Epica Unchain Utopia Flute Cover Tabs

Hey Everyone!

I was very excited to record this cover in anticipation of their concert that happened earlier this year. I'm finally getting around to putting together some Flute Tabs for this song (Finally!! I know lol) Personally, this find that this album is one of their heaviest and one of my absolute favorites.

Unchain Utopia was the second song I worked on when I began making covers. Initially, I only planned on covering the non-choir parts but found that to be a bit uninteresting. With my love for piccolo (I prefer it over flute), I found that it blended very well with the choir but was still able to be heard much better than playing the same pitch on the flute. I will always try to incorporate piccolo into symphonic metal flute covers! I really appreciate its variety of applications and styles from marches, to classical, to medieval metal and now to symphonic metal. Matching and blending the piccolo in with the flute parts for this cover requires using similar technique to that of flute. I've heard a variety of opinions about how piccolo should never have vibrato but I feel that really diminishes the color and musicality. It's imperative that the piccolo doesn't sound stark but really incorporates warmth and depth. I found that the easiest way to achieve this is by referencing traditional flute techniques of various harmonics (lower harmonic is usually better for piccolo to prevent going sharp), various speeds of vibrato depending on song selection, and most importantly, intonation. For me, I enjoy listening to piccolos that register as 25 cents sharp when tuned to 440 or 441 Hz. Usually, when piccolos are perfectly in tune, I tend to hear them as flat which, to me, is much worse than being sharp.

Epica's music has so much depth and complexities and covering their material really makes me appreciate their music even more. Even just focusing on Simone's vocal lines and translating them to flute is very difficult. In this cover, articulation, phrasing and flexibility are essential in capturing the essence of the song. I find that Simone has a lot of movements in the lyrical lines that instrumentalists would not commonly do. For example in the line, "Am I the only one who sees the troubled lines?" the amount of notes that are used for "see the troubled lines" are much more than what I covered. There are many passing tones that are common for voice but not flute. Working on these will give flute more personality, which is something I'll be working on for my future covers!

Unchain Utopia Epica Flute Tabs Arr. Sara Vertanen


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