Xenoblade Chronicles - Beyond The Sky - Symphonic Rock Cover (HUGE COLLAB!) 

[Ran out of characters in the main description] *I also plan on doing a Behind The Scenes video for this project - if you have any questions in particular you want answered/addressed - please reply here!* Oh man, where do I begin with this project? This project has been a massive undertaking that has taken almost two years of dedication - but here we are. Technically speaking - the beginning of this cover goes all the way back to 2021, when I was actively entering the Pixel Mixers’ monthly contests. For those unaware, Pixel Mixers runs a monthly contest on Discord and Reddit - and the top three placers across the entire year get a chance to submit an album theme(s) to the server - and then all the members vote on it. I managed to score second place in 2021, and I submitted two themes - Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and Pokemon Mystery Dungeon (this shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody). I specifically submitted XC1 - since that opens up a theoretical XC2 album (and we didn’t know at the time, but XC3 as well) in the future. Anyways, Xenoblade 1 managed to win the poll - so I knew that this was **my** album - and I had to “go big or go home” (especially since I don’t think I’ll ever have the time/consistency to place top 3 in contests again). All the way back in 2020 - I had envisioned a big arrangement of Beyond The Sky - but I didn’t have the time (or frankly the skill level either) - so it mostly didn’t go anywhere. But with this album, I knew I had to shoot my shot. I selected Beyond The Sky as my first choice - and managed to receive it. To start with, I needed a lead vocalist - so I sent my friend Ica a message and she was instantly on board. I knew out the gate I wanted to have choir for the final chorus - since I thought it would enhance the "grandiosity" of my vision. Alongside this, I wanted the arrangement to start small and gradually build up to a full orchestra - and thus I began transcription/arranging work. Regarding the arrangement itself, it's mostly pretty 1-to-1, with added quips and flairs to random instruments here and there for fun - and then I added the instrumental chorus section in the middle to give the orchestra a chance to shine (and also to give the vocalist a break). Fortunately, since this is a pop-rock song (and not a crazy avant-garde jazz or prog track), the chords were pretty simple across the entire piece ( | Eb | Bb | Cmin7 | Abmaj9 | ) - so that made the rhythm section writing fairly easy to work with. Wind and string lines were a little tougher at times - but they managed to work out. The other nice thing was that a lot of the parts weren't super technically demanding (barring Trumpet 1 and Violin 1) - so I could focus on the expressiveness of the track rather than the technical prowess). Anyways - several weeks of arranging/transcribing go by - and I have a completed arrangement - so thus began my hunt for musicians. I reached out to some people directly - and posted in Discord servers/chats for others. I notably wanted to have "AS MANY SINGERS AS POSSIBLE"... and I'd say they delivered haha. Eventually I assembled a team of everyone interested - and thus began the recording journey. I created a full Discord server (with a bot/automated message information!), a custom spreadsheet for credentials and revenue split tracking, and a massive Google Drive full of sheet music and backing tracks. I'm glad this project is over since I can migrate all of my files off my SSD and onto my external backup drive. For the first time ever - I decided to do a "staggered" recording method - where Group A (all instrumentalists) recorded first to a MIDI demo track, then I edit it for Group B (...just Lead Vocals) to record to, and then I edit it again for Group C (Choir). For most of my projects - I generally just do a MIDI backing track which gets the job done - but giving vocalists a proper track to follow was essential for this to work. I know its best practice to do this in as many projects as possible (mainly to give sections a chance to follow articulations, call-and-response, etc. better) - but of course not every track I do has the time allowed to do so. ...I severely underestimated how much work editing would take. Not only did I have to cover timing corrections for every single stem I received - but also I had to Melodyne them. I'll just say right now... I never want to look at that orange piece of software again - but it was worthwhile. I think there were 40-something instrumental stems I had to work with here (which is nothing compared to the choir as I'd find out later) - but eventually I got a rough track ready for Ica to track to. Ica records lead vocals (and KILLED them!) - and then it was choir time. Now you see - the original choir part was just SATB - but many of the singers told me "hey that soprano line is stupid" - so I decided to make the brilliant decision (to my PC's dismay) to change the choir part to be SSAATTBB - and gave the singers the option to sing as many lines as they were comfortable to do. I want to say I gave the singers a month or so to record (while following along to the lead vocal track) - and I expected to receive maybe 50-60 tracks or so. ...yeah it was quite a bit more than that - breakdown as follows: - Sopranos: 28 - Altos: 35 - Tenors: 50 - Basses: 36 Total: 149. Yeah Melodyne was going to put in overtime here. I would like to shout out Lucas Guimaraes who somehow sang ALL 8 CHOIR PARTS WHAT THE HELL. I asked him afterwards how his vocal cords survived that and he just said "a lot of air and a lot of chugging water."' Looks like Tenors won this time around too, so we'll see how the next large scale choir project (by someone else lmao) breaks down. With all of the editing and pitch correction done - it was time to ACTUALLY start the mix for the track. I want to say I used three whole Reaper files for this project; the first was to edit the instrumentals, the second to edit the vocals, and the third to actually mix and apply FX to tracks. Fortunately - since this was an orchestral arrangement, I didn't actually have to do that much to individual tracks beyond basic volume automation, saturation, light compression, and reverb (reverb was mostly handled in instrument sections on a bus). The sheer quantity of tracks was daunting though - so this process took a lot longer than I want to admit - especially since I don't consider mixing to be a key strength of mine. The nice thing about having a server with over 60 musicians in it was I could easily render track drafts for quick feedback return. And the problem with having over 60 musicians in a server was that sometimes you would receive directly contradicting feedback depending on peoples' listening preferences, backgrounds, and speaker/headphone quality. But between the iterative feedback in the server and Pixel Mixers' Quality Control Team (THANK YOU guys for putting up with my BS here) - things eventually worked out after several major draft iterations. I would like to give an extra special shout out to KestrelGirl here - she has a LOT of experience in orchestral music, and also provides some of the most technically detailed feedback I've ever seen. Seriously, she'll say something like "increase the kick drum compression attack by 6ms" - and I'll be like "how on earth did you hear that???" - if you need mixing feedback in a pinch - I 100% recommend asking her. Once the mix was done, it was time for the administrative stuff. I would like to directly apologize to Hashel and the Soundrop employee managing this cover for putting up with this. 63 people with unique revenue splits... becomes a lot to manage for anybody. I joke that this is "the track that broke Hashel" since he said he wasn't going to deal with something of this caliber again (can't say I blame him). Thank you for putting up with this.

Thanks for having me on this! Couldn't make the premiere because of timezone things but I'm super happy with how this track turned out, you did a great job =)

This a beautiful rendition of a favorite song

Wow what a great collaboration! Awesome job putting this together & congrats everyone on the great performances 👏

So amazing! Everyone did such an incredible job!

Everyone was amazing!

I cannot begin to describe how beautiful this is

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Beautiful

Gorgeous, you all did a wonderful job ! Take this comment, for the algorithm, and I hope it reaches more people !

What an incredible cover! Thank you! :)

This is amazing!

Great work everyone. Amazing Sean. Props from your Pops!

Sean! So proud of you for this huge undertaking and for pushing yourself as a musician, arranger, editer, all other things-er! It's so beautiful, and it definitely made me cry to see everyone involved. Congrats!! Thank you for letting me be a part of it 🖤

Thanks for putting this together Sean! What a project!

This is amazing! Huge props to you for this massive undertaking and to all the performers for their stellar performances!

Wow. Such a monumental project with so many community members, and the choir entrance especially is such a great moment. Congrats on creating something on a truly epic scale, glad to have been a part of it!

So happy to have been (the tiniest) part of this, this turned out great!

Brought me to tears. The result of this massive undertaking is such a labor of love…not just of music, but of collaboration, an appreciation of individual talents, and the passion that makes great things❣️

Wow. I’m floored. I was already excited to be a part of this but just physically seeing the insane amount of people involved brought a few tears to my eyes, what a massive undertaking. Beautiful. Just beautiful.

this turned out so well guys! congrats

Great work Sean!! So glad to finally hear and see this project you’ve worked so hard on!

This turned out great! Such a beautiful arrangement and that choir was epic!

Amazing work! I can barely imagine how much effort you guys put on this project. Thank you all :)

Man this is so cool! So glad to hear how this whole thing came together.

I've said this before, but I'll say it again: I am incredibly proud and honored to be part of this massive undertaking, and feel so lucky to be part of a talented community like this. Sean, you are fantastic, thank you for letting me be your lead!!!

Daang, what a monster of a collab & project! Going through a multi-year process and then finally being able to share the completed work; it's a heck of a great feeling. Kudos to you for organizing all of this, and shoutout to Ica for slaying the lead vocals!

Amazing job on making such a huge project work!

What a wonderful culmination of hard work! This is such a beautiful song and this mega-performance is amazing :)

This is incredible... I've got goosebumps! 🥲 That ending choir was such a wonderful idea!

I love this song so much aaaaaaaaaaaaaa I'm glad you made this collab, it sounds sooo precious :')

Let's goooooo! Incredible work organizing this and herding the cats, so to speak. 😄 Thanks for letting me be a part of the mega collab!

Such a joy to watch this. Thank you for having me on this arrangement! You did great with this video, what an undertaking!

Everyone is here 😊

So neat to have been a part of this as a choir singer! Everyone did a spectacular job! ❤

Phenomenal! This song is already emotional enough, but seeing so many talented people collaborate together for the 14-year anniversary is so amazing. 😭

Horray! So great to see the final mix at last:) Thank you for having me as one of your singers! It was such a joy:)

everyone is here! (pretend I posted *the meme*)

Wow, incredible cover!! The scale of this project was nothing short of Xenoblade-worthy, but you made it!! It's great to see the video finally out for the world to see, too. Amazing job! And of course, it was a total pleasure performing the guitar for it. :) Y'know Sean, after everything this collaboration has been through together, I think we can safely say that these really have been the Xenoblade Chronicles. Alley-oop!