Alpine Escape

Hi hi! Thank you all so much for 1,000 subscribers!! And for 166 more since then... A lot's kept me busy over the summer. Love, loss, more than one complete workflow overhaul, and warming to the anxieties of performing live and my biggest phobia! Oh and drama with my studies, but that's less fun.

I finally now earn An Amount™ from ad revenue. It's not significant at all but it is something. Although I do take commissions and sell my work on Bandcamp and Ko-Fi, I'm also very big on earning without charging, so I'd appreciate supporting my work by watching without adblock or listening on streaming services <3



I know most of you are here for Yakuza content but I'm really enjoying spreading my wings into other games, especially after five(!) years* of mostly Yakuza in which I've been progressively disassociating from the series in every aspect besides its music. My issues with the studio and the series date far back past the current wave of criticism. The series still has very talented musicians but Yokoyama has worn my trust completely thin that I won't be playing new games from them again until the studio is free of his greed and ineptitude.

* My first posted cover, Machine Gun Kiss, went live on SoundCloud in January 2021. My first cover posted on YouTube was then Majima no Majirock in June.



With all that being said, the new year is opening with a big marathon of Yakuza 3 remixes to celebrate Kiwami 3, yes, immediately after saying I don't personally care for it. After that I'm aiming to get around to my outstanding requests, and then it's time to get into some *real* deep cuts and stuff that's been finished and lying around for a while, like an arrangement of Legend style Receive You that's been finished since before this summer. Who remembers the score to the cutscene where Nishiki shoots the gun at Kiryu out in the woods? I've heard it a lot recently! *hint hint nudge nudge*



tl;dr: Yakuza content isn't going away, but I'd really like to build a broader audience for other series, particularly ones I can actually say positive things for at the moment.

Speaking of which, I've had to delay this week's intended upload due to logistical delays. I haven't figured out where I'm going to fit it in yet, but today's video is instead a demo sampler, something I've wanted to put together for months. The video is a partial selection of unfinished cover projects that I either wasn't happy with, forgot about, and/or simply haven't had time to finish or overhaul.

I spend a *lot* of hours working on music and audio, only a small amount of which ends up public for one reason or another. Nonetheless, I think they all have *some* merit to them, but only when exhibited as such and not as a proper release in such states. I hope they are mildly interesting, and who knows, some of them may get completed someday.





Thank you everyone for your support over the years. I'm also hoping to announce a new project in the new year writing original music with a singer, and I can't wait to say more about this. In the meantime, have lovely holidays! <3

- alpy

2 months ago | [YT] | 11

Alpine Escape

Hello! So, a few things:

1. I've started a Discord server! I've been a lot more social this year and I'd like to get to know you all better and maybe play some games along the way. I'll add more to it soon to make it less barebones but for now the link is here: discord.gg/VaNutSZVJt

2. As a reminder, I'm no longer taking requests, but commissions are available on my ko-fi. The longer version can be found in previous channel posts. ko-fi.com/alpineescape

3. I now have a public Trello board for tracking work: trello.com/b/YL5OD4Ed/alpine-escape-public-work-tr…

4. All of my music on streaming is going to temporarily disappear and reappear in the coming days as I change distribution services. I don't think these releases will replace the originals in playlists, so please be aware of that if you have any of my music saved. I put up with a lot of nitpicking from Tunecore as well as their internal verifiers being strict on enforcing rules and standards that were wishy-washy at best, but them not having ears and falsely accusing me of using original audio in my covers was where I decided enough was enough.

That's all for now. My current fascination with music from Yakuza is unreleased tracks ripped from game files, so I'm really looking forward to going nicher than Shangri-La and cutscene cues next year. I'm also preparing notes for a video essay on series-wide sound design, so I hope that's something people may find interesting. My research and experimentation has been going really well, right down to loading into Yakuza 4 without the ability to load anything new into memory. Whoops!

See you on the other side, Ray
<3 alpy

6 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 22

Alpine Escape

Tomorrow! Yakuza goes chill~
8 "relaxing" (relatively) Yakuza arrangements, 6 of which are entirely new. (Vol. 3 is also in the works...)
P.S. comms are open on ko-fi: ko-fi.com/alpineescape
- alpy <3

7 months ago | [YT] | 12

Alpine Escape

Which song would you rather get poisonously stabbed to?

7 months ago | [YT] | 8

Alpine Escape

IMPORTANT UPDATE ON REQUESTS



Hello!

First of all, thank you everyone who's put requests in for music. By my count, I'm currently at 20 completed (including some finished and scheduled but not yet public) requests over 13 months. I have to admit that a lot of them have been new to me, even some really big tracks like Two Dragons that I didn't really know that well before working on them.



Effective immediately, I'll no longer be taking requests, but commissions will be opened within the next few days through my ko-fi instead: ko-fi.com/alpineescape

ALL CURRENTLY OUTSTANDING REQUESTS BEFORE JUNE ARE EXEMPT AND ALL COMMISSIONS WILL BE PUBLICLY POSTED.


Prices are GBP with rough current USD conversion for reference:

- For simple cover requests (I retain creative control): £8 ($10~)
- For genre cover requests (I retain creative control, you decide the genre, includes reference material): £15 ($20~) for 3 minutes, plus £5 ($7~) for every additional minute.
- For custom cover commissions (you decide the style and genre or game, includes reference material): £20 ($27~) for 2 minutes, plus £10 ($13.50~) for every additional minute.
- For custom game USTs (you decide the game and scene), £20 ($27~) for 2 minutes, plus £10 ($13.50~) for every additional minute.
- For completely original compositions (i.e. for your game or animation etc. etc.), my starting rate is £60 ($81~) per minute of work. Please contact ahead of time to negotiate the project scope and ownership of commissioned work.

*Note that I retain the right to reject and refund commissions as and when. Please refrain from songs and genres that are heavy on rap vocals, gang vocals, or heavy metal vocals.



It's been really tough to make this decision, but the last year in particular has been busy and stressful, working on audio in some form or other (covers, original work, sound design, research or postgrad assignments) to equivalent hours of a full-time job and overtime, for no pay. With a third assignment active currently, I've had little to no downtime from working in the last two weeks and it's killing me to feel guilty about not working my 50th hour that week.

I never wanted to paywall content but it's been agonising working so much for so little. For most of last year I was predicted to hit 1,000 subs (the point at which you start earning from ad revenue) in May, and here we are in June with the goal still a while away. I wanted to earn from my work in passive ways like ad revenue and from streaming, but it just isn't enough to sustain overworking and burnout.



As well, the amount of requests outstanding currently is a pleasantly but stressfully surprising 21 tracks. Not only is this more than the amount I took on in the last year, but coupled with completed requests that are scheduled and waiting, uploading one a week would take until December to upload non-requests, and any new ones would spill over into 2026 already.

As I mentioned in my last post, my workaround for avoiding burnout (again) is to alternate Yakuza and non-Yakuza content, because 4 years is a long time to get comfortable in one area. Truthfully, I don't want to leave the Yakuza sphere but I do need to moderate my time around it and work in general; it's been a few months now since I was able to enjoy a game just for pleasure, and not with the primary intent of research or exposure therapy.



As a reminder, all requests that were made before June are exempt. I will get to them, depending on my schedule and any outstanding commissions, but they'll be slower and lower priority as I ease myself back into working healthier amounts.



Thank you all for the love, your requests, your understanding, and a nice egg in this trying time,
- alpy ❤️

8 months ago | [YT] | 12

Alpine Escape

Updates, updates, come get your updates (denimmmmmmmm)

WEEKLY UPLOADS ARE NOW GOING UP ON STREAMING. This is not a drill, every VGM Friday upload from now on will go live on (or around) the same day. I'm only checking Spotify and Apple Music but they should be distributed to many other stores as well. This also includes downloads from my Bandcamp, where everything is choose your own price (including free). I would really appreciate these streams as they do more to earn back from my work than YouTube does. I still see absolutely none of the ad revenue on my channel, and the ETA to hitting 1,000 subscribers just keeps getting pushed further and further back.

To burn through my ever-increasing to-do list of projects and finally push forward with branching out, Yakuza uploads are remaining bi-weekly while the 'off' week will be something else. Yakuza is my bread and butter but equally I'm having so much fun working outside the little bubble of Shoji and co. I'm very steadily getting through the instrumental requests and even working on USTs again. I know you don't *think* you want a UST for Y1/K1's Abandoned Building long battle, but believe me -- you'll want it.

In other news, I'll have music on Steam from Tuesday! "Strange Shores: Social Desktop Fishing" is an idle fishing game that sits in the corner of your desktop while you work. It was developed partially locally to me and so happy I got to contribute music to it. Making music for games has been a dream for most of my life and I'm incredibly lucky to have my work in a game that's out and being sold on the very storefront I game on every day. Please check it out! <3 store.steampowered.com/app/3593500/Strange_Shores_…

And lastly, yesterday saw the release of "Memories Of Lost Odyssey", an ambitious project by Daniel Welch, long-time friend of the channel and fellow Yakuza/VGM arranger. I contributed bass guitar to a bunch of tracks, including the notable 'Howl Of The Departed', as well as electric guitar for Neverending Journey. NJ is the first time since the Machine Gun Kiss cover I posted from the archives recently that the three of us have directly worked together and I love how it's come out.

Daniel did a fantastic job as always with the music, but also cutting it all together into a feature-length film. Lost Odyssey is an oft-forgotten 2007 Xbox 360-exclusive JRPG from Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu, known for being the creator and composer respectively for Final Fantasy, more recently Fantasian, and most importantly, The Last Story.

That's all from me today. Happy hunting, Faithy!
- alpy <3

9 months ago | [YT] | 4

Alpine Escape

Pseudanthium and updates!

First of all, PSEUDANTHIUM IS OUT NOW! Check the album out wherever you listen to your music 💕💕💕

Spotify: open.spotify.com/album/6zPF73DnKYrpcTIDR1Chmw?si=p…
Apple Music: music.apple.com/us/album/pseudanthium-like-a-drago…
Bandcamp: alpineescape.bandcamp.com/album/pseudanthium-like-…

Now, for updates.

Hoo boy. If ever there was a project that should've been so simple and turned into a nightmare, this was it. For the 4 years I've been uploading to the channel, and the many years of writing music before then, my biggest enemy has always been perfectionism. Constantly doubting my ability and wasting so much time revising projects, only for them to come out not all that great (see: One-Eyed Slugger, or for an older example, Amidst A Dream, which took a year and a half before I gave up and posted as-is).

Perfectionism, my drive to produce professional mixes, my drive to produce big maximalist arrangements, my past self's mixing abilities and my present self's mixing abilities were the 5 factors I found myself wrestling with. Finishing the album was a bittersweet realisation that my production and mixing skills aren't where I want them to be. Fully remixing, or at least giving second-passes to a collection of 10 tracks proved incredibly difficult. Issue after issue after issue arose and so much of my time was wasted on rendering only to immediately discover something that I needed to tweak. If you were wondering why Reign and Two Dragons were also uploaded as part of the album spam despite just being uploaded as singles very recently, that's why. I wasn't happy and had to tweak them further. I'm not happy about it, but I also had to swap out several tracks for newer, more polished mixes to save time and get the project out there. It was a very useful learning experience about how to approach producing my music going forward. It's just unfortunate that not all learning experiences are painless, and I felt incredibly burnt out on the day I went through standardising the track volumes to remain consistent throughout.

Since finishing up the album, I've taken a break from Yakuza to work with other game series. I'll still be posting Yakuza remixes regularly, but as of writing I have the next 3 scheduled and waiting and I needed the break. Working with Yakuza has become a very fun comfort zone, but I've also been loving re-arranging music from other games in this time. More Ace Attorney has been a long time coming, while Resident Evil and Animal Crossing are much more left-field and have been very fun challenges to approach my workflow differently. Because of this, the next Pseudanthium collection will *NOT* be Yakuza, but there will be at least one more Yakuza collection this year. I just need to regroup and rebuild my confidence before tackling some of those really old and ugly mixes.

2025 is gonna be a really good year musically. I have some bangers from Yakuza lined up, really good stuff from other VGM in general, more covers/remixes going up on streaming, and we're on track to hit 1,000 subscribers this year too. My content is free because I don't like the idea of paywalling it, but this also means I rely on streams (from Spotify, Apple Music, etc. etc.) to make back a tiny amount of money from my work. Once I hit 1,000 subs I can also earn a little more from ad revenue (yes, I don't see a single cent of that and I never have). Please stream the album and share the channel; as soon as we hit 1k I'm dropping everything to work on the special celebratory mega remix I have planned. It's going to be amazing and I can't wait to share it with the world.

P.S. I'm really looking forward to Iji Sakura this Friday. It came out so well so easily and god I wish more projects were like that.

That's rad!
- alpy <3

10 months ago | [YT] | 14

Alpine Escape

PSEUDANTHIUM RELEASES ON APRIL 14TH!!
Make sure you're following on your platform of choice and keep an eye out for more coming this year <3
- alpy

10 months ago | [YT] | 14

Alpine Escape

🎧 ANNOUNCING PSEUDANTHIUM!! 🎮

Have you checked out the new mix of Reign yet? 👀
'Pseudanthium' is my new line of VGM remix compilations going up on streaming platforms starting this year! A few of you have been asking for it (and I've wanted it) for a while, so I'm happy to announce the first album will be out in April!

Every Yakuza remix featured will undergo arrangement, mixing and mastering second-passes. In some cases, this includes re-recorded lines or even ground-up re-recordings. My aim is to provide the "definitive" versions of these remixes utilising what I've learnt since their original uploads, some of which are almost 4 years old! Pseudanthium albums will cover music from other games as well, but mostly Yakuza.

Be sure to follow on your streaming service of choice now! There'll be more coming this year so let me know what covers you want to see in volume 2~

( They'll also be available for free download from my Bandcamp: alpineescape.bandcamp.com/ )

- alpy <3

10 months ago | [YT] | 10

Alpine Escape

Hi hi! PaRappa the Yapper here.

I'm back from Singapore! A rare Alpine holiday (I'd typically prefer to spend that time at my desk), I didn't get to find Akiyama, but I did meet Abi again, who makes my amazing thumbnails and videos!

First of all, thank you everyone who came in while I was out of the country lol. My subscriber count grew a crazy amount while I was away and now we're almost at 800! I've mentioned before in earlier posts that in order to hit monetisation (yes, I've legitimately not made a single penny from ad revenue the entire time I've been uploading), there are thresholds for sub count and annual watch hours. The watch hours keep rising and are about to smash the target for 4,000 hours over the last 365 days. These are unbelievable numbers, but I still have a very special cover planned for hitting monetisation. I don't ask this often because I don't like asking for it, but please tell your friends, spread the word, and let's blitz through these last 200 subs and hit 1k <3

Next, apologies for the order of requests and coming non-request uploads. I *will* get to everything, but the order in which I've felt motivated to chip away at the long list of uploads is all over the place. I usually try my best to get to them in order, but I've completely lost track now. Just know that I will get to every request (unless otherwise specified), I just can't guarantee when. I'm also indefinitely slowing down my upload schedule to every other Friday. This may increase again down the line but for now I'm just too swamped with assignments and other important career stuff.

Another part of this is that I'll be starting to branch out from Yakuza soon. I'm *NOT* dropping the series, just branching out a bit more. I know it's what you guys want to see, but I'm coming up on four years of specialising in the series and that's a long time to focus in on only one series. With that in mind, you guys introduce me to a lot of tracks even within Yakuza that I never really thought about before working on them, so do let me know what you'd like to hear from other series as well!

P.S. the first batch of Yakuza covers going up on streaming is almost finished. 8 of the first 10 mixes are in the "referencing" stage where tweaks and adjustments will be small at most. The current bottleneck is simply getting the branding finished, so there'll be more news on that very soon. We're designing it in a way that it won't have to be completely different or remade with every release, so free time providing, it hopefully won't be the only batch dropping this year~

- alpy <3

11 months ago | [YT] | 17