Testing the waters...

PelliX

PelliX

Well-Known Member
England
I have what's basically a cover band. About a year ago or so, our singer decided it was time to bring forth some of her own ideas. Naturally, we headed off to a bumpy start doing the songwriting and so on. I'm used to either knowing what to play or improvising a part into an existing song. It's a lot harder to start from scratch when the concept of the song resides only in someone else's head, and that person doesn't hand you a melody or chord sheet. While the song has something, I'm still not sure whether it should have been a little more progressive or perhaps even a more melancholic - not my forte. I found the lyrics to be a little on the sad side, so I figured that I might as well come up with something myself. Needless to say, I had a few drinks and set out to write a happy song. I've written simple music before, but never lyrics and it shows. Neither is a twelve bar shuffle boogie exactly revolutionary or innovative but I like one. While I can't say that the song is inspired by any *particular* existing piece of music, I do hear a little of Status Quo's Spinning Wheel Blues, listening back to it. Originally the lyrics were intended to be delivered faster and snappier, more in a narrating than a singing way but after a while she came up with what you hear, and while it would need some more studio magic to get it tight, it sort of sticks in your ear I find.

This Morning:

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Singer: vocals
Drummer: drums
Me: Guitars, bass, piano, arrangement, etc.

There's a fairly large collection of covers and a few more originals where that came from. You've been warned... :coffee2:

I guess I could have run off an MP4 of the track and uploaded it here...
 
Don O said:
Nice 12 bar beat Mr. X !
Click to expand...

Thanks, man! Most of what we play and cover is probably a little mellow for a lot of folks here; Stones, CCR, Status Quo, Pink Floyd, Beatles, etc.

Here's one that I initially started with a few folks over at the MF, but the project got stranded and we decided to give it a shot. The bass player on this one is far better than I am, bless him.

Sweet Home Chicago

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And a few more from when she had just joined the band basically. I was the lead singer before that, and we all agreed she was much better equipped in that department. I do still have recordings of the 'original' lineup, but I'm limited. Most vocal stuff is out of my league so we suddenly had a lot of doors opened in that sense...

Spirit In The Sky

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The Timewarp

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Paint It Black

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Fat Bottomed Girls

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We got everything from drop D metal bombs to tasty jazz here ! I’m getting old if the Stones and Pink Floyd are considered mellow. :run:

I’m in a cover band too, we cover CCR, Tom Petty, The Beatles, Steppenwolf, Eddie Money, Bob Dylan, Doors, Neil Young, Van Morrison, Thin Lizzy, etc. Our lead singer, who’s a fantastic musician, is also a song writer. He’s published about 50 CDs of originals over the years.
 
Cool! We do a fair deal of pretty standard CCR sing-a-long stuff, Bad Moon Rising, Before You Accuse Me, Cross-tie Walker, Fortunate Son, Green River, I'm sure you can imagine. Some Beatles indeed, a couple of Doors numbers (we don't really have a steady keyboard player, so often it's me doing the honors and I'm no Ray Manzarek).

We also do newer stuff... sometimes... not often... I have a bit of a soft spot for the Black Keys on occasion.

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We're currently giving Run Right Back a shot, actually.

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Every now and then we'll also take a song and just totally change the feel, genre, everything. I'll be honest, to this day I've not heard the entire original song in one go, I hate it. I've managed Bonnie Tyler's version a couple of times but wasn't too impressed, inspite of the fact that I really like her voice around that time.

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To be fair, the drummer wanted to do it, and he loved it...
 
Thanks man, appreciated! Quite a few ropy ones there. I'll dig you out some better ones...

Here's a take of Tainted Love. I like the original, I really like the Soft Cell cover, don't really care for what Marylin Manson did with it. Ultimately it became a bit of a mix of the latter two. I'm even allowed to join in for the chorus when we play it now...

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Eric Clapton's Motherless Child. Singer sits this one out. I actually did the hand drum and tambourine, too. Tried my trusty Hofner 12-string but did all the guitar on the Hummingbird.

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Larry Williams' Slow Down, vaguely inspired by both the Golden Earring and Beatles renditions. Drummer on drums, me doing the guitars, bass, vocals, piano, etc. By now you should be realizing just why I was removed from vocal duties...

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Ike and Tina Turner's Proud Mary (yes, we covered the CCR cover, too, but I prefer this one...)

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An obligatory rendition of Little Red Rooster..

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The Stones' Sweet Sounds Of Heaven (we actually did this just a few months after the album was released actually)

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PelliX said:
We're currently giving Run Right Back a shot, actually.
Click to expand...

I've always liked this song since the first time I heard it. It feels so out of place post-2K, like a lot of the Black Keys' stuff, honestly. Simple, raw, powerful, catchy. Those are often (!) what attracts me to a song. If you can't make a couple of notes speak, then what good are a thousand going to do? I strongly subscribe to that notion representing the likes of BB King and Gilmour for whom I have some of the greatest respect as musicians.

Overall, I've done most of the song picking but not because I demand to do so, it's just how things go normally. Recently, the singer had been dropping a lot of requests ideas with us and I try to accomodate. Faith, by George Micheal for example. Alright, Faith... basically the Bo Diddley beat and a snazzy bass line. I always liked that one, to be honest - a bit of a guilty pleasure maybe. Given that I knew the lyrics and it wasn't too challenging, I even have a recording of my own vocals. Initially intended as a guide track as I was alone in the studio, I went all out and gave it my best shot. I share these with the drummer and we laugh, often. Then we did the (proper!) vocal and percussion takes after I basically put the bass, guitars and tambourine in. Then - out of nowhere - the singer mentioned that she actually meant "Freedom", not "Faith". My jaw briefly dipped but I figured alright... that's fine... but now it's my turn. So while I sort of hashed out an arrangement for Freedom (which is coming along, kinda) I had some fun with this. This is a rough mix with a canned beat (my drum skills are pretty much "intro to Paradise City"):

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...and Faith, with a slightly altered (non-layered and cut) guitar solo part. I also didn't want to entirely ditch the intro, but it was a little boring, so I piped the MIDI capture back through some digital bells and slowly let a B3 clone creep in playing the root notes and some chords leading up to the guitars.

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A few more for general amusement...

Lady In Black... deep, deep in the mix I'm actually providing a lower vocal harmony toward the end...

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Bobby McGee (the Janis version, not Kris' original...)

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Phil Collins... who by his own admission can't dance

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Cool! Thanks for posting all those. What is your band's name?

My old cover band Superconductor would play Dreams by ABB, then follow with the Hatchet version. We had that kind of pattern for a mess of tunes.
 
Hey, thanks! That's actually an interesting idea.... I prefer the Allman take, and I might just suggest that one soon, ghe ghe... :grin:

We've done a few "covers and the covered another cover" but only a handful, really. As I mentioned above that's a cover of Janis Joplin's version of Bobby McGee (there's a few really funny stories behind that song, too). The original was actually by Kris Kristofferson. We don't ostensibly play 'country' but I got drunk one night after working on the version I posted and just strummed and sang Kris' take for fun. The bassline is incredibly simple but oh so catchy. Well, I sent the result to the drummer and we laughed... deleted the vocal take and asked the singer. Initially less than amused, she obliged so we ended up with two versions of that one. Here's the 'country' take. Like a B-side afterthought or something, haha:

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I'm still dying to finally do a rendition of Country Honk, the 'original' of Honky Tonk Women by the Stones. The singer has a fiddle but she's not up that stuff yet and I'm not even going to try! Could always replace it with a hamornica or something like that, I guess. Food for thought. It's become a staple for me when someone hands me an acoustic with the old "come on, play us something" line. We did, many moons ago, do a couple of takes for the known 'rock' version. I even have video footage of me in the studio tapping a carefully selected saucepan as I didn't have a (non-digital) cowbell handy and my drummer was away, if I recall correctly.

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We also might some day do the Lynyrd Skynyrd version of Call Me The Breeze. The JJ Cale original was actually the first song I ever recorded end to end years ago on my own, equipped with a battered 58 and a 505 drum computer... I figured if he could do it on his own, so could I (ever ambitious, eh). Didn't have a bass either, so that was faked with the same Tele...

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Oh, and here's the CCR version of Proud Mary. Fun fact, the deep vocals backing the chorus are me again. If we did it again, I'd ask the drummer, he goes down way lower than I do.

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