Plants vs. Zombies has been my favorite game since childhood—through high school, and still today. During the pandemic, after binging through every level (twice), I found myself turning not to the gameplay but to its music. Graze the Roof is one of my favourite:
PvZ soundtrack is remarkable. The composer and sound director Laura Shigihara was in a relationship with George Fan, the creator of the first game.
I was obsessed. With some music training, Logic Pro installed on my Mac, and plenty of boredom to fuel me, I decided to try recreating Graze the Roof myself.
Recreating another composer’s work is no easy task. Like, one can perhaps dictate solo pieces, but nobody can casually transcribe a Tchaikovsky symphony. With synthesized electronic music it’s trickier cause you don’t even know which instruments were used — then you end up trial-and-erroring your way through the sound library. Still, within an afternoon I managed to piece together a rough version—before the mental strain (and my own distractibility) pulled me away:
But it turns out I wasn’t the only one fascinated by the PvZ soundtrack. Recently on Bilibili, someone with seemingly no formal training managed to recreate the entire score from scratch—perfectly.
Original Version: Graze the Roof (In-Game)
The perfect transcription — this buddy has really good ear...
He wrote about his process:
“屋顶工程”始于2024年8月。那时的我连五线谱都不懂呢，当时只是觉得这首曲子很happy，旋律也比较清晰，就想尝试“扒”一下谱子。最开始只做了一个声部，还是用简单的阿拉伯数字写的（连节奏都没有），而且还有不少音是错误的。后来慢慢发展为俩声部，仨声部，然后就觉得自己做得已经老好了。期间我也逐渐认识了五线谱。再后来，我对曲子的兴趣越来越浓郁了，于是我又反反复复地听，对曲子的了解也就越来越深入，发现了许多之前忽略的细节（如颤音之类的东西），并且发现了不少新的声部。每一次“发现新大陆”，既是惊喜（哇，原来还有这个声部），又是挑战（因为还得扒出来）。同时，越后来发现的声部越隐蔽，扒谱的难度也就越大，也是因为本人耳朵不太行，那种白天怎么试音也试不出来，晚上睡觉还在想的日子也是常有的。
The “Rooftop Project” began in August 2024. Back then I didn’t even know how to read a staff. I just thought this track sounded really happy, and the melody was clear enough that I wanted to try “picking it out.” At first I only managed one line of music, written with simple number notation, no rhythm, plenty of wrong notes. Then it grew into two parts, then three, and I felt pretty proud of myself. Along the way I slowly learned to read proper notation.
大概到2025年6月，我已经把所有音高都搞清楚了（这期间，有多次我自认为谱子已经完美，然后过几天又发现错误或新的声部。我还记得我曾说过的那句话：“从上次我认为谱子完美到现在，又发现了二十多个漏洞……但我现在认为谱子是完美的了。”结果过一阵子又发现十来个漏洞）。在搞清楚全部音高的尾期，我又开始揪时值，感觉这些东西有时候比音高还难揪，因为有些音色的音符边界是比较模糊的。是八分音符，还是十六分音符加十六分休止符？这个跳音，用十六分音符还是三十二分音符？诸如此类的问题又成为了新的挑战。在这期间，我又发现了回音这个东西。到2025年8月，已彻底把音符的音高和时值都弄清，最后就差力度的。这个还好说。这边放自己的谱子，那边放原曲，听一下声大声小就可以了。
By June 2025 I had nailed down every pitch. More than once I thought, This score is finally perfect—only to discover twenty more mistakes a few days later. I even joked: “Since the last time I thought it was perfect, I’ve found twenty flaws… but now it really is perfect.” And then, inevitably, I’d find another dozen errors. As I closed in on the final version, I started working on rhythms. Sometimes these were even harder than the notes themselves. Was that an eighth note? Or a sixteenth plus a sixteenth rest? Should this staccato be a sixteenth or a thirty-second? I also had to figure out things like echoes and overlapping sounds.
直到今天8月26日早，我又改进了一些力度记号，并录成了现在这一版的屋顶还原曲。“屋顶工程”之路，当然离不开各位朋友的支持，以及站内认为大神的借鉴，在这里统一特别感谢。 回想这一程，和人生之路貌似挺像的。不断努力（反复试音），不断发现新事物（发现新声部），改善自我（修改乐谱），最终达到开始甚至都不可想象的境界。加油吧，少年！
And so, on August 26, I finished this current version of the Rooftop arrangement. The “Rooftop Project” wouldn’t have been possible without the support of friends and the inspiration of others on the site whom I look up to. I’m deeply grateful. Looking back, this journey feels a lot like life itself: working hard (testing notes again and again), discovering new things (hidden voices), improving myself (revising the score), and finally reaching a level I couldn’t have imagined at the start. Vamos!
Respect. The sunflowers would be proud.