Post your covers! (2019-2022)

Thank you @RuknRole

I played electric upright for awhile and that’s where I picked up this technique. It seems to work for me, so no sense trying to change it.

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In fact, the Edgar Winter song Frankenstein got it’s name for how many cuts it took to make the final product.

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Great job Pam :man_singer:t2:. Well played and professional video, as always. PS: like the shirt :wink:

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Great job Pam @PamPurrs ,
Left comments on your website,
Cheers Brian

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Thank you @Bassdacious

It’s my “Skippy” shirt from Arian Cap (as you probably know).

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Thank you Brian @TNKA36

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All the time.
Junior Walker famously never played the very well known Sax solo on Foreigner’s “Urgent” as recorded. It’s a splice job of many takes that we’re all unusable as is. But he got pissed and left before getting a good take.

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EXCELLENT! Great work on that cover Pam! Timing and tone superb! I guess I’ll cross “Nowhere Man” off my list of Beatles covers.
:+1: :+1: :+1:

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Thank you @JerryP . It’s a tough one. It took me a little over a month to nail it…

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All of my covers are like this. My bandmate and I have never been on the same continent while recording them. He sends me a bunch of stems, I record a bunch of my takes, and mix and edit them to produce the final version. Exactly like a real studio would.

The next step in my mixing/mastering journey is probably perfecting double-tracking the instrument parts. There’s lots of different methods used (in addition to playing it multiple times).

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I am still in the ‘99.995% one take mode’ - I have corrected a single note or two after nailing all the rest.
I do take it as a challenge to play it through in one go, however, this really isn’t realistic.
In the studio, the above examples show this not to be.
Live, mistakes are made all the time, just no one cares (unless you are srutinizing a cover band note for note).
If I did my next cover in two parts, I would have it done by now, the 1/2 step key change is driving me bonkers still (getting close).
In the end, does it really matter?

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In the end, nothing matters except the finished product (in the studio) or the show (live).

In my experience as a totally amateur hobbyist home studio producer, how you get to the finished product in the studio doesn’t matter once done, BUT there are workflows to get there that are more efficient, and optimizing for these is key, because you can spend the time saved on other parts of the mix. Producing a song has enough work to it as it is; IMO doing retake after retake until you can nail the whole thing in one go is really alien to an efficient workflow, but whatever floats your boat :slight_smile:

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I noticed the first commenter on your website!
Ari!
That’s a pretty big deal!

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Yeah, she’s awesome!

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That is very true. However, it is a nice feeling to get through an entire song without a mistake.
I do agree though, when making a recording you can waste away a lifetime trying to record the perfect start to finish take. Good video and audio editing skills are essential for piecing together the “good” takes into one finished product.

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I’m changing my ‘take’ on this ASAP (pun intended).

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Bloody Great Job @PamPurrs ! Left a comment on your site too.

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@T_dub, @Mac, big thanks for taking the time to come back on this one and sorry for my delay. Been a lot of traffic on this thread lately and been enjoying the covers…well done to all contributors!

T_dub, thanks for the long and detailed reply, takes a lot of effort to sit down and give so much info. And useful info it is too. You have now given me a second option, as I had got it down to one. As you say the new laptop option is expensive to get the performance required to handle the audio and video.

One suggestion had been to get a ‘desktop’ (or ‘tower’ as the Brits say) because they are so much cheaper. I like desktops, but my problem is I am currently not living at home in the UK - I’m in the Mid-East. I have one more year to go and don’t want to accumulate too many more big items - I have already acquired two basses and an amp here! But that may be an option for the future when I’m back in the UK for good.

What I had decided to do, before your post came in, was go ahead and get the audio of my bass part (I already have a Zoom U-44 unit); film myself (I have a high end digital camera that takes 4K video); and buy the song(s) and strip out the bass track, as recommended/suggested by @PamPurrs and others on here, and on the other similar thread.

I don’t want to buy a new laptop yet, partly because I’m still confused with all the permutations/combinations of graphics card, RAM and processor I posted a list of; and because to get the top performers, the local stores here have only gaming machines that cover those specs. Someone on here pointed out that a gaming laptop may not be the answer - though brilliant for graphics, they handle audio differently. So, really, I still have no idea what laptop to get (has to be a laptop because it goes between home and work office every day, plus on flights home) and remain confused as ever.

Secondly, laptops here are damned expensive, more than at home. Shipping and customs is expensive too, on large items.

Finally, if something goes wrong after I’ve moved home, I can’t just hop on a flight back to the Mid-East to take it to the store.

So… I had decided to wait on the new laptop. Instead, Once I have my three elements - my bass track, the song track minus bass, and the video, I would turn these over to one of the many online folks looking for business, to pay someone to put it all together. Much cheaper than a new laptop. I know, some people enjoy the process of actually being a video editor. And Pam said it’s not so hard when you have it all in the software and lined up, the software does a good job. But maybe that’s what I’ll get into when I move home for good. I’m not sure yet I want to spend a lot of time learning a bunch of new software and learning how to edit audio/visual material. Maybe. We’ll see.

I’ve used online folks before, to design my company logo, and business cards etc. There are so many people needing some business, you can get things done to a good quality fairly cheaply (and I like to pay them a bit more than the going rate, for a job well done). I know some on here might say “that’s cheating!”. But to learn how to do all this stuff I have to learn a lot of new hardware and software and processes, I work full time and only have evenings…is that going to take away from actual bass playing/practice time?

But this new option… getting a refurbished iMac, I would never have thought of that. I shall look into it. Though have never owned a Mac and I know they are a fair bit different. But it seems like a good cheap(er) alternative.

By the way all, I’m not in the market for a bass, not sure how that got out there, but good suggestions from you all anyway! I bought an Ibanez SR300E to start on as my first bass. Good sound for such a low price (I didn’t want to spend lots in case I quit early). It’s great for me as I have small hands/fingers and two busted fingers (ring and pinky) from sports injuries. The neck is thin. I also got an Ibanez miKro short scale, which I’ve upgraded with quality pickups and tuners. That’s for where the basslines are just too tricky/fast/spread out notes for my small hands, and also has a thin neck.

Then on a recent trip home, I bought an Aria hollow body semi-acoustic, retro style. Beautiful bass for the price, makes a lovely mellow 1950s/60s sound. But I left that home so I have a bass to practice on when I’m there. So, three basses in one year! Before August 2020 I’d never even held a bass!

Thanks again to everyone who’s contributed - with all this info I guess I have no excuses now!

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Nice to see Chris Isaak mentioned on here, I must follow up the covers posted. I was big on his music back in the early 90s, such a great sound and voice. I have got back into his music recently, and learnt how to play the bass to Wicked Game - “but it’s so simple!” people may say - exactly! Great son to give a beginner confidence, and I play along to the actual song (the live version in a studio on YouTube is my favourite), just to see if I can keep time, and finish the song in the right place. I want to record a version of that to send to some friends, who say “I could never play any kind of instrument” as that’s what I used to say before I picked up a bass, one year ago. And if I can play that song, with small fingers and two broken ones, anyone can!

I also have two friends one who started to learn drums a few years ago, and has stalled, and one who started learning piano when I started bass, and also stalled - I sent them the link to Wicked Game live, saying come on, the piano and drum parts are not too tricky, I can do the bass now, lets all learn and play this song together! Hoping it will inspire them.

Secondly though, since I’ve been on this bass ‘trip’, I have often heard people say that with the bass, less is often more. This song is perfect for that. The brilliant haunting vocal and guitar melody are the stars of this song, not the bass, keyboards, drums. It shows how the bass just goes along, keeping time, filling out the background. This has helped me, as when I started, and looked at/listened to some of my favorite songs and bass players, and it could be off-putting - “how WILL I ever be that good”. But that was a mistake; these people are often virtuosos who’ve been playing 30-40 years. Better to start with some low-hanging fruit.

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Loved that! I may have to try to learn it.

And TKNA36 (Brian?) beat me to it - Hawkwind ‘The Space Ritual’. One of my all time favorite albums.

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