Over the Christmas period, Express is bringing you a series of Bailiwick Christmas Covers from across the island’s diverse music scene, from instrumentals to pop classics.
Olly Rybarczuk is a local musician, currently teaching guitar and music production at Jenca Music School, as well as an engineer at JAMM Studios, which recently helped a local 13-year-old singer to produce her very own Christmas single.
With this arrangement, he takes a seasonal favourite and shreds it into brand new shape.
On his take on ‘Deck the Halls,’ Olly said: “I knew that I wanted to choose a Christmas song that would adapt well to a technical metal arrangement, and Deck The Halls seemed to be the most compatible with my vision out of the ideas that I came up with, as it is fairly fast tempo and has some great examples of call and response melody that I wanted to add a lot of layers of harmony to.”
“My main inspiration for that style of composition from a rock and metal perspective is bands like Queen and Dream Theater, and also I’ve found myself listening to a lot more classical music recently which influenced my use of harmony, arpeggios and the overall sonic density of the arrangement in general.”