Wolfire Games Forums

Hi there!
I love the Overgrowth main theme and i love metal, so i tried to combine the two.

overgrowth metal cover draft

Wait a second . . .

• ... this sucks!
  ... this is not metal!
  ... this is not complete!
  ... i can do better!

... Probably! That is why i created this topic
I'd like to ask for your feedback on things like: do you even recognise the Overgrowth melody in it ? Do you dislike or like specific sections ? Do you have any ideas how to improve the balance between the original and the metal ? would you add an acoustic section ? maybe add an intro / outro ? (yeah i know i am still missing the last minute of the theme, figuring that out is my next step)

I know that there are people around here that share the passion for metal music and some of them surely know how to make it themselves. So if you want to check out the details or help me out by correcting/improving/adding to the score here are the guitar pro files:
og-main-theme-metal-v0.1.gpx / gp5
(if you don't own guitar pro you might want to check out tuxguitar)
(note that the guitars are tuned to C which happens to fit the C-minor OG theme)
I'd be particularly happy if someone could fix the drums, i just clicked them together as i saw fit but i don't know if it is even playable or violates some sacred drummer codex.

Once we got it all settled i will attempt to make better quality recordings and produce a final result that is worthy of the title. I'd also be happy to collaborate and incorporate recordings of others if anyone wants to join.
For me the recording part is still very difficult as my brain always tries to distract the fingers with thoughts like "yeah you nailed that hard part, don't you dare to make a mistake now" which usually leads to instant fail :]

Anyway, thanks for reading, any comments are highly appreciated,
and thanks to Anton for putting his ears at risk at supporting me

Can't really say that i'm experienced when it comes to writing or playing music but my spontanious thoughts are that as of now there isn't much in the piece that tells me that it's the Overgrowth theme. The best part for me was at the end when the guitarr (i think) began to play. It gave the piece character and made me identity it as "Overgrowth."

So i think that may be something for you to think about in future versions: Add more guitarr or find another way to give the piece a voice to go along the let's say "brutal-heavy-sounding-metal", and make us think "hard-core-overgrowth-parkour-battles", or something.

Same. It sounded good, and certainly metallish, but not Overgrowth until the very end. Perhaps extend that either way? I thought it even could have been a bit longer. I would give it a go, but the only program I have is Finale and I have enough music projects going on as it is...
Sounds good though!

i liked it, but i have to agree with these guys.

Thank you all for the feedback so far!
I must admit i was afraid of/expecting the problem you all agreed upon but hoped i could get away with it. Now i know that i must face it
In fact the pronounced notes of the intro riff are the Overgrowth main theme, but i guess with too many rhythmic variations to be recognised any more. It is so difficult because the Overgrowth theme is simply meant to be so slow paced as it is, and it is already perfect the way it is.

Then there is that part in the middle which really is not much of Overgrowth except that it doodles around on the same notes as the main theme. I added it because if the metal cover was just a 4x sped up version of the original, it would be over in a few seconds ... and because it varies the pace a little.

The end is the part where i really just stole the notes from the flutes, as far as i could figure them out. But i am glad that this was recognised because for me the speed also took away a big part of the similarity there. Don't worry the ending will be extended, 1:12-1:40 of the main theme is still missing.

So i will rework the beginning and see what i can do about the middle part to make it more overgrown. I originally made this acoustic intro but discarded it because it violated to much of music theory stuff that i have no clue about. Do you think something like that could make a better start to connect the metal with the main theme melody ?

Thanks again, it will take me a while to come up with something better but i will not give up!

Ok, I decided to give it a whack. Sort of. I downloaded tuxguitar, and tried downloading those files you put up, so I could import them in. What format are they? All I got was a wall of code for both of them.

Hi Jack, thanks for giving it a whack!
I used guitar pro to write the music down, and gpx is the format of the current version 6. Tuxguitar should be able to directly open the gp5 file which is the format of the previous guitar pro version. I do not know how a wall of code would look like in tuxguitar, it has never happened to me. This is how the gp5 file should look like: tuxguitar screensthot
The tracks and notes should give you an idea what i am playing, however the midi sound is not representative. Especially the drums seem to have some incorrect mappings.
If nothing works here is a midi export.

The wall of code is in my browser, not tuxguitar. It's just that when I click the links I don't get a file download or anything, just a page in-browser full of text.
Also, is a knowledge of tablature necessary? I read treble and bass clef, but as a non-guitarist I'm not familiar with tab notation.

Oh, then your browser has quite a weird behaviour, anyway "right-click -> save as" on the gp5 link should do the trick then.
If you can read the traditional music notation, then you should be able to grasp guitar tabs within seconds. They are really just coordinates of which string is pressed at which fret, however you can just ignore them and edit the standard notation. In the menu bar, untick "view -> show tabulature" to remove them if they distract you.
If tuxguitar does not work for you, you can also throw midis at me and i punch them back into my guitar pro I am curious to hear your ideas, meanwhile i will continue with the transcription of the ending.

Okay. I may not be able to throw myself at this full force right away, but I'll definitely give it a go.

EDIT: I got tired of wrestling with Tuxguitar, and decided to just copy the notes into my program. I have everything but the drums, and I'm going to see what I can cook up as far as a bass line, as I think it needs one. One thing you should be careful of is your accidentals. I noticed in all of the chords you put sharps instead of flats. Take C Minor, which you have written as C - D# - G. While it is technically correct, as D# is enharmonically equivalent to Eb, Eb is much less confusing, because when written on the staff it makes that nice triad shape. I corrected all those when I copied the score over, so that's my first input. Second, I like the idea of an acoustic intro, and I like where you went with it, but the chords start to not match the melody so much towards the end of the intro. So I'm gonna try to devise an alternate ending to that.
Looks good