Like I said before, the next thing I'd do would be a video game cover. Although Star Fox 64 is one of my favorite games, I've barely played Star Fox for the SNES. It has a pretty good soundtrack (although I think SF64's is better overall). The song for the first stage, Corneria, is one of the songs that stands out the most and seems to be pretty popular. The other song that stands out to me is the Main Theme, which blows me away and I think is better than the main theme they've been using since Star Fox 64, and if I was any more ambitious I would've covered it too and mixed it with this one to make the song longer. Maybe I will in the future. Anyway, I had envisioned a metal cover of this song in my head for a while now and I decided to finally bring that into manifestation. So here you go, the product of a couple sleepless nights and metal-injected geekness.

I made this in GarageBand recording to USB with my Line 6 POD X3 Live using my Selectron speakers as monitors (that's right, not using my Randall amp as a monitor anymore). This time I used more instruments, namely my Washburn X10 guitar and a borrowed Fender Squire bass, the latter using a preset on the POD called "Metal Theater." I used the Washburn because I needed to tune to D in this song for the rhythms, and tuning on my Ibanez Xiphos XPT700 is a pain in the ass because of its less-than-spectacular Edge 3 floating tremolo bridge. so I tuned it to D standard and did the same with the bass. My Ibanez Xiphos XPT700 guitar remained in E standard and I used it for leads, and some rhythm at the end when I didn't need lower notes and I had already packed away my Washburn. Also, this time I composed the drum parts in the note editor with GarageBand's Rock Kit preset instead of using loops like in my last recording. For synths and other sounds, I use two different orchestral hit soundfonts, the GarageBand synth preset "Planetarium," and the intro synth is played by one of my configured GarageBand synth leads.

So let's break it down...

Hardware:

Macbook Pro OSX Leopard
Line 6 POD X3 Live
Selectron speakers

Instruments:

Ibanez Xiphos XPT700 (Leads)
Washburn X10 (Rhythm, D tuning)
Fender Squire bass (D tuning)
GarageBand synths and other soundfonts

Software:

GarageBand