Thomas, what was your biggest goal when it came to arrangements? What were the biggest challenges that you faced with the arrangements?

Thomas Kresge: The goals shifted, since at first I was trying to write things as “dark” as possible. This really influenced the first few arrangements, like “Mad Monster Mansion”, which would likely have come out way different if I had done it later.

In general, my only real goal when arranging is to make the music sound like a complete work for the intended ensemble. That is, it should stand on its own as a piece of music that someone can enjoy alongside more legit repertoire, even if they don’t know the source material. I try to balance keeping it in the spirit of the original track without simply re-orchestrating the original without alteration. I don’t often like to move too far away from the original, which I think kind of alienates fans of the music, but if it’s too similar then the arrangement doesn’t really have a reason to exist. Otherwise, I like to avoid repeating the same thing twice in a single arrangement, and I make sure I’m developing the material in a way that doesn’t get boring. To this end, “Ghost House”, “Big Boo’s Haunt”, and “Bloody Tears” were probably the hardest arrangements to do as they offered the least to work with.

How did you decide on collaborators? Were these all friends and colleagues of yours?

Daniel Romberger: We had a discussion very early on about expanding the ensemble for Brasslevania and ultimately settled on nine musicians. From there, it was all about reaching out to our brass friends who play those instruments. Marc Papeghin was the horn player on our very first track as The Game Brass, we met Ken HatVGM Crouch at MAGFest, we knew Jordan Moore from his channel and Ocabanda (and knew that he was a horn player), and John Stacy has kinda become our 6th member who played with us at MAGFest, rotating in and out. Having three horn friends in the expanded ensemble also freed Danny Flam up to play trombone, which is his primary instrument, since he usually plays horn in the quintet.

Describe the recording process. I assume that you all had to record your parts separately.

Thomas Kresge: Every part is recorded remotely, in isolation. I create a demo of the piece (a click track to help keep time) as well as a MIDI file so everyone can record more or less in sync. I then get the recordings from the band members and clean them up a bit to remove any extra room noise or other sounds that may have gotten in the recording, which helps blend everybody together as if all of the players are in the same space. A bit of post-editing is often required when mixing to make sure everyone lines up correctly, as differences in peoples’ recording setups, latency, and just the fact they are playing alone without any other players to breath with means some editing is almost always required when recording this number of players in isolation.