Hearthstone is a turn based card game by video game giant, Blizzard Entertainment. I had an immediate attachment to Hearthstone and how it wonderfully captures the spirit of the games that inspired it; a happy marriage of World of Warcraft meets Magic: The Gathering. I also might be biased because I got to record guitars for the trailer to the game’s newest expansion, Fractured in Alterac Valley.
If you’re like me and grew up playing fantasy-based card games do yourself a favor and download the game. It’s a double must if you’re a fan of Blizzard’s Warcraft and World of Warcraft lore.
TL;DR
The Call and Recording Process
After talking about the project on the phone with composer Adam Gubman, I smirked, laughed, and literally said “Thank You, God.” Honestly, this was one of those projects that was too good to be true. Here are the details he mentioned he needed:
- I need this to rock.
- This has to feel like an anthem.
- It’s 80′ hair and glam rock
“Can you do that?”
I laughed.
It wasn’t an arrogant laugh, I laughed because I grew up on that stuff. If it was coming out of the Sunset Strip or lived on Shrapnel Records, I practiced it. I went from practicing this style in my bedroom to recording it for video games.
Life is a trip, man.
Me. Cain Kong.
That era of music led me, somehow, to power and progressive metal where I felt like a kid in a candy store polishing my technique and inspired to learn theory. Of course theory wasn’t necessary, but I wanted to understand why lines and harmony from players like Steve Vai, Joe Satriani, Eddie Van Halen, Greg Howe, and John Petrucci made sense.
I got the track Adam wrote later that night and I dropped it into Studio One for a listen, mark sections, and jot ideas on a notepad I keep on my desk. I immediately heard the guitar parts in my heads reminiscent of Journeys “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)” with a mix of power metal. As Ray Liotta says in one of my all-time favorite movies, Goodfellas, “It was perfect.”.
The verse sections were cake to record, just kept the slogan of “serve the song” in my head. My job as a studio guitarist is to stay in the rhythm section and help whatever is in front to keep the spotlight and make them look good.
The chorus section in Fractured in Alterac hits us sounding like a song you’d hear during an 80’s movie montage. If you’re a fan of Yngwie Malmsteen you’ll recognize this chord sequence in almost every one of his songs. i-iv-VII-III etc. You hear the first three chords in the progression and you know where the rest is going.
I’m prettyyyy suuurreee I recorded some chords underneath the vocals during the first chorus, but in the final mix the rhythm guitars are out. As a studio guitarist, this can happen. The final mix isn’t up to me, and that’s fine, because we’re serving the song remember?
One thing that DID stay in the mix was me playing the vocal melody in the higher register. Composers love when you do that. Perhaps it won’t get used in the final mix, but they absolutely dig having the melody doubled as an available option.
Pro Tip: The more alternates, options, and effects you record and give composers and producers, the better. One of my rules of thumb when recording guitars for games, commercials, scores is to always give them more than they expect. This minimizes requests and emails back & forth, time spent recording, and their concerns.
“Fall Back”
At the climax of the trailer, around the minute mark where both the Horde and Alliance and falling back, we get chorus section again paired with a key change and half time feel. This part is epic, like the key change in “Livin’ On a Prayer”, it just makes you want to throw your fist in the air.
Note wise, I didn’t feel this section needed the melody doubled, it was getting enough of the melody from the vocals. Sooo I decided to give it a counter melody in the high register that followed the chord progression, of course, following the language and style of the 80’s sans the hair spray and made it enter the section with a little ascending 16th note run. I kept the rhythm guitars easy with single note lines that outlined each passing chord to make it different than the power chords in the verse and first chorus. Simple but effective, ya’ll. Just like a good taco.
Honestly, I think that is it. I ended the track with power chords to bring it all back around and gave options for outro licks in the event the mixer wanted to give some extra flair/zazz to the ending.
The guitar parts in the Fractured in Alterac Valley trailer weren’t difficult to record; It was all about knowing my place in the song, being a guitarist in the right spots with the melodies, and speaking the language of the genre which felt like a breeze.
The Sound
To give the guitars the sound of 80’s hair metal I had a couple of options. I could have went the JCM800 route, a boosted plexi ala Malmsteen, but I went for the Soldano SLO in TH-U from Overloud—I can’t stress enough how capable this piece of software is.
The vocal midrange in the Soldano is perfect and it has such an articulate saturation. Sometimes saturation can kill the definition in the bottom end and round off the top end of the guitar a little too much, making it sound dull. However, the Soldano retains all of that and has this harmonically rich overdrive that begs you to dig in and a fat pick attack without the harsh top end that can come with it. It’s not a surprise this amp is still a high gain staple.
Of course I put a tubescreamer in front of it. I didn’t learn that trick of throwing an overdrive pedal in front of a driven amp until a couple years ago and I kick myself for it— it rips. With the tubescreamer set to zero it is a rad way to get some oomph from your amp and with all of the overdrive available in TH-U you can get some real cool combinations to this.
The axe I picked for this fight was non other than the, I used my Charvel So-Cal Style 2. With the combination of an Ash body and caramelized maple fretboard it is bright enough to slice through any mix. Paired with the Fishman Open Core pickups, I put them into Vintage PAF mode and they played like butter. I fricking love this guitar.
The Trailer
Fractured in Alterac Valley Trailer – Sound Off
Long story short, I feel blessed that I get to contribute my guitar playing to projects like this. It’s always a pleasure to work with Adam and I just know the team at Blizzard will make the music pop and the visuals kick a$$.
Fractured in Alterac Valley was a huge amount of fun to record for. I got to re-live my teenage years and pretend I was in Queensryche (hahaha) and throw down some soaring melodies. Heck, maybe one day I’ll actually own a physical Soldano. That’d be siiiiick.
