Tealgamemaster just recently interviewed the Project Destati team. Here it is if you want to check it out:
I was INCREDIBLY fortunate to interview the Project Destati team! Check out the interview below this text!
1. Project Destati: Light is a Reorchestrated Kingdom Hearts Album which matches and in some cases surpasses the incredible work of Yoko Shimomura. It's now officially been a month since Project Destati: Light has been released. If people are unfamiliar with what Project Destati is, wouldyou mind telling people what it is and who you are?
Project Destati Team: Absolutely we’re a trio of musicians who basically grew up with Kingdom Hearts. From its onset back in 2002 up until now, we’ve been huge, huge fans of the series. In 2013, we decided to come together to reorchestrate the music from Kingdom Hearts and deliver the epic sound that the KH OST really deserves.
2. How exactly did this project begin and what inspired you?
Project Destati Team: Well, the story of Kingdom Hearts shaped all of our childhoods, and this lead to each of us practicing the KH scores on our respective instruments for many many years while we were growing up. Having been inspired by similar reorchestration projects (such as Pokemon Reorchestrated, Zelda Reorchestrated, Distant Worlds, and the Banjo Kazooie Symphony) we three met online after Braxton of Pokemon Reorchestrated introduced us, and that really started the ball rolling!
3. Why the name Project Destati, and what other names did you consider?
Project Destati Team: Names that we played around with included “Kingdom Hearts Reorchestrated”, “Kingdom Hearts Sinfonia”, and a few other variations with that kind of thinking, but nothing seemed to fit as well as our current name. “Project Destati” was chosen as a reference to one of the more prominent pieces from Kingdom Hearts, actually. We feel that the track “Destati Dive into the Heart” really captures the essence of what our reorchestration project is about, serving as both the player’s introduction at the Station of Awakening and a recurring motif throughout the entire soundtrack.
4. Was the reaction greater than you expected when you released “Project Destati: Awakening”?
Project Destati Team: Definitely! Back when we released “Awakening”, we really didn’t have any idea how the Kingdom Hearts community would take it, seeing as nobody knew what our splash page was about. When GameInformer and related news websites started writing articles speculating what it could mean for the Kingdom Hearts community, it really gave us a lot of hype to live up to, people began theorizing about a Kingdom Hearts liveaction movie, a Kingdom Hearts 2.5 announcement, a mobile port of KH1, etc. When the countdown finally ended and the nature of our Project was revealed, many fans seemed to be disappointed, but the ones that stayed around and gave us an opportunity to show our months of work were happy with the music that we’d reorchestrated. This really gave us the motivation to make our first volume, “LIGHT” even bigger and better than“Awakening”.
5. The idea of teasing us all by making us wait 358 days until Project Destati: Light; was that always planned, or did it just pan out that way?
Project Destati Team: We originally intended to release LIGHT 358/2 days (read: 179 days) after Awakening, but we really wanted to make sure that we had put together the best orchestral album of Kingdom Hearts music that we possibly could, so we spent a few extra months tweaking and polishing the tracks.
6. How difficult was it to choose the songs, and why did you choose the songs you chose? There are so many to choose from.
Project Destati Team: You’re right, there are so many pieces to choose from. At the very onset of Project Destati, over the course of a week or so, we three made a spreadsheet of all the tracks in the Kingdom Hearts discography and began ranking them by considering things like memorability of the track, importance to the story, whether or not the track was a variation or a medley of already existing tracks, and of course, our personal favorites. In the end, we came up with a working tracklist that was about a hundred or so pieces of music that we were interested in working on. For “LIGHT,” we considered which tracks on our spreadsheet would lend themselves to being well represented with the “LIGHT” theme, and which would be better saved for a different themed album. In the end, the 22 tracks on “LIGHT” are the ones we felt fit best.
7. Could you tell me the process for creating one of your songs? How were they produced, who worked on what, etc. And roughly, how long they take to create?
Project Destati Team: Once we had our assignments for the tracks to work on, we three split up and began the process of arranging. After several months of studying the original score and deciding how best to tackle the music, we submitted our rough drafts to each other for improvement ideas. Once the arrangement rough drafts were critiqued, re-edited, and finalized, Kristin took the MIDI data and began the much more time consuming process of mixing while David and Sebastian began sending out sheet music to the instrumentalists. After the painstaking process of tweaking mix drafts, importing and modifying instrumentalist recordings, and finalizing a solid mix, the tracks were then polished with mastering and the album was reviewed once again. In this way, we really went through all the pieces together at once, and the whole process was finished after several months. For an individual piece of music, the creation would likely take around 56 weeks, but the process does go a little faster when we work in bulk.
8. Were there any problems that occurred throughout the entire process?
Project Destati Team: Of course everything from arranging writer’s block to software malfunctions, delays, Kristin accidentally stepping on her iLok. As they say, nothing worthwhile is ever easy!
9. Each song is cleverly created as it references so many others within them. Was that always the idea, or did it just seem to work when you tried it out?
Project Destati Team: A little bit from column A and a little from column B. A big part of our arranging (and expressing our love for the series) is exploring the music and its ingame context, rather than simply the technical aspects of theme and variation. Kingdom Hearts is about connections, and you really can’t tell the story of one character, place, or event, without including others.
10. What song was your favorite to work on and which was you favorite finished piece?
Kristin: My two favorites were Roxas / The Other Promise and Rage Awakened. Roxas intimidated me more than any of my other assignments, not only because of the flawless rendition in Drammatica, but also because it’s my favorite character theme of the series, and I’ve got a huge emotional attachment to the Days trio. I spent a lot of time worrying about doing the music justice. Rage, by contrast, was just plain fun to do because I could focus on upping the intensity from the original and making the track undoubtedly Terra’s by referencing him and his story throughout it.
David: I really had a lot of fun with Hollow Bastion and the Gummi Ship Rhapsody, but Working Together was my absolute favorite to work on. I’m incredibly proud of the arrangement of that piece and how nicely the secondary and tertiary melodies weave in and out throughout the 7 minutes, balancing themselves with the already established melody of the original track. However, my favorite finished piece from the sound alone ended up being Hand in Hand. There’s something magical about hearing all that brass in this piece that just wasn’t quite achieved with any already existing arrangements, and the track never fails to get me pumped up!
Sebastian: As much as I want to pick "Pirate's Gigue" (one of my alltime favorite bouncy, fun tracks), I still have to go with “Kairi.” I had a grand time changing, shifting, and abstracting one of the most thematic melodies in the game. I almost think it might be too dark, at parts, but then again, is that really all that bad? My favorite part about that song, specifically, was hearing the melody come to life after arranging it especially in all the woodwinds
11. Were you surprised by the amount of publicity that Project Destati: Light has received?
Project Destati Team: The reaction from LIGHT’s release was definitely much larger than we’d anticipated, and certainly larger than the reaction we’d gotten from our splash with “Awakening”. We’re very humbled by the overly positive reception, and happy that we have this opportunity to reimagine these fantastic scores as we eagerly wait with the rest of the Kingdom Hearts community for KH3!
12. Do you plan on releasing a physical copy of your albums, or would that be a problem due to copyright? I'm sure many would buy it.
Project Destati Team: We’ve been considering it! Physical albums are pricey to produce and are unfortunately not likely for LIGHT alone, but this might change in the future…
13. Do you plan on releasing merchandise of some sort? I really like the logo you have for Light. I'd have that on a shirt!
Project Destati Team: Hey, there’s an idea!
14. Seeing as this album was Light, will the next one be Darkness?
Project Destati Team: Well now that you’ve guessed it, we’ll have to rename it to Volume II: Fresh Fruit Balls.
15. The answer is most likely no, but am I able to get a teaser for what will be on the next album; any track names?
Project Destati Team: Sure. BounceORama (Volume 2 will be even bigger and better than “LIGHT” was! But we’re afraid that we’ll have to leave it at that...for now)
16. Will we have to wait another 358 days until Volume 2?
Project Destati Team: It’ll take as long as we need to bring you the best album we can! (Hopefully not, though.)
17. Has your work been seen by people like Yoko Shimomura?
Project Destati Team: To our knowledge, it has not. We have reached out to Ms. Shimomura, but we also completely understand the insanely busy lives of musicians! However, we would be incredibly excited and honored if she did listen to our work one day.
18. This is set to be a trilogy of albums, correct? What does the future hold for you all?
Project Destati Team: You’ll have to wait and find out! Project Destati is more than a few reorchestrations of Kingdom Hearts music, and we’re really excited to share more of our plans in the future. Until then, please look forward to Project Destati: Volume 2!
Thank you once again for allowing me to interview you! It was a huge honor!
Tealgamemaster just recently interviewed the Project Destati team. Here it is if you want to check it out:
I was INCREDIBLY fortunate to interview the Project Destati team! Check out the interview below this text!
1. Project Destati: Light is a Reorchestrated Kingdom Hearts Album which matches and in some cases surpasses the incredible work of Yoko Shimomura. It's now officially been a month since Project Destati: Light has been released. If people are unfamiliar with what Project Destati is, wouldyou mind telling people what it is and who you are?
Project Destati Team: Absolutely we’re a trio of musicians who basically grew up with Kingdom Hearts. From its onset back in 2002 up until now, we’ve been huge, huge fans of the series. In 2013, we decided to come together to reorchestrate the music from Kingdom Hearts and deliver the epic sound that the KH OST really deserves.
2. How exactly did this project begin and what inspired you?
Project Destati Team: Well, the story of Kingdom Hearts shaped all of our childhoods, and this lead to each of us practicing the KH scores on our respective instruments for many many years while we were growing up. Having been inspired by similar reorchestration projects (such as Pokemon Reorchestrated, Zelda Reorchestrated, Distant Worlds, and the Banjo Kazooie Symphony) we three met online after Braxton of Pokemon Reorchestrated introduced us, and that really started the ball rolling!
3. Why the name Project Destati, and what other names did you consider?
Project Destati Team: Names that we played around with included “Kingdom Hearts Reorchestrated”, “Kingdom Hearts Sinfonia”, and a few other variations with that kind of thinking, but nothing seemed to fit as well as our current name. “Project Destati” was chosen as a reference to one of the more prominent pieces from Kingdom Hearts, actually. We feel that the track “Destati Dive into the Heart” really captures the essence of what our reorchestration project is about, serving as both the player’s introduction at the Station of Awakening and a recurring motif throughout the entire soundtrack.
4. Was the reaction greater than you expected when you released “Project Destati: Awakening”?
Project Destati Team: Definitely! Back when we released “Awakening”, we really didn’t have any idea how the Kingdom Hearts community would take it, seeing as nobody knew what our splash page was about.
When GameInformer and related news websites started writing articles speculating what it could mean for the Kingdom Hearts community, it really gave us a lot of hype to live up to, people began theorizing about a Kingdom Hearts liveaction movie, a Kingdom Hearts 2.5 announcement, a mobile port of KH1, etc. When the countdown finally ended and the nature of our Project was revealed, many fans seemed to be disappointed, but the ones that stayed around and gave us an opportunity to show our months of work were happy with the music that we’d reorchestrated. This really gave us the motivation to make our first volume, “LIGHT” even bigger and better than“Awakening”.
5. The idea of teasing us all by making us wait 358 days until Project Destati: Light; was that always planned, or did it just pan out that way?
Project Destati Team: We originally intended to release LIGHT 358/2 days (read: 179 days) after Awakening, but we really wanted to make sure that we had put together the best orchestral album of Kingdom Hearts music that we possibly could, so we spent a few extra months tweaking and polishing the tracks.
6. How difficult was it to choose the songs, and why did you choose the songs you chose? There are so many to choose from.
Project Destati Team: You’re right, there are so many pieces to choose from. At the very onset of Project Destati, over the course of a week or so, we three made a spreadsheet of all the tracks in the Kingdom Hearts discography and began ranking them by considering things like memorability of the track, importance to the story, whether or not the track was a variation or a medley of already existing tracks, and of course, our personal favorites. In the end, we came up with a working tracklist that was about a hundred or so pieces of music that we were interested in working on.
For “LIGHT,” we considered which tracks on our spreadsheet would lend themselves to being well represented with the “LIGHT” theme, and which would be better saved for a different themed album. In the end, the 22 tracks on “LIGHT” are the ones we felt fit best.
7. Could you tell me the process for creating one of your songs? How were they produced, who worked on what, etc. And roughly, how long they take to create?
Project Destati Team: Once we had our assignments for the tracks to work on, we three split up and began the process of arranging. After several months of studying the original score and deciding how best to tackle the music, we submitted our rough drafts to each other for improvement ideas. Once the arrangement rough drafts were critiqued, re-edited, and finalized, Kristin took the MIDI data and began the much more time consuming process of mixing while David and Sebastian began sending out sheet music to the instrumentalists. After the painstaking process of tweaking mix drafts, importing and modifying instrumentalist recordings, and finalizing a solid mix, the tracks were then polished with mastering and the album was reviewed once again. In this way, we really went through all the pieces together at once, and the whole process was finished after several months. For an individual piece of music, the creation would likely take around 56 weeks, but the process does go a little faster when we work in bulk.
8. Were there any problems that occurred throughout the entire process?
Project Destati Team: Of course everything from arranging writer’s block to software malfunctions, delays, Kristin accidentally stepping on her iLok. As they say, nothing worthwhile is ever easy!
9. Each song is cleverly created as it references so many others within them. Was that always the idea, or did it just seem to work when you tried it out?
Project Destati Team: A little bit from column A and a little from column B. A big part of our arranging (and expressing our love for the series) is exploring the music and its ingame context, rather than simply the technical aspects of theme and variation. Kingdom Hearts is about connections, and you really can’t tell the story of one character, place, or event, without including others.
10. What song was your favorite to work on and which was you favorite finished piece?
Kristin: My two favorites were Roxas / The Other Promise and Rage Awakened. Roxas intimidated me more than any of my other assignments, not only because of the flawless rendition in Drammatica, but also because it’s my favorite character theme of the series, and I’ve got a huge emotional attachment to the Days trio. I spent a lot of time worrying about doing the music justice. Rage, by contrast, was just plain fun to do because I could focus on upping the intensity from the original and making the track undoubtedly Terra’s by referencing him and his story throughout it.
David: I really had a lot of fun with Hollow Bastion and the Gummi Ship Rhapsody, but Working Together was my absolute favorite to work on. I’m incredibly proud of the arrangement of that piece and how nicely the secondary and tertiary melodies weave in and out throughout the 7 minutes, balancing themselves with the already established melody of the original track. However, my favorite finished piece from the sound alone ended up being Hand in Hand. There’s something magical about hearing all that brass in this piece that just wasn’t quite achieved with any already existing arrangements, and the track never fails to get me pumped up!
Sebastian: As much as I want to pick "Pirate's Gigue" (one of my alltime favorite bouncy, fun tracks), I still have to go with “Kairi.” I had a grand time changing, shifting, and abstracting one of the most thematic melodies in the game. I almost think it might be too dark, at parts, but then again, is that really all that bad? My favorite part about that song, specifically, was hearing the melody come to life after arranging it especially in all the woodwinds
11. Were you surprised by the amount of publicity that Project Destati: Light has received?
Project Destati Team: The reaction from LIGHT’s release was definitely much larger than we’d anticipated, and certainly larger than the reaction we’d gotten from our splash with “Awakening”. We’re very humbled by the overly positive reception, and happy that we have this opportunity to reimagine these fantastic scores as we eagerly wait with the rest of the Kingdom Hearts community for KH3!
12. Do you plan on releasing a physical copy of your albums, or would that be a problem due to copyright? I'm sure many would buy it.
Project Destati Team: We’ve been considering it! Physical albums are pricey to produce and are unfortunately not likely for LIGHT alone, but this might change in the future…
13. Do you plan on releasing merchandise of some sort? I really like the logo you have for Light. I'd have that on a shirt!
Project Destati Team: Hey, there’s an idea!
14. Seeing as this album was Light, will the next one be Darkness?
Project Destati Team: Well now that you’ve guessed it, we’ll have to rename it to Volume II: Fresh Fruit Balls.
15. The answer is most likely no, but am I able to get a teaser for what will be on the next album; any track names?
Project Destati Team: Sure. BounceORama
(Volume 2 will be even bigger and better than “LIGHT” was! But we’re afraid that we’ll have to leave it at that...for now)
16. Will we have to wait another 358 days until Volume 2?
Project Destati Team: It’ll take as long as we need to bring you the best album we can! (Hopefully not, though.)
17. Has your work been seen by people like Yoko Shimomura?
Project Destati Team: To our knowledge, it has not. We have reached out to Ms. Shimomura, but we also completely understand the insanely busy lives of musicians! However, we would be incredibly excited and honored if she did listen to our work one day.
18. This is set to be a trilogy of albums, correct? What does the future hold for you all?
Project Destati Team: You’ll have to wait and find out! Project Destati is more than a few reorchestrations of Kingdom Hearts music, and we’re really excited to share more of our plans in the future.
Until then, please look forward to Project Destati: Volume 2!
Thank you once again for allowing me to interview you! It was a huge honor!