{"id":7671,"date":"2015-10-11T11:00:25","date_gmt":"2015-10-11T15:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.videogamedj.com\/?p=7671"},"modified":"2015-10-11T12:44:55","modified_gmt":"2015-10-11T16:44:55","slug":"smooth-mcgroove-undisputed-champ","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/smooth-mcgroove-undisputed-champ\/","title":{"rendered":"Smooth McGroove: Undisputed Champ of Vocal VGM"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;re\u00a0a fan\u00a0of video game music and you haven&#8217;t heard of Smooth McGroove, I&#8217;m not going to judge you for\u00a0your ignorance.\u00a0Nobody&#8217;s perfect. However, you might want to\u00a0redeem yourself by watching\u00a0this\u00a0video from Mega Man X. I&#8217;ll wait.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/hyx9-kWYjDI\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Oh yes, that is the sweet sound of VGM\u00a0being faithfully recreated\u00a0with nothing more than a microphone and some\u00a0mouthparts. Well&#8211; there&#8217;s a computer involved, and experts are still debating the technical purpose\u00a0of his\u00a0cat, but you get the idea.<\/p>\n<p>Some\u00a0backstory\u00a0for the uninitiated: Max Gleason uploaded his first Smooth McGroove Acapella video (Zelda&#8217;s Lullaby) on January 13, 2013. The Internet quickly\u00a0responded with a loud, enthusiastic\u00a0&#8220;Yes!&#8221; and within two years he had amassed\u00a0more than a million subscribers on YouTube. Very rarely do we see an online star rise to fame at such a meteoric rate, and Smooth&#8217;s story will surely go down in history as one of the fastest climbs to success the Internet has ever seen. Not only do his videos perfectly fill a niche, but they also <i>ooze<\/i> quality.\u00a0Simple, accurate, and beautifully polished; each one is\u00a0a perfect storm of childhood memories for any gamer.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/f5jgnCBigGQ\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>There is something magical about capturing note-for-note nostalgia with the\u00a0universally recognized sound of the\u00a0human voice, and Smooth&#8217;s got it down to a science. Not only does he have the chops&#8211; and the beard&#8211; to get the job done, but he&#8217;s also got the expertise in music production to\u00a0bring the whole experience together. The result is basically what you would expect to hear from the angelic choir in video game heaven. With beatboxing.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of production experts, I&#8217;ve heard whispers that\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.gamechops.com\/artists\" target=\"_blank\">GameChops<\/a>\u00a0is planning an\u00a0official Smooth McGroove remix album. No release date or track list yet, but I <em>can<\/em> say that it&#8217;s definitely happening. Start your hype engines!<\/p>\n<p>Now, I&#8217;m <em>supposed<\/em> to be keeping everything top-secret, but I wouldn&#8217;t be able to forgive myself if I made an announcement like that without giving you <em>something<\/em> to nibble on. So I&#8217;ve whipped you up a tasty little preview of my own &#8220;Smooth&#8221; Super Mario Bros. 2 remix:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZsI1Yzl5PSc?feature=player_detailpage\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Just keep that between us, okay? Our little secret.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, trust me when I say there are more than enough videos to satisfy your hunger\u00a0for video game music\u00a0on <a href=\"https:\/\/youtube.com\/smoothmcgroove\" target=\"_blank\">Smooth&#8217;s YouTube channel<\/a>. He&#8217;s covered just about everything: Zelda, Phoenix Wright, Kingdom Hearts, Pok\u00e9mon&#8230; and that&#8217;s just in the last <em>month<\/em>. \u00a0If you love video game music, do yourself a\u00a0favor and jump down <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=CRfwX_UdomA&amp;list=PLX2MjbJ6GIceq8YbAPJ0ExF_yRUafQkLG\" target=\"_blank\">the rabbit hole<\/a> headfirst.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately for our ears, Max isn&#8217;t\u00a0<em>always <\/em>creating\u00a0the stuff goosebumps are made of, but he has been known to appear on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitch.tv\/smoothmcgroove\" target=\"_blank\">Twitch<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0his gameplay channel, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/SmoothMcGames\" target=\"_blank\">Smooth McGames<\/a>. Be sure to follow and subscribe to both\u00a0if you want to get the full experience.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Smooth McGroove\u00a0is on\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/smoothmcgroove\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/smoothmcgroove1\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a>, \u00a0and you can download\u00a0his music from our friends at <a href=\"https:\/\/loudr.fm\/artist\/smooth-mcgroove\/YaszY\" target=\"_blank\">Loudr<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/smoothmcgroove.bandcamp.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Bandcamp<\/a>. If you really want to pledge your support, he also runs\u00a0a successful <a href=\"https:\/\/patreon.com\/smoothmcgroove\" target=\"_blank\">Patreon<\/a> campaign with great perks.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>And finally&#8211; let&#8217;s bring it back to his cat really quick, because seriously, look at this adorable\u00a0cat:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" lang=\"en\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Chill Charl <a href=\"http:\/\/t.co\/6yO7kctF50\">pic.twitter.com\/6yO7kctF50<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Smooth McGroove (@SmoothMcGroove) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SmoothMcGroove\/status\/376742692534771712\">September 8, 2013<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" async=\"\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;re\u00a0a fan\u00a0of video game music and you haven&#8217;t heard of Smooth McGroove, I&#8217;m not going to judge you for\u00a0your ignorance.\u00a0Nobody&#8217;s perfect. However, you might want to\u00a0redeem yourself by watching\u00a0this\u00a0video from Mega Man X. I&#8217;ll wait.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":149,"featured_media":7723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33,55,327],"tags":[609,101,1272,161,175,4234,1002,20,21,4292,235,98,3578,4492,309,682,24,25,3590,188,29,30,60,468,31],"class_list":["post-7671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-music-vgm","category-music","category-videos","tag-album","tag-awesome","tag-bandcamp","tag-download","tag-game","tag-game-music-vgm","tag-gamechops","tag-mario","tag-megaman","tag-music","tag-nes","tag-nintendo","tag-patreon","tag-phoenix-wright","tag-pokemon","tag-release","tag-remix","tag-remixes","tag-smooth-mcgroove","tag-vgm","tag-video-game","tag-video-game-music","tag-video-games","tag-youtube","tag-zelda"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/smooth-pikachu.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/149"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7671"}],"version-history":[{"count":54,"href":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7684,"href":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7671\/revisions\/7684"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gamechops.com\/vgdj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}