Here’s the sheet music to that I used to play this song. As @joergkutter mentioned, maybe someone else may find “alternate” versions??
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If you were me, and you wanted to try your hand at some covers but didn’t have a lot of time to go down a learning rabbit-hole because baby, and you had at your fingertips Audacity, GarageBand and Ableton (Live Lite), which would you choose?
Also, any tips for organizing a count-in when you’re playing over an original song?
Thanks!
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I will give an advice for everybody here willing to do their first cover : choose a SIMPLE song. a song you really like, of course, but with a bass line you will be able to play without having to work at it during countless hours.
The fact is that for your first cover, you will have to figure out how to record, mix, host and share your work. Nothing really hard, but that’s a whole little workflow and I think it’s better to keep the things as simple as possible, just to maximize your chances to finish this little project that is your very first cover.
That said, and in the same logics, if you don’t know any DAW choose a simple one. I don’t know GarageBand but, for what I know, I think it would be a perfect choice for this purpose. Audacity is simple but very limited, and Live is a bit not-so-simple if you never used it.
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I picked Audacity, knew nothing about recording oneself, but figured it out pretty quick via YT videos. Just to get the process down the first time. It is pretty limited software, but, in the beginning, you may not want to spend too much time on fine tuning details, you just want to record something.
Good luck, there are threads on here with good suggestions, looking forward to hearing your cover!
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@infra - since I already had GarageBand on my MAC, that’s what I started with and still use as my DAW. It’s easy to learn to use, and came free on my MAC.
As for ‘count-in’ when playing to an original song, what I do is either use the built in count in feature and set it for either 1 or two bars, and/or move the original recording 1 or two bars into the track so that there is dead space before the song actually starts. This actually comes in really handy if you are also recording a video that will eventually be mixed with the audio recording.
As for song choice, @terb is spot on with starting with something easy…
Good Luck, and Keep on Thumpin’!
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somewhere between the Blues Countries and the Sludge Swamps, there is a band called Unsane.
Unsane - Against The Grain
I love Unsane, and this band is probably the one I’ve seen the most often playing live. I love a ton of Unsane songs but I had to choose ; this one illustrates pretty well what Unsane is, in my opinion. It’s from the album Visqueen, released in 2007.
I find the bass line on this song very interresting, it gives a dark, dirty, sticky ambiance to an overall very bluesy groove. Greenie works pretty well for this kind of heavy sludgy stuff, even if the SBV would have done the job too, but with a less nasty grind. On a technical perspective, we’re obviously in the Drop-D territory. There is not much difficulty except maybe the muting and finger noise management, as there is a lot of horizontal motion from consecutive notes. And the timing, as always with those down tempo riffs.
Also I modified the bass line a little bit : there are no chords on the original song, the chorus part is played only on the low D string. I just added the A string to make power chords, because why not 
playing those parts more heavily was too tempting !
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Very well played @terb! VERY dark and nasty I would say, and Greenie was most certainly the best tool for the job.
Muting and finger management is always a main key in sound management and as usual, you performed exceptionally well, and your timing was spot on from what I could tell (I’m not too familiar with sludge/grunge).
This was WAY COOL!! A great modification that totally transformed and opened up the bass line riff. It was kind of like the song went from totally dark and dirty to showing a bit of translucency allowing it to open up just enough to expose itself.
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oh yeah 
next time I’ll play a more “happy” thing, I promise ! 
I’m not so much into happy music, but one of the fun things of doing covers is being able to slide from one style to another, it’s easier to do in this context than when playing with a band !
yeah, not so sure about this, I’d say it was heavy and I played it heavier 
but to be serious I really think we, as bass players, don’t use chords as much as we could. chords can be very interesting to add some density to a part of a song.
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I thought that it kinda help to show the "sunnier/brighter side of terb…
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GarageBand
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try this one, it is easy to learn
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Ok folks, here is my homework! I did of cover of Shape of My Heart by Sting:
–Coming soon, web troubles!–
Thanks to the advice above I tried to keep it simple and focus on getting something finished and posted. I recorded it on GarageBand on iPhone and didn’t do anything more complicated with the original track than turning down the bass knob.
I can’t remember how long I’ve been working on this song, maybe a couple of weeks but I’m really happy I was able to figure out nearly all of it after doing the lessons on major & minor scales, with just one little bit where I resorted to finding a tab.
I thought this one was easy but then I realized there’s a lot of space to mess up the timing and I really messed it up last night over multiple takes! Managed to squeeze in one take this evening though around family stuff and ended up with this.
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your link doesn’t seems to work, I get an error and I can’t listen to your cover 
Does it work now?
Also, how do you get the little embedded player to show? Do you use the Hyperlink button in the forum post?
Still can’t get there and I’m getting a malicious code warning.
@infra When you get it sorted, share it as a new post instead of an edit. Just to make sure people see it.
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I’m testing free MP3 hosting with https://www.mailboxdrive.com/ :
https://www.mboxdrive.com/GFY01.mp3
it seems to work, please let me know. So you just have to go to the site and click on “Upload” (top left) then “Browse for MP3s …”, then you choose your file on your computer. when the upload is finished, the site will give you a link with your hosted MP3. you copy/paste this link here and the cute little player will neatly embed by itself.
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LOL their site icon is a skull and crossbones. Yarrr mateys!
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I said the next cover would be happier ! Here it is. I guess everybody here already knows Airbourne, which is some kind of younger version of AC/DC.
Airbourne - Runnin’ Wild
This song uses a pretty unusual tuning : F A# D# G#, which is like a standard tuning with all the strings 1/2 step up. Interrestingly, I’ve seen live videos where Airbourne plays the song in standard tuning, so 1/2 step down regarding to the studio version. But as I cover the studio version, I have to deal with the 1/2 step up thing, and in fact it’s one of the reasons why I chose to cover this song at first. I wanted to try a capo over a standard tuning : I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone using a capo with a bass, but if it works with a guitar it must also work with a bass … So, yes, I tested and it works. but in fact it’s really useless in the case of this particular song, so I ended up just transposing the line over the standard E A D G tuning, and that’s it.
That said, I find this bass line more interresting that it seems, and I added some complexity to it (including a very short shred/lead part because why not). Anyway, there is something really satisfying with those 1/8 chugging lines, it makes me feel likes I’m driving a steam locomotive. almost mesmerizing.
Sound-wise, it’s still recorded with the UX1 and POD Farm. I was tempted to record with my “new” Bass POD Pro but I don’t know it very well yet, I have to tame it a little bit before I can use it for recording sessions. I may use it for the next cover, we’ll see.
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That’s pretty flawless, @terb - very nicely done! And, how sweet is that little run down - wow! I guess, this is where the guitar player in you shines through!?! 
No way, I have that speed and coordination yet 
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