Uploaded January 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Dancing Mad (Kefka) Final Fantasy VI Metal Guitar Cover by FamilyJules
▼ Your choice for the Greatest Video Game Song of All Time ▼
(Tabs For All Parts Available on Patreon!)
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Stream and download this song on my album The Greatest Video Game Songs of All Time!
🎵 materia.to/GreatestVGM 🎶

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This is the final video in my series of going through the top 20 Favorite Video Game Songs of all time as voted on by my community. This is the NUMBER 1 song voted by all of you!

Last summer when I tallied up the votes and saw that this would be the final song, I let out a sigh of dread. While I was excited that the number one song was one that I haven’t done, there’s a good reason why I’ve been nervous to take it on and it should be apparent by the runtime. Not only is it long, it’s complicated in technical ability AND arrangement. Being a 4 movement piece, it was not going to be easy to figure out how to make it one song.

Last week, there was a bit of an issue with the number 2 song and I had to take some time to make adjustments, which put me back a bit in getting started on this which made me very nervous about it releasing on time. To have less than a week to put together a cover of the 12-17 minute arguable magnum opus of Nobuo Uematsu, was stressful but I knew I just had to do my best.

Being able to simply play all of these parts was one thing, but mixing it was an incredible challenge. I opted to fully orchestrate it past its original instrumentation and getting everything heard at the level I felt appropriate was incredibly difficult. I had to make many sacrifices to tones and EQ I normally wouldn’t choose. I originally planned to use only the John Petrucci Neural DSP amp for all the guitars (which felt appropriate given the context), but I quickly found that because of the density, I wasn’t going to have the luxury of whatever tone I wanted. I ended up using the Mixwave Spiritbox again for rhythms and the Neural DSP Plini for leads. I love the Plini but it’s very low end heavy which I actually used to my advantage to add a slow reacting compressor to the low end to give the transients in the lead more punch to cut through without adding too much more high end energy.

For the arrangement, I really just laid everything out and arranged as I went in a way that felt fluid to the direction I was going. I ended up repeating sections in different ways than I originally planned and I hope that it creates a unique arrangement of this piece. I found getting to repeat parts let me really go all out on adding stuff after replicating the original sections to respect the piece.

My favorite part though was the chord changes I made to the clean section in movement one and movement 4. There was something about the Aadd9 chord going to an E/G sharp instead of the C sharp minor that really moved me that I had to have it there, especially at the end to give it a more triumphant feeling. I’m incredibly proud overall how this turned out and I can’t believe I finished it in time. I really hope you guys enjoy it as it was an absolutely immense undertaking.


Thanks so much for watching! I’m going to be taking a small break to begin working on some new things coming soon. Subscribe if you haven't already so you can be the first to see the big things coming very soon!

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Proudly endorsed by:
Ernie Ball Strings (ernieball.com/)
Schecter Guitars (schecterguitars.com/)

Get your next piece of music gear through my affiliate link for Sweetwater!
bit.ly/Sweetwater_FamilyJules

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Composed by: Nobuo Uematsu

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Instruments Used:

Lead Guitar: Ernie Ball Music Man Majesty
Rhythm Guitar: Schecter C-7 Multiscale
Bass: Schecter Diamond-J 5

Interface: Axe-Fx III
Mixer: SSL 12
Microphone: Neumann TLM103
Audio Software: Cubase 13
Video Software: Davinci Resolve
Video Camera: Panasonic Lumix GH5s

Check out my entire list of equipment here: kit.co/FamilyJules7x
#finalfantasyvi #dancingmad #familyjules