I realize I literally just shared All I want for Christmas is Odin, my viking metal cover of Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas is Odin”, but then another idea popped up, for a funeral doom version of WHAM’s “Last Christmas”:
Much slower than the original (30bpm), and of course as much in a minor key as possible, as any funeral doom song should be If you’re worried about Whamageddon, don’t be, this is 100% safe!
As usual, everything done with FOSS, and Ardour 6.9 in particular (I plan to start playing with 7.x next year!). This is a bit short, since I did everything in a couple of evenings, but I still think it came up nicely.
Thanks! There was no intentional callback to Pink Floyd (I guess funeral doom as a genre borrows something from psychedelia?), but I’ll take it
Guitars and bass I played myself: guitars (6 strings at the beginning, 7 strings at the end) went through my POD X3 Live with a preset I use often, while for bass I use a Guitarix preset I like a lot that gives it a fatter and more full sound.
All the rest was scored instead. For drums, I used Hydrogen to write the patterns, and DrumGizmo (Muldjord kit) to play them in Ardour. Strings are arranged as a strings orchestra, so in 5 parts: I usually play them with Virtual Playing Orchestra (VPO), but this time I went with KBH Strings instead, as I think they sound better for slower strings with little articulations (as was needed here). The organs, atmospheric pad and bells during the interlude were played with Yoshimi.
There’s also a Windows VST involved, the free Spitfire Audio ones. Specifically, I used it for the muffled piano in the interlude, and for the atmospheric effects in intro and outro. In the intro, there’s different effects from the Foghorn one, plus the ascending cello from the Cello one; in the outro, it’s the Gaelic Voices from that VST.
Everything is tied together by my own modified version of an excellent orchestral template for Ardour, which gives me different reverbs (with Dragonfly Reverb) for different sections. Since I often do tracks that mix orchestra and rock elements, I use the same preset for those too, e.g., putting bass and guitars in the front, and drums in the middle.
If you’re worried about Whamageddon, don’t be, this is 100% safe!