Impulse - An Endless Sporadic - percussion cover - GH3 Guitar Hero III

This piece was recorded March 2008 at Denton High School in Denton, TX, while I was the percussion instructor there.

This song is just plain flat-out awesomeness. If anybody has known me for the past 2 years, they know I'm an obsessive Guitar Hero player, and that's how I discovered this piece, Impulse, by two badass musicians who call themselves An Endless Sporadic. You can check them out on MySpace, but they haven't been signed or released an official album yet. One of them works for Neversoft, the drummer Andy, and he got their song in the game Guitar Hero 3 as a bonus song. Once I heard it, I knew I had to arrange it someday.

It was a challenge to get the marimbas and vibes to work in the original key, since some of the guitar parts are so low, but I don't like changing keys in my arrangements, so luckily we had two 5 octave marimbas and some mics to help on the low end. I gave my best shot at playing the crazy drumset part with a single bass drum pedal, but the real key was hiring the amazing Chris McQueen to play the guitar part. He plays with Oso Closo and Snarky Puppy (from Denton) and you should check them out too, they will rock your face off.

This piece was fun to do as a percussion ensemble because in the original they used ProTools and had already added all of the small percussion instruments you'll hear, so I didn't need to add anything. I did cut out an entire chunk of the piece in the middle, because it would have been impossible to recreate all the crazy distorted guitar effects with percussion in that section, and I also extended one part to allow Chris McQueen to take an improvised guitar solo.

Otherwise, like most of my arrangements, I tried to recreate the original piece as faithfully as possible in a percussion ensemble form, so I hope you like it! I think this is my best arrangement to date in terms of fun and excitement factor, because the source material was just so mind-blowing.

From Left to Right:

Joanna Ceja -(marimba)
Manuel Ortiz -(bells/percussion)
Charlie Tucker -(chimes/percussion)
Bobby Jacobs - (marimba)
Brandon Arthur -(electric bass)
Sean Redman -(me on drumset)
Chris McQueen -(guest artist on electric guitar)
Cody Goble -(marimba)
Christina Burch -(vibes)
Austin Ford -(vibes)
Charles Crouch -(vibes)
Ryan Klinck -(vibes)

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Impulse
• An
• Endless
• Sporadic
• Guitar
• Hero
• III
• World
• Tour
• Rock
• Band
• rhythm
• game
• XBOX
• 360
• PS3
• PS2
• Wii
• Percussion
• Denton
• High
• School
• DHS
• Cover
• Arrangement
• Marimba
• Texas
• Prog
• Progressive
• Ensemble
• Drumset
• Chris
• McQueen
• Sean
• Redman

[Mrflashdrive]

WERES THE HEAVY BIT DAWWW!!!

[SeanUNT]

@Mrflashdrive Yeah, I really wanted to include that part. But I just couldn't figure out how to make it work with marimbas and vibes. It sounded silly and weak without the distortion, and if I just let the guitar and bass handle it, all the percussionists would just be standing around looking lame during the hardest part, so I nixed it. But I tried to make up for it by extending the awesome Funk jam under the improvised guitar solo our guitarist did.

[KiodFox]

no. blues does not go here.

[SeanUNT]

@KiodFox Blues?

[KiodFox]

@SeanUNT i just kinda felt like the solo was unnatural and too bluesy sounding, but t i=think i was just calling everything bluesy when i said that.

[SeanUNT]

@KiodFox Well the bassline and chords were what was already written by An Endless Sporadic, I just repeated it several times to make it longer because I love that part. I would call the bassline more Funk than Blues though, and Chris' guitar solo was very Prog to me, but those labels are always kind of vague.

[SeanUNT]

Well then you must think the drummer for AES is shitty, since I transcribed and played his part note-for-note, without a single mistake. You're just not used to hearing live drums with no mics, so it's hard to hear my snare and bass clearly and loudly, so I admit the overall drum sound is a bit muddy. Also, I was purposefully trying to play low and reserved to not cover up the mallet instruments, which are the focus. Ask a qualified musician if I was shitty, and I think they will disagree.

[SeanUNT]

@u2berz I hope they were virgins, as most of them were around 16...

[CardinalMVP5]

Hey dude. Great stuff! I have actually been trying to transcribe this piece for mallets as well. I came across this and it is exactly what i have been going for. If you still have the sheets and wouldn't mind sending them to me could you? It would really help me out. Thanks! And keep up the good work.

[Sparklzmotion]

is the bass player a girl with a Moustache??

[AnimeGuruDooD]

Billy Ryan Highschool all day baby!

[Alakazham3]

@SeanUNT I really liked it overall nice arrangement (I 'm not really into the musical terms so i will just say it sounded great)

[Fatalyze666]

haha, this is brilliant! props to everyone who performed, never thought it could be done like this, and so well at that ;)