Post your covers! (2019-2022)

terb · August 14, 2019, 7:37pm

Hi all

I thought it would be a good idea to share our bass covers here. I hope it may encourage some of you to get into recording, finding tabs by ears (or on the internet), playing the songs that really make your heart vibrate. All of that means great fun and great progression. It could also be a way to give and receive advices and constructive criticism about our playing techniques, rythmic accuracy, groove, bass tone … in a nutshell I think it would be great !

If you don’t know how to create a backing track from an album track, and replace the existing bass line by yours, we discuss the subject here : "remove" the bass line from a track - #14 by terb

Of course there’s no minimum skill and difficulty level required and remember that we’re all here to progress and have fun. So, don’t be shy, make and share your bass covers ! these could be pure audio tracks, or video if you prefer (easy to upload and share on Soundcloud and/or Youtube, hoping the ContentID filter won’t be too rude with us)

So I’ll start. I’ve already shared this first cover as an audio track, but Youtube have since accepted the video, so here it is :

Amyl & the Sniffers - Gacked On Anger

I also made a second cover yesterday, of a song from the same band and same album :
Amyl & the Sniffers - GFY

Don’t hesitate to comment ! Every feedback is precious for a learning bass player.

I can’t wait to listen/see your covers

Jazzbass19 · August 14, 2019, 8:26pm

Very nice, @terb . . .

I think you’re a bit more advanced than a “beginner” . . .

terb · August 14, 2019, 8:32pm

as long as there’s a pick involved … anyway I’m still learning, as everybody here I guess

Vik · August 14, 2019, 8:44pm

It’s a neat idea - and I’ve thought about doing this with some of the B2B jam tracks, where the bass has already been taken out - make up my own bass line for fun, to some of the songs.

It’ll probably be awhile before I’d take on doing an original bass cover to a full song (maybe I’ll try a bass cover, but with some tablature first from the recording) - but, one day, I may just come back to this post, and put something up

So - putting this on a future to-do list for all things bass! Thanks for posting these, even creating a YT video of yourself playing, and it sounds great!

terb · August 14, 2019, 8:49pm

also for your first cover, you could choose a very easy song with a bass line with very few patterns (if not only one) ! anyway tablatures are not forbidden

JoshFossgreen · August 14, 2019, 9:38pm

Nice stuff @terb! Thanks for starting this thread, I love the idea.

Your covers sound great to me! Rhythm sounds super solid and the P bass and the Yamaha both sound great.

One constructive feedback thing you can play with - in this style of music (anything vaguely punk or metal-y), the most common way to use the pick is to do all downstrokes. It gives you a more consistent driving sound that propels the music forward.

So I think that would work well on Gacked on Anger, because it’s not super fast. I doubt it would work on GFY because that would be really fast to play all downstrokes! I think the down-up sounds good on that tune.

Cool interview clip of Flea talking about the all downstrokes thing @ 33:05

Speaking of punk rock, this is the closest thing to a punk cover I’ve ever done!

terb · August 14, 2019, 10:22pm

thanks

that’s very interesting ! it’s not really a choice : down-up is natural for me (guitar player) but the attack sounds different on the up and down, and what Flea explains about the notes being more detached to each other when playing all downstrokes make me want to experiment with that ! thank you for pointing this up !

wow, that’s way more complicated than Amyl & the Sniffers for sure

howard · August 15, 2019, 1:23am

Thanks for starting this thread!

joergkutter · August 15, 2019, 10:22am

Great idea for a thread, @terb!

However, it also rips open an old wound of mine… namely, that the music I want to cover is also the music I can’t play (yet, or perhaps never). So, I will have to mull a bit more over this one, before I might be able to submit something!

terb · August 15, 2019, 2:15pm

You could start with something simple, even if it’s not exactly your final target music

joergkutter · August 15, 2019, 6:28pm

Well, that settles it then… I’ll start off with a cover of “Portrait of Tracy” and then I’ll slowly increase the difficulty level

terb · August 17, 2019, 10:27pm

here is a new cover, some garage/lofi rock from NYC.

Boss Hog - Disgrace

(terrible spongy-sounding kick )

By the way, I started experimenting with down-up and all-down. For now I like both and, as they sound different, I think it’s good to be able to play both and choose the best one for each song (and each part).
Here I play down-up, as on the original track, and I feel it sounds more “moving” (despite less solid) than all-down. That’s pretty interesting and I’ll keep experimenting for sure !

eric.kiser · August 17, 2019, 11:27pm

@terb Keep them coming. I have really enjoyed your videos.

terb · August 18, 2019, 2:22am

can’t wait to enjoy yours

Jazzbass19 · August 18, 2019, 11:40am

Very nice, @terb!

Years ago, I used to use a pick all the time. After taking Josh’s course, I’m much better with my fingers, but I really need to work on using a pick once again. Thanks for the inspiration . . .

Vik · August 18, 2019, 6:21pm

Ok - I’m hoping to put up a bass cover soon - this is exciting stuff! But first, I wanted to post another method of extracting the bass from a song - the method is very similar to @terb 's way, but this uses Audacity, and, it’s a quick and dirty way to do it in less than 10 minutes.

Watch this YT video: BJR's Tutorials : How to remove bass guitar from a song - YouTube
Then, look in the comments, as someone has written step by step, what to do, where to click in the software program. I didn’t even know what I was doing, just followed the directions, and it worked, pretty well!

I think these methods rely on scooping out a certain frequency range, and, that could be problematic if it also removes other sounds besides the bass from other instruments in that range. Maybe a sound engineer has a better method, but, for now, this is a pretty effective way to do it. It may be worth going back through the settings used in that YT video, and tweak them depending on the song, or genre of music.

No excuses now - time to practice some covers

terb · August 18, 2019, 6:22pm

yeah, the course helps me a lot to develop my fingers playing too. I like having a lot of tonal options with different techniques !

Vik · August 20, 2019, 9:52pm

Anyone know how or where to upload a bass cover, without getting flagged for copyright infringement? I just made a cover of an 80s song, and tried to upload to SoundCloud, but it immediately flagged and removed it.

Not trying to steal anyone’s work, or commercialize it in any way! Just trying to learn bass here, and maybe get feedback. And I don’t want to post it somewhere that will ban me for trying to do so, or somehow red flag me (like YT - I kind of need my gmail/YT account!)

terb · August 20, 2019, 11:17pm

Those copyright things are a pain in the ass for us. Being flagged for making a cover only for fun and learning reasons drives me crazy.

If you have a website you can upload the mp3 and then copy/paste the link here in the forum, it will embed a neat MP3 player. If you don’t have anywhere to upload your mp3, you could send it to me and I would upload it on my server.

Vik · August 21, 2019, 2:31am

It’s very nice of you to offer to upload it to your server for me! But I will try to do this from my side, and embed the link here.

Yes, it is a real bummer that this happens, because doing this cover has really helped me to take some of the concepts I learned in B2B and apply them to a real song! I would really recommend this exercise to everyone, regardless of whether there’s an easy way to share your cover or not.