PianOpeth

dwoakee

Suboptimization Expert
Mar 31, 2006
515
0
16
NRW, Germany
Just found this guy who did an interpretation (mind you, not a cover!) of the whole Damnation album (except for Weakness) on piano! I have listened to Windowpane and it's ... well, interesting. A bit hectic. Yet, I'll check out some other songs. Just wanted to let you know.

PS: I searched the forum first but didn't find a thread that already mentions this. Hope I didn't miss it.
 
yeah, the guy's name is Kalle Kapner he's from germany and he had and interesting idea of performing the whole damnation album only with a piano something like apocalyptica with metallica. but the guy is not using a piano, he plays on a midi keyboard and some of the songs are a bit ,,funky". maybe if he nad wilson as a producer , the songs would sound better and organized. anyways, creative thinking kapner, bravo!
 
The sound isn't the problem, the incredibly sloppy playing is. If he'd bothered to rerecord things over again when he messed up it would be much better. It's really unfortunate too since the versions of a couple of the songs are really, really good (Hope Leaves especially).
 
Yeah, he did a really great job reinterpreting those songs with piano, but, as forementioned, the playing and recording itself is far from perfect. Anyway, got it long time ago and I like to listen to it from time to time. Good stuff.
 
Noticed myself now that there is another guy doing Opeth on Piano ... actually calls himself PianOpeth on myspace. He's much better.

Maybe I'll show that to my wife. She soooo isn't into metal ... or any other kind of rock music ... but she plays the piano, so she might like those adaptations.
 
Noticed myself now that there is another guy doing Opeth on Piano ... actually calls himself PianOpeth on myspace. He's much better.

Maybe I'll show that to my wife. She soooo isn't into metal ... or any other kind of rock music ... but she plays the piano, so she might like those adaptations.

He's better in terms of recording stuff without mistakes, but he basically just plays the guitar riffs on piano, sometimes incorporating the vocal melodies, and it sounds totally retarded - there's no attempt at doing anything further with the music or adapting it to actually sound good on piano. It's a gimmick. It actually sounds to me like he printed out the powertabs and learned from those :p

The first guy was a pretty damn good arranger, which I think is more important than playing ability when dealing with this kind of material. Like, if you listen to those shitty "piano tribute to *insert name of rock band*" 90% of them are total shit, but then you get someone like Christopher O'Riley who actually gives serious interpretations of the material that often can stand on their own as brilliant compositions and proves that playing rock songs on piano can be done well if you are actually a good musician/composer. Unfortunately the playing was bad enough on the Damnation recording that it ruined it ;_; He should rerecord more carefully imho.
 
He's better in terms of recording stuff without mistakes, but he basically just plays the guitar riffs on piano, (...) It actually sounds to me like he printed out the powertabs and learned from those :p

The first guy was a pretty damn good arranger, which I think is more important than playing ability when dealing with this kind of material. (...) Unfortunately the playing was bad enough on the Damnation recording that it ruined it ;_; He should rerecord more carefully imho.

Actually, I agree with most of what you say. Generally, I also like an interpretation better than an exact cover. But, as you say, with Piano Damnation, the trouble is the bad playing. On a subjective note, I find his playing hectic and too crowded. As for PianOpeth, his rendering of Opeth maybe pretty literal in terms of the notes but still it is a piano so the sound is still radically different and I find that's already interesting ... to see if an Opeth song would also work on a piano. And imo it does. So, in this case I like the literal version better.
 
I agree, the first guy is a fantastic arranger, the second plays and records better. A combination of them would be cool. Opeth sounds great on piano! Even though the results are not completely convicing, I applaud this guys. Keep up the good work!
 
Wow...I did not like that Silhouette cover. He just overplayed the best part of the song (the end). Other than that it was pretty cool.