Zelda: My First Video Game Cover For Guitar

The Legend Of Zelda Tittle Theme from Ocarina Of Time is one of the most memorable from the Zelda franchise. After coming to where I am right now and finish my master’s degree, I thought about doing something with classical guitar.

In the classical guitar world, there is a lot of competition which I personally don’t like but of course, I did some of them. I always thought about doing something a little bit different. I decided one day to do arrangements for Zelda music just to promote my classical guitar music once I got more people watching my YouTube channel. I never thought on concentrate mainly on what I do today, on just video game music.

Everything started when my wife gifts me a camera, it was a zoom Q4(an amazon affiliate link). It was perfect to begin recordings, and the sound I would say it was OK. So, after too much thinking and being too scared to record, I finally did it. And just to push myself a little bit more, I decided that this was going to serve as a practice to do arrangements as well to create more composition.

I recorded my first arrangement and I remember how I got my first “like” on YouTube. Good times. Very slowly growing but man, it felt so satisfied. After being so lazy, for a long time, I finally did it.

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​Why did I decide to do this song? First of all, I’m a big Zelda fan. If you check my channel you would already figure out. When I was a child I played some of the games but it mostly gives memories of my brother playing them and me just watching and helping him to discover secrets in the game.

In Puerto Rico, our native language is Spanish but as a United States territory, it meant that we were going to have an English education as a second language every year from k5 to college. Of course, we did not understand anything because we never practiced it.

And sometimes we would recognize some words which means that when we found something it was a big deal. Our first Zelda’s game was “A link to the past” but “Ocarina Of Time” was the game that marked our lives. I always remember the beginning of the game were link is running with Epona and then the beautiful background music. It is one of the most incredible intros of all video games in my opinion. Of course, this track is on my top 5 Zelda’s song.

About the song (or I would say track), it is all about connection. It is celestial, relaxing and just open in all the senses. Simple melodies in modes as well the accompaniment. Before I decided to do the arrangements I remember to jam with the chord progression. Also, it gives a huge vibe of piano playing. A little bit “jazzy” I would say but not too much.

Overall, it is “simplicity” at best. Koji Kondo is an amazing composer, and it is shown here with this composition. Overall, the whole “Ocarina Of Time” soundtrack is a masterpiece. In the guitar I decided to change the tuning in the A string to be able to maintain the arrangement as “guitaristic” as possible. You could say is “lazy tuning”, but to be honest, I’m not trying to impress anyone. In fact, I’m just trying to make a cover that is enjoyable not just for me but for everyone as well.

When I do arrangements, most of the time I use audio or just from ear which was the case for this track. It took me around a week to create the arrangement and like 2 hours to record it. It is not easy to do a whole take without mistakes. That’s why in my earlier recordings there were many mistakes. And it was so painful the whole process. Just to think about it put me in a bad mood.  It was not until the beginning of 2019 that I began to edit the music. And yes, it is more satisfying. It takes more time but it is a little bit more efficient.

Are you interested in learning this cover? Well, you can head over to the guitar tab list of all most of my video game covers.