NO SHRED ALERT!
I am a huge fan of Koji Kondo’s music, and the LOZ theme has always been one of my favourites. I finally decided to record a cover for it, combining some of the original melodies and arrangements with some little additions of mine, like an arpeggiated acoustic accompaniment, some power chords to lift the energy, and an outro of dubious taste
It was also a good excuse to practice filming techniques in my new-ish home studio.
The parts are very simple on paper, but I found them deceptively hard to make sound good. Playing slow melodies on guitar is quite difficult — even more so with a clean tone. Something that helped was to layer an acoustic guitar on top of an electric one, as you can hear from 0:11 onwards.
I was initially tempted to put “rock style vibrato” on the longer notes, but it sounded totally horrible and out of place in this context. I eventually opted for the more subtle “classical vibrato” or no vibrato at all, so this was a good exercise in restraint / breaking habits. I don’t think I completely succeeded, but at some point you have to declare a project finished and move on right?
Anyway, hope you enjoy the arrangement and I made some tabs of all the parts for anyone interested!
Additional note: all the electric playing is a single take, and it’s from one of the earliest attempts that I did (probably take 2 or so). In the following days I tried to re-record some parts “better”, but could never capture that initial energy / optimism / sense of fun of the first couple of takes. It became more of a chore so once again it was a matter of knowing when to stop (I’m learning).