
2015 - Dearly Beloved ft. David Russell
Around this time, I started focusing on originality in my covers, writing riffs that would define my versions better than before. I wrote the intro riff after being inspired by Plini’s The End of Everything EP, trying to play off the chord progression. With David Russell playing a piano solo at the start of the song, I could also play off some of the expectations people might have for a calmer Kingdom Hearts instrumentation. I was lucky that this became a favorite on Twitch because I created a really solid solo over time and eventually stuck to it for my re-cover.
2016 - Jago's Theme ft. Jackson Parodi
Another attempt at my Indian Bollywood influences, I made this song for GameLark and Materia Collective's album VERSUS. I didn’t have a lot of knowledge about fighting game themes, but on a totally random playlist, I found this and felt like the Monk chanting could convert well! I learned a lot from Mick Gordon’s hard-hitting, sample-heavy approach and worked harder on recreating the track rather than drastically re-arranging it. The Hindi lyrics came from my mom and some handy translating as I tried to make it into a lyrical war chant. Jackson volunteered his accordion as a clever substitute for the Indian Harmonium, and I felt like it would glue the heavier riffs together with some downtime segments. I even got to use a gong and dress up for this one!
2017 - Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Theme
When Breath of the Wild and its OST dropped, I happened to be on Spring Break, so I pitched this album idea to Materia Collective, promising that I could deliver in just 11 days. I spent half my day playing the game and the other half arranging the songs. The magic of this game was the expansive world, the freedom of movement, and the music, which had the right balance of whimsical chord movements and stellar Zelda melodies. Though the title theme was quite a challenge, I am so proud of the way this EP came together.
2018 - Field of Hopes and Dreams (DELTARUNE)
This arrangement came out of deep thinking on how I could approach a song “my” way. With more Bollywood influences, particularly 1970s-80s classical instrumentation meets disco, my arrangement was focused on putting the absolute best of both worlds into a song. I couldn’t think of a lot of guitar-friendly approaches, so I brought back vocals and more expressive singing in Hindi (which I almost never do on my channel). To match the music, my friend Mattattack and I filmed the sitars, tablas, and guitars in one of my favorite parks, and we took advantage of the sunset to give the video a nice sheen. The result is one of my favorite videos, although I’d like to redo this one with more conventional percussion to make it a real banger.
2019 - Sweet Victory ft. The Internet
During the 2019 Superbowl, there were rumors that the performing musicians might play the song “Sweet Victory” to honor the creator of Spongebob Squarepants; however, those rumors were squashed, and the internet was disappointed. I wanted to see how I could approach that kind of pinnacle moment in my own way (also, before I might lose momentum to other channels, admittedly). I put out a request to any musician friends to join me, and with a resounding response, I included as many people as I could while working on my own parts. I did a Squidward impression and sang the intro solo, while Mason Lieberman and all my other guests took front stage for the rest. I also used a scene from Rocket League to recreate the Bubble Bowl in After Effects as well!
2020 - Animal Crossing Music in DOOM Style
My latest crazy idea was to merge Animal Crossing and DOOM Eternal music into two medleys, playing off the strange but wonderful Internet meme that put the two games together. I figured it might be interesting to do two videos—entirely separate medleys—that linked to each other after watching my friend subversiveasset do the same. By keeping them at two minutes and incorporating the original style of music in the respective games, I was able to glue them together! Not only that, but with a bit of green screening and art from Sprouteeh, I could keep the visuals extra fun and almost self-aware of the ridiculousness!
Bonus (Allen’s Pick) - Shadow Temple
Before I even arranged this cover, I knew that I wanted to explore more cinematic music videos with exciting, albeit messy action. With help from friends Denis Z. and Mattattack, we came up with a spooky story across three locations, including a cemetery to represent Kakariko's Graveyard, and put a lot of time into editing together a respectably cohesive story. The day of shooting had amazing laughs with dropped ocarinas, fake sword fights interrupted by dogs, and a lot of slow motion tests. Ultimately, this video felt different...and better. I like to think of this as my channel’s biggest landmark video, with the least emphasis on guitar-playing and more of a full audiovisual tribute to my favorite game.