Video Game Music is Habit Forming. Don’t Turn Off!

The double bill of keyboardists Jonny Tobin and Jared Richardson, also known as JD Rich, at Tyrant Studios next Friday is one of several upcoming shows that have video game music themes.

I spoke to Tobin, who is a longtime friend of mine, and Richardson, whom I just met, about their March 13 date at Tyrant.

Richardson brings his regular trio, featuring Colin Sankey on bass and Trent Otter on drums, for one of the night's two sets.

"Jonny really stood out to me," Richardson said. "He seems to be sort of the closest person to what I do in terms of a combination of skills and interests. I'm a big fan of his music. I've listened to a fair bit of his original stuff, the sort of combination of funky jazz with electronic music elements. And particularly the way that he does synth solos, that's kind of my thing too."

Tobin agreed that he and Richardson had common ground. "We both kind of realized, we both play keys," he said. "We both are into video game stuff, and we both are actively creating music within that space. And also, I think our styles are different enough that we could put on something and have two distinct sets, and it wouldn't feel like too much overlap in terms of repertoire and style. We each have our own distinct thing."

For the show, Tobin adds guitarist Alvin Brendan to his regular trio, which has Alex Dobson on bass and Otter also on drums. Last fall with those three (plus Benjamin Millman on additional keys), Tobin played the inaugural show in an Infidels Jazz series called Cheat Codes.

I heard Tobin's trio play at La Fabrique St-George two weeks ago, on Wednesday, February 18th. (They also played Meo Chinatown for Infidels on Tuesday this week.) While playing open-ended, vampy originals that matched the chattering evening crowd's energy, they mixed in the "Chao Garden" theme from Sega's Sonic Adventure 2, which Tobin released recently as a single.

Tobin self-produces his recordings digitally, virtually free of the need to use a proper studio. His description of that process, referencing this new track, speaks to his jazz background.

"With a song like ‘Chao Garden’," Tobin said, "I would take melody and then decide on a template, like how I want drums to sound, then build the skeleton up from there. Then I take it the same way I would any sort of arrangement, where I reharmonize it. With these video game ones, I try to be faithful to the melodies, playing them pretty close to how they would be. Sometimes when people cover or arrange stuff in a jazz setting, they pull apart melodies and make it pretty unrecognizable. I'm thinking about, like, Gretchen Parlato has a version of the song 'Weak' by SWV, which is pretty pulled apart. It's really cool."

"But with this video game stuff, I want it to be pretty integral to the melodies. I want it to appeal to the fans of those games, so I really emphasize that."

Richardson came to Vancouver in 2022 having been born and raised in Victoria. "I grew up playing a lot of, probably too many, Nintendo games," he said. "The cool thing about video games is that the tunes keep looping over and over again, and these tunes get stuck in your head. And so as I was learning piano as a kid, I was hearing Super Mario themes looping over and over again. After I was done playing the games, I'd go over to the piano and play the tunes by ear."

Richardson, Tobin, and I are all around the same age, so the specific games ring true. I recognize the show's title of Hey! Listen! as a Legend of Zelda reference, and I have no trouble naming every character on the poster.

While considering Sonic Adventure 2, I thought of another one-liner to reference in this story: an in-game billboard I can recall from that game, as you're flying through a level, that reads, "Playing SA2 is habit forming. Don't turn off!"

Both Tobin and Richardson tipped their hats to a long-established band of Millennial jazz musicians who play the video game repertoire in Vancouver: missingNo. (The band's name, which includes the lowercase and period, is a late-90s Pokémon Red & Blue reference.) Dobson and Otter are common members, joined by others including Thomas Houlden, Rory Hislop, Michael Klein, John Nicholson, Nicky Walsh, Luis Melgar, and Eric Wettstein.

"missingNo. kind of pride themselves on doing more obscure [games' music]," Tobin said. "They've done stuff from Spelunky, and indie games. I really love that."

Richardson followed them online from Victoria. "I subscribed to their YouTube channel pretty much around when they started it. Was it as early as 2010 or something?"

missingNo.'s YouTube channel dates back to what they call their debut performance circa 2012; they uploaded their performance of music from Spelunky HD in 2020.

Cheat Codes, Infidels Jazz's series dedicated to video game music and anime culture, happens at the Rec Room on Granville Street. Richardson is booked to play for its next two editions. On March 21st, he joins a band called Connections led by saxophonist Jamie Hicks. I asked Hicks if he could reveal some of the repertoire. He replied on Instagram with more of the hits: Super Smash Bros., Donkey Kong Country, Mario Kart, Metroid, Super Mario 64, and a more recent Sega title, Sonic Mania.

After that, Richardson brings his own eight-piece band called the Purple Comet Orchestra on April 18th, playing "your favourite Nintendo classics, including Mario, Zelda, Kirby, and many more." missingNo. then plays the same series on June 6th.

Richardson also told me that he attended one of bassist Piyotr Kao's nights of video game music and gameplay between sets, billed as Piyotr's Game Lobby at Tyrant Studios. It was the one I cited as upcoming in my Studio Ghibli story: September 7, 2024, featuring music from Kirby. This series in particular, and Tyrant as a venue, has been perhaps the biggest outpost beyond Infidels Jazz for the musicians in this sub-scene.

"It's quite fascinating that video game music is kind of becoming its whole own scene in Vancouver," Richardson said.

Tobin's next drop is an instrumental cover of Michael Jackson's "Human Nature", due out on April 3rd. That said, his two upcoming full-length projects directly engage the video game themes that already informed his style. One is dedicated to the music of Super Mario 64; the other has a variety of repertoire under the title Choose Your Character.

I asked Tobin how he felt about promoting himself with short videos on social media. He admitted that he of course still has times where he hates making content, but he focused on finding a fun way to do it. "I do coaching as well for artists, I offer that as a service. One thing I tell people is, you have to find a way to make it personal to you and enjoyable, and it's about telling your story."

"I think having that confidence has been part of the posting, just being willing to put myself out there, put captions on videos that are a little more sensationalized. Like, 'F-ing dope jazz fusion band playing Mario', whatever. I wouldn't go up to someone on the street and say, I'm a dope keyboard player, here's my video. But when you're in this marketplace online, you have to create clickbait in a sense. I think everyone has to do that. If you wanna be successful, you have to do it, but you can do it in a way that doesn't feel like you're completely selling your soul."

The JD Rich Trio is booked for the late show at Guilt & Co. on March 23rd, where they'll have a non-video-game night. "I’ll have a guest vocalist joining me," Richardson said, "and I might be singing a little bit as well, which is a little bit scary for me. I don't market myself as a singer, but I dabble in vocals." That's another area of common ground with Tobin, who now sings often at solo gigs in lounges.

Richardson will have to reckon with questions of video and content as he approaches his debut single release. (Also worth a mention: Richardson's bandmate Colin Sankey has found great success, including Mario themes on virtuosic slap bass, making such videos.)

"It's a huge song," Richardson said of his yet-unreleased recorded debut as JD Rich. "It's got like 200 tracks in the production and vocals, chord sections, guitar, bass, drums, and a lot of electronic sounds as well. It's this whole huge thing. I haven't been rushing it, because I just want to do it right." At Tyrant next week, his collaboration with Tobin has arrived right on time.