Really crazy live version from Mohawk Place in Buffalo, NY!

Journal Entry #2: My Dance Dance REvolution Past...

My family owned a pizzeria in upstate New York. It was AWESOME and a huge part of my life. One the best parts of growing up in a pizzeria - we shared a wall with an arcade. That arcade had a variant of Dance Dance Revolution called 'Pump It Up' (It has 5 floor panels instead of 4). So, naturally...I got extremely good at it over the years.

When I was 14, I started getting really serious into it. I started meeting some other people that frequented the PIU machine, and they actually became some of my best friends ever. One of the friends (Mike) actually first introduced me to all sorts of really strange and great electronic music - Black Moth Super Rainbow, Aphex Twin, Boards of Canada, Mindless Self Indulgence, Venetian Snares...Mike really showed me that weird music was out there.

Dance games were a huge part of my life. All I wanted to do was go to the arcade and play...and when I couldn't, I'd play at home. It was BLISS when on Saturday, Mike would pick me up from my house at 11 am and we'd play Pump It Up for literally 12 hours until the arcade closed.

Fast forward ten years.

Mike ended up buying a Dance Dance Revolution machine and putting it in his house. I had since created and developed Basic Printer into what it is now. Then that's when I had an amazing idea for a music video - playing Dance Dance Revolution to my OWN song...

We called up our friend Matt, who was better than both of us combined, and won a ton of national competitions. He was to be my rival. And well, the rest is in the video...

The thing that I hadn't realized until I made this video was that - DDR really shaped my musicianship. I started examining my music and I realized how influenced by DDR it was. A lot of my musical choices feel native to the sound catalog, and a lot of the rhythmic arrangements are janky like they are in DDR. What's more interesting is that I realized that DDR was where I had my first taste of musical performance. When my family would go to the beach, I'd never be lounging in the sand - I'd be strolling the boardwalk, looking for DDR machines. When I found one, I'd play the hardest songs I could, drawing huge crowds on the boardwalk. That was such a thrill and so fun. 

Not until I was playing the song Regal Sprint on tour in April of 2018, throwing my neck out from thrashing about during the chorus, did I realize this was just that same exact feeling, evolved by 10 years. It felt right to honor it again in the form of this music video.

GEAR USED:

Roland TR-707 Drum Machine (Drums)
Arturia Minibrute Bass Synthesizer (Bassline)
Mellotron (Strings)
Korg Poly-800 (Fritzy synth in the verse main melody)
Roland JU-06 Digital Synth (Lead synths in B section, airy synths starting in second verse)
Korg Volca Keys (Arpeggiated synth starting in second verse)
Glockenspiel (Bells in B section)
Tamborine (In second B section)
Fender Telecaster (Guitar)