Back in 2012, I recorded a version of the main theme of the movie “The Rock”, by Hans Zimmer (you can find my old video here: https://youtu.be/XTDcKNwJq5k).
It wasn’t particularly good as a recording or as a video, but it’s an easy theme that I really like, and that version was based on a Guitar Pro tablature that I found on the Internet.
Cut to 2019, I decided it was time to record and mix it better, and this video shows how I did it this time.
The video itself is not particularly good: I started recording the audio as a demo, and then it evolved rapidly until it became the final mix, and at that point I did not have any video of me playing the rhythm instruments, except for the bass, and only the second half of the guitar solo.
But I really liked those recordings, and I decided not to redo them and give more importance to the audio than to the video.
I decided to overlay a description of the various instruments that you can hear, all played by me (except for the strings and the drums, both programmed in Ableton):
- there are two acoustic guitars, a Fender and a Taylor, hard panned left and right, for the entire song
- the second half contains four electric guitar tracks (the overlay cites only two): both are my single cut amplified virtually through Amplitube 4 using an Orange AD30 and a Fender SuperSonic models
- the bass is an Epiphone, which you can see in the first half of the video, amplified through Amplitube as well, using an Orange AD200 model, and combined with the physical amp that I was using in the video (an Ibanez SW15)
- the first half of the theme is played using the single cut with the same AD30 virtual amp; the viola that appears at some point is a virtual instrument played through Midi Guitar 2 (so the notes are exactly the same that are being played on the electric guitar)
- the second half of the theme is played using the Fender Stratocaster that you can see in the video, through a physical Mustang I amplifier (which gives a more lively punch).
I am quite proud of the final mix, a little less of the video itself, which is only 720p, probably due to the initial throwback to 2012…
Also maybe at some point in the future I will go to an actual studio room and use physical amplifiers all the way (my Katana 100 is just waiting for that to happen…), but I am quite impressed by the quality of the Amplitube 4 emulations, so far that I almost decided to use the single cut and the AD30 for the entire solo, and drop the Strat altogether (but I really like the feedback!).
Anyway, enjoy!
This here is the audio-only version, published on SoundCloud:
Syvo3 