Spirit of the Flame/Kens Theme - Street Fighter 6 (Metal Cover)

Spirit of the Flame/Kens Theme - Street Fighter 6 (Metal Cover) Arranged and Performed by Chris Hmieleski
Videography by Michaela Hmieleski
Edited by Chris Hmieleski
Originally Composed by Shigeyuki Kameda

It's about that time where I dump how we got this video out there and comparatively speaking, this one came together with SOOO MUCH LESS headache than usual. I've known for a while that I wanted to do this one and after the learning experience that was gravity beetle, I figured it was time to give the old boy Ken some love. Fun fact: Ken was my first Street Fighter "main" and will continue to be as long as he's on the starting roster. He has everything I love in a character, it can't be denied.

So lets start with some of the songwriting stuff. Turning the original version of this song into metal wasn't gonna be too hard, making it unique and different was its own challenge though. I saw that certain sections repeated themselves with slightly different context, so I wanted to take that to its metal conclusion. Power metal riffs serve a few different ways, but I also wanted to put something in there that was a bit off time, which is how we get the prog middle 16. Instead of 4/4 counts like the rest of the song has, I opted for a 7/8 9/8 pattern while each instrument was grooving and I gotta say, its one of my favorite sections on a song I've done. Sprinkle in some pinch harmonics and a new lead guitar, I think I was able to capture so much attitude in the performance that has been sorely lacking in my music lately.

Then I let it sit. I had intended to make a video before my kids summer vacation hit, but things came up and by then, my summer was already spoken for. In all honesty, I had no intention on getting this done until about a week ago (at the typing of this). I've been DEEP in writing for another project I hope to talk about soon so it just wasn't a priority. As luck would have it though, a free week came up, and here we are! Going into this one, I knew I wanted it to feel like a VGM cover. Not just "Hemi playing his instruments", I wanted people to see the game represented in the video as much as the song. So I decided to add in some B-roll of me actually playing street fighter, a thing I actually do quite frequently. I think it gives that extra bit of character to the video and I hope you all like the extra touches.

That said, I'm so excited to finally get to share this with you all. A lot of love goes into these songs and videos, even when things hit a bit off the mark. I really love making them and I'm gonna keep doing it as much as I can. I hope you all enjoy! And if you've read this far, do me a favor and leave a "F*ck Blanka" in the comments so I know who the real ones are.

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Equipment Used:
Music Man Bongo 5 HH Bass
Schecter Reaper MS 7 String
Stirling JP 157
Roland Juno DS Keyboard (as a midi controller)
Novation Bass Station II
Darkglass ADAM Pedal
Synth sounds from Spectrasonic Omnisphere
Mixing Plugins by Neural DSP and Native Instruments

#metal #streetfighter6 #cover