Hi guys! Here's an absolutely tasty old school VGM jam from the one, the only, Super Mario 64!
Nothing says heavy metal like our boi Bowser, he's a brutal giant spiked Koopa that wears metal bracers. It had to be done!!
All joking aside, this theme is insanely nostalgic to me. It's simplicity makes it so catchy but ironically, it also made it quite a fun challenge to do a cover of.
Going into this arrangement, I knew that I was going to have to repeat the main riff many times, so I tried a lot of different variations of the riff (the verse using palm muting, the chorus using different versions of the chords etc etc.). That was probably the biggest hurdle of this arrangement was just keeping it fresh and interesting throughout the whole listen. I feel like I pulled it off!
The leads, I kept pretty faithful to the original minus a few shred moments here and there. I wanted this piece to just be a stomping heavy riff fest much like the original is.
Production wise, I had such a blast working on this. I wanted to dial in a super crushing and clear rhythm guitar tone for that riff. And I also experimented with a new way of mixing my bass guitar which I think turned out insanely awesome! I'm the most stoked on the bass for this track than any other instrument!
Overall I'm super happy with this track and I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it!
The original \"Bowser's Theme\" from the game \"Super Mario 64\" was composed by Koji Kondo
Thank you to WoloU for the game footage!
Gear used in this cover:
- ESP Guitars
- Hughes and Kettner amplifiers
- Fishman Fluence Modern Pickups
- Dunlop Jazz III Tortex picks
- Monster Cables
- Ernie Ball Strings
- BIAS Desktop Amp Simulator Plugin
- Toontrack Superior Drummer 2.0
