He-Man Main Theme CD Cover Art
It was a long time project of mine to revisit one of the best original theme from my childhood: the 1982 He-Man Main Theme. I always thought this song had potential to be a great Heavy Metal theme and so during the pandemic, I took it upon myself to produce this cover.
THE PROCESS
I proceeded to work just like in my early days when I first started making music: by reproducing my favorite theme music with my little synthesizer at the time, and learning it by ear and then “remaking” it. It was not an easy task to do as most of the versions of it I could listen to on Youtube were extracted from a vinyl, which means the music is slightly detuned. So first I reproduced the drum kit patterns and the electric bass in order to get the core of the song right with the correct tempo. Then I proceeded to figure out the Violin lines and then the Brass section. And to finish, I pretty much created what I felt was right for the song in terms of Electric Guitar power chords and solos. I then worked with my good friend Andrew Osano to get all that nicely printed on score charts for the musicians to do their magic.
THE RECORDING TECHNIQUE
Knowing that I was going to have live Guitars in there, it was also imperative to have live Strings and Brass so that the spirit of the original song be preserved. That’s what I like to do when I create cover songs: I must absolutely keep the vibe of the original while adding the elements that I think will benefit it and give it a fresh new sound. I had violin virtuoso Ambroise Aubrun come over my studio to record the Violins section. That’s right, one player performed the entire string section. The process is called “layering,” and for it to work, the player must be exceptionally good as he must play over himself several time, and always in the same way in order for the illusion of having a full string section to work. It also requires quite a bit of sound engineering skills which as you may know by now, I most of the time handle myself on my own productions. Ambroise of course did a fantastic job. One of the challenge that arise during that process is that sometimes the 1st Violins and 2nd Violins were orchestrated to play all unison, particularly during the intro. Since Ambroise can also play the Viola, and that the register was not too high for it, I came up with the idea that the 2nd Violins in these particular spots be played by the Viola instead, so as to avoid a major phasing effect that would result from one Violin playing 12 times unison (during most of the song, the 1st and 2nd violins play at the octave for richness).
For the Brass section, I worked with the amazing Trumpet player Chris Tedesco. He recorded from his home in his own studio. Chris—while being mainly a Trumpet player (one of the best in town at that)—can aslo perform on the Trombone and French Horn, and accepted the challenge of performing the entire Brass section on this production. And he did a fantastic job. When it came time for him to record his part, I provided him the song mostly “mocked-up” but also containing the live string section that I had pre-mixed into it. I find that it makes a huge difference to the players when they can record against a mock-up that has at least the string section live in there. And it worked out perfectly, from Bass Trombone all the way up to the B Flat Trumpet, Chris performed each section, layering up 5 Trumpets, 6 French Horns, 3 Trombones and 3 Bass Trombones! Once properly mixed in and blended, the result was already massive!
We were now ready for my good friend guitarist extraordinaire Michael NOMAD Ripoll to shred in some amazing Electric Guitar power chords, and exquisites Electric Guitar solos and as you can hear in the final result, he went way beyond the call of duty in that regard.
The final touch in the performance register came surprisingly from me: I performed the entire Electric Bass lines in this cover, making my first participation as a Bass Player in a professional production. Quite intimidating of course as I found myself playing against the performances of some of the best players in Los Angeles, and I have been learning the Bass only for the past 2 years! (thanks to my amazing wife who surprised me with the most beautiful 5 string Electric Bass I had ever seen for my birthday 2 years ago). It is also me that you hear shout “He Man!” using the same process of layering, and also helped by a virtual choir that I programmed to shout-in the words with me.
5.1 SURROUND MIXING
When the time came to mixing the song, one of the idea that was first put on the table was to not only provide a cover of this theme, but also propose to hear it in a way that it had never been heard before: 5.1 surround. I spent the pandemic making my studio 5.1 ready and oh boy the results have been amazing. If you have a home theatre system at home, I highly recommend you download the 5.1 version of this cover song either from here on my website, or on the Immersive Audio Album’s website.
To release it I worked with the good folks at Note for Note Music, who produced the amazing art cover you see and helped me making sure you can listen to this cover song everywhere on your favorite streaming platforms. I hope you enjoy listening to it and have as much fun doing so as we did making it! More to come soon.
