Interview with Diwa de Leon, the mastermind behind the project Video Game Music Box

Hello everyone! I have been wanting to share interviews with musicians and composers and I am finally sharing the first one of these! The focus of this blog and my YouTube channel of the same name is relaxing music, lullabies and especially kalimba. Well, the music box sounds a lot like a kalimba, don't you think?

Today's interview features Diwa de Leon, composer, arranger and musician, creator of the project Video Game Music Box (amongst many other wonderful projects). I met Diwa on Twitch where we both stream music and have come to become his friend and even have some neat musical collaborations! If you like the sound of the music box and game music, you definetely need to check Video Game Music Box, and if you like awesome covers of video game music on violin, check his project String Player Gamer.

Isabelle: Hello Diwa! Thank you so much for accepting my invitation for this interview. Could you please start by sharing some information about yourself and your career?

Diwa: Hey Isabelle! Thank you so much for having me!

My name is Diwa de Leon, I am a full-time composer, arranger, music producer, and music content creator.

My main focus is on publishing music albums and singles, with supporting music videos for online consumption. Even though I used to be a live-gigging musician, I have since retired from that to focus solely on online productions. One of my most successful brands is called "String Player Gamer"/where I produce covers of video game music for my violin.

Aside from that, I have also started a side project called Video Game Music Box. VGMB is a series of albums focused on video game music covers as lullabies.

Can you tell us about your project Video Game Music Box? When did it start and how did you have this idea?

Of course! I began this project around August 2018. I was fascinated with music box arrangements of video game music, anime, and other popular songs from movies and television shows. I have been listening to other people's music box arrangements on YouTube. I began looking for similar arrangements on Spotify, but lo and behold, I couldn't find any music box arrangements of video game music, except for a tiny few. This dawned on me that there is a market void for video game music box arrangements that I could fill up for Spotify. And thus this experiment began.

What are your favorite releases in the Video Game Music Box project?

There are too many! But among my favorite album releases are always going to be anything from the Legend of Zelda, Chrono Cross, Undertale, Deltarune, and lately I've been enjoying the music of Hollow Knight.

Can you tell us a bit about the process of arranging music for the music box? Any tips to share in this regard?

Before I started arranging my music box arrangements, I imposed one rule before anything else; that the arrangement should be idiomatic to a real-life music box. That even if I arrange digital samples, if someone were to listen to the music without knowing about the process, they would still think it is being played on a real music box.

What does this mean? It means that there can be no more than three octaves for the range of the arrangement, there can be no more than three or sometimes four-part harmonies. Anything that would sound artificial to the ear, or something not plausible to be played by a real music box, I avoid.

With this one guiding principle, I have set a creative limitation for myself, which is a good thing because it keeps the arrangements focused.

What are your plans for Video Game Music Box?

I started this project with six initial albums, and as of this writing, I now have finished 33 albums. I plan to keep going until I reach 50 albums, and then I will take a break from this project.

But the possibilities are endless, there's always new video game music being released in the world with every new video game published. So I can always keep coming back, especially if I become entranced by new video game music.

Can you tell us a bit about your other musical projects and your plans for them?

Certainly! Aside from Video Game Music Box, I also create music videos of video game music covers on my YouTube channel called String Player Gamer. But I am also a semi-retired film composer so I sometimes still accept film scoring projects from my clients in the Philippines.

I plan to keep producing at least one album of video game music covers a year. But also short-term, I want to produce a new album of all my original compositions. I'm very excited about this!

Any last message you would like to share with the readers of the blog?

The time is now for you to unleash your passion on the world! If you want to be a musician, an artist, a creator, don't wait. Do it now and never look back. You will be a better person because of it and the world will be a better place because of it.