Smooth McGroove

Max Gleason, better known by his stage name of Smooth McGroove, is an American YouTuber known for recording re-arranged a cappella versions of video game music. He typically appears in his videos in a kind of Hollywood Squares split-screen featuring multiple versions of himself singing and beatboxing all the parts simultaneously, often complemented by a video of the relevant game being played. His cats Charl and later Angel have also been known to appear unpredictably.

Career

Gleason's musical career began when he was eleven years old and began playing the drums. He eventually started teaching private music lessons to support himself. In college, Gleason began recording some MIDI tracks and posting them on MySpace, but never got much recognition for them. Later, he and some friends of his started a rock band, and in addition to being the drummer, he was responsible for the audio mixing. The band fell apart, and a few years later, Gleason decided to do more music. He began rapping about video games, and he gradually moved to a cappella music.

Gleason has recorded music from many popular video game series, including ''The Legend of Zelda'', '' Super Mario'', '' Sonic the Hedgehog'', ''Final Fantasy'', '' Mega Man'', ''Undertale'' and ''Street Fighter''. Gleason's videos have garnered millions of views, and he eventually left his job giving private music lessons to focus fully on his a cappella videos. When asked about working with more modern tracks, he sided against it, stating that "music for video games today serve a more atmospheric role with less of a focus on memorable melodies". He noted that the ''Elder Scrolls'' series was an exception.

A Starbound patch known as "v. Enraged Koala" released in early 2014 added a microphone feature including sounds by Gleason.

In 2014, Gleason provided narration for an episode of the video game webseries ''Did You Know Gaming?'' covering the ''F-Zero'' series.

Gleason's cover of the "Gardens" theme from the 2008 video game LittleBigPlanet was included in the 2014 sequel LittleBigPlanet 3 under the title "Secret Gardens".

On January 22, 2015, Gleason was featured on Episode 2 of the Reddit podcast '' Upvoted''. Gleason recounted how his musical career began, and how he suddenly gained the attention and viewers that eventually allowed him to pursue making music as a full-time career.

Across 2019 and 2020, Gleason was dealing with personal medical problems and had shut down his Patreon and produced no content, but returned to production of his a cappella covers in March 2021.

Personal life

Gleason was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and was raised in Yukon, Oklahoma. As of 2013, he lived in Oklahoma City with his cat Charl.

Discography

* ''VGM Acapella: Volume 1'' (2013)
* ''VGM Acapella: Volume 2'' (2013)
* ''VGM Acapella: Volume 3'' (2013)
* ''VGM Acapella: Volume 4'' (2014)
* ''VGM Acapella: Volume 5'' (2014)
* ''VGM Acapella: Volume 6'' (2014)
* ''VGM Acapella: Volume 7'' (2015)
* ''Undertale Acapella'' (2016)
* ''VGM Acapella: Volume 8'' (2016)
* ''VGM Acapella: Volume 9'' (2017)
* ''VGM Acapella: Volume X'' (2019)

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:McGroove, Smooth
A cappella musicians
American Internet celebrities
Living people
People from Oklahoma City
Year of birth missing (living people)
Musicians from Enid, Oklahoma
Cover artists