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Download (End card acoustic short: Piklopedia)

 

 

It’s Pikminin’ time!

 

Perhaps I’ve been a bit harsh on Pikmin in the past. There’s been a bit of a long running joke that I haven’t done Pikmin songs because when asked why, I usually respond “Pikmin has music?”.

I was only joking of course… but in all honesty, I never really knew too much about Pikmin, and the few Pikmin tracks I had heard could only be described as “Environmental” at best.

So Pikmin 4 came out recently, and I decided it’d be fun to celebrate by finally doing a Pikmin song. I checked up on the GaMetal Patreon Request List and this was one of the few Pikmin songs suggested, so after listening to it, I thought it’d be a fun challenge to take on.

Not challenging because the song itself was hard to play or even hard to translate into a different format, it had plenty of rhythm and melody to play around with. The challenge came in incorporating the several different variations of Wistful Wild, and there are A LOT. Something like 13 or so. Thankfully, the variations mostly add or change a simple instrument line or two.

We can make things a little easier to break down by first starting off with the 2 biggest and most noticeable differences: the normal versions and the “sunset” versions. The Sunset versions are all generally the same as the normal versions, with one major difference: the acoustic guitar and flute (and probably a few other less noticeable instruments I’m forgetting to mention) have been replaced with a music box. So by incorporating a few music box bits into this arrangement (at 1:34 and the outro), we’re acknowledging the existence of all of the Sunset variants.

Now to get a little more complicated, we have the 6 different variants of Wistful Wild overall: Normal, Enemy Near, Battle, Working, Treasure, and Spiderwort Near. The changes here also mostly apply to the Sunset variants, barring a few small exceptions.

Normal is mainly the acoustic guitar and flute lines (as well as the Cello and Sitar-sounding part later in the song). For the most part, they’re heard throughout every variant, with a few exceptions of variants changing the instrument of the main melody/some rhythms.

Enemy Near adds a little 2 note jingle throughout the entire song. I bring this in at 0:28 in this arrangement, and it plays throughout most of this arrangement represented by harpsichord (though I do tone the volume back on it a bit, as it would get annoying if it were too prevalent for too long, lol).

Battle brings in a march-sounding drum line, which I bring in here around 0:38. Since this is a GaMetal arrangement… it’s pretty much all battle sounding whenever the drums are playing, haha.

Working cuts the drums out and instead incorporates a different piano and pizzicato string rhythm section. This one was a bit trickier to represent in this arrangement with all the different instruments going on and what not, but I did include the Piano/plucked strings line during the second loop. The rhythm section that comes in at 2:21 is a direct acknowledgment of the Working variant rhythm line.

Treasure replaces the flute melody with an accordian. Simple enough, just had an Accordian handle the lead melody at 2:31.

Spiderwort Near is the normal variant with a simple long soft flute/string/choir rhythm line in the back. Technically when I bring in the music box at 1:34, this is the Spiderwort Near variant. I do keep the rhythm going for a bit once the full band comes in.

Now that I’ve proven in a court of law that I’ve represented all of the different versions of Wistful Wild… I must make one confession. There are ANOTHER thirteen variants which I did not acknowledge: the Louie versions. Louie’s versions basically give the song a slight swing tempo, that’s all really. I don’t think anyone noticed….. 👀