Finally this is done! It's taken me several hours, but I've finally finished arranging Dragonforce's 'Through the Fire and the Flames' for piano. I have stuck to the exact structure and key (Cm) of the original song.
Sadly, I feel it didn't come out quite as good as I was hoping. I was in two minds whether to make it exactly the same as the original, or change it to make it a lot more piano playable. I tried the later, but I felt I started losing the melody a lot. You have to remember that this piece is designed for guitar, not piano, and so it is hard to make it practical to play all the crazy, solo bits on the piano. I compromised by adding "Ad-lib" above lots of bars in the stave, to allow for improvisation in the parts where the original is impractical to play.
I'll admit, I did use a MIDI for parts for most of the later half of this song (i.e all the solos). It was taking too long to figure out by ear all the masses of notes that were being played. However, I didn't just copy the MIDI across and
plonk it there done, I did actually arrange it and change slightly to adjust for a piano.
Notes:
Bars 1-15: This opening melody riff is actually played a third higher in the original, but I think this way sounds just as good, and is easier to play.
Bars 193-198: This is quite awkward playing these extra bits, so I sometimes leave them out, and play the right hand an octave higher.
Bars 202-299: I have gone for basic crotchet octaves in the left hand as opposed to the alternating before hand. It is much easier to play the rhythms of the melody in the right hand doing just crotchets in the left, due to rhythmic complications in some parts. Also, I find by about this stage in playing the piece, my left hand is getting quite sore, and so this notation helps relieve some of that.
Bars 330-343: These octaves can be replaced with just single notes for this passage like at the start of the piece.