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Jorgi
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A lesson in self-indulgence:

 

We Are Broken (final riot)

 

I was listening to Emergency from Final Riot because I was going to cover it, but then I thought "hmm, I might as well play the song before it as well, to make it a bit longer". Well, We Are Broken isn't really a guitar driven song, but then I got the idea to just have a little fun with it and not really follow the original guitar parts.

 

It's recorded with one take, so you can shove the mistakes up your punx.

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Okay, this is the first cover you've done I actually didn't like, which is a surprise since you pretty much have always delivered the goods up until now with nothing less than a 4/5 video

I didn't hate it, but there are enough parts of it I didn't like that I don't think I can say I liked it.

 

Some of those blues licks really didn't fit the musical context at all and maybe it's just because you're playing against Hayley's voice, but some of the intonation seemed pretty off at times.

And you know I'm pretty up front and honest, so I'll be honest and will tell you that some of your note choice was horrendously bad and truly cringe worthy at times.

And the sloppy moments, just seemed unusually sloppy for you, I remember your Bloodmeat cover being much tighter despite it being a significantly more technical song to play. I'm going to haunt a guess that you haven't played electric much lately perhaps?

There's a reason why I never thought to tackle this song because I figured I couldn't play it without inserting way too much soloing, but somehow you managed to do it (albeit, rather poorly executed:p)

3.5/10 for this one.

 

Given the standard of your previous stuff, I'm figuring what you've got next is gonna be a lot better.

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Actually, I haven't really practiced, like, actual improvisation, so the sloppiness might come out of that. It's a different thing with practiced parts. I can see why you would think the context isn't fitting, but it didn't really clash that much with my ears, dunnooo. I didn't pay any attention to Hayley's voice, though. That's self-indulgence :lol:

 

Well...the note choices. You wouldn't believe how much I scratched my head when I tried to figure out what scale to use. The verse riff is pretty obviously e minor, but it's not properly established and sometimes it didn't really sound fitting...and I did actually just flat out hit a wrong note in a few places :rotfl:oh well, I can only get better at improvisation by practicing it more.

 

If I'm going to do another song sometime in the future, it'll be practiced, don't worry. :) This was just a spur of the moment thing that I thought of last night just before going to sleep and recorded this morning after waking up.

 

EDIT: About the intonation: I'm thinking I need to change my strings or something because I tuned them just before playing but I DID hear some of the notes being a little out of tune as I played..

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It's also a problem of trying to improvise stuff for that long too. Guys like Joe Satriani can do it well, but not all of us are muthafuckers of guitar players either, so for the rest of us, we either need to just avoid playing songs that could potentially involve so much improvisation in the first place or "semi compose" the improvisation.

I used to cover the song Soothsayer dedicated to Aunt Suzie with my old band.

You might know it, a Buckethead tune.

It involved me having to improvise (me being the lead guitarist) for anywhere up to 5 minutes. In the end, I would semi compose the solo and have a bunch of licks I'd already practiced but I wouldn't have a structured order for them, so at least it would feel like I was still improvising.

The audience would probably have no idea 50 per cent, even 70 per cent of what I was playing was already thought out despite the fact to them it would seem if I was truly doing on the spot improvising, but since I wasn't hitting all sorts of fucked up bad sounding notes and was staying with the chord progression everything dug what I was playing.

 

I kinda liken your bits where you seemed to be stretching out musically, to that of trying to stretch out rubber band but it stretches too far and breaks.

And as result you kinda fall flat on your face.

 

And yeah, change your strings bitch, or buy Elixir strings.

I change mine about every 10 days or so, but then again I record stuff so you pretty much can't have old strings at all in my situation.

Means I don't get to drink as much beer as I'd like since I have to buy strings so often, but it's worth it I guess.

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It could be, or actually, it is. I kinda noodled around in places and tried different notes *oops, that didn't sound good* *oops E dorian! Get out of there!* Maybe I should construct a proper solo next, but I like noodling :D The bad notes would've gotten filtered out if I had played the song over and over again until I have an idea of what to play, so I admit, I shouldn't have rushed it.

I know Soothsayer, of course, that's an incredible guitar solo (can't really call it a song :))

 

Haha, I change the string when the old one breaks :rotfl:

 

So, do you have anything else to say? Like, about wah, vibrato (my vibrato usually gets messed up when the adrenaline kicks in :lol:), tone and blablabla

 

And post moar covers >:o

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Ideally, I'd change my strings daily if I were rich. To some people it's insane I change mine every 10 days "WHY SO SOON?!!!!!" but to me that's not enough, but I can't afford to change them more. Vibrato and bending is so much better with strings that aren't covered in mountains of filth that builds up on them and corrosion anyway.

 

Tone is hard to judge in these kind of performances, because it's hardly an ideal setting. Honestly, the only time I get anal about my tone personally is when I'm recording into a full band mix, but when I'm just fucking around with playing a youtube/video cover I'm not so anal about it since you don't get as much benefit spending ages tweaking and then recording via a shitty video camera mic (maybe you used your real mic and guitar amp, but I don't own a mic and have to resort to what's on the camera) anyway.

I tend to see guitar tone always in a full context, so I don't really know what a good guitar tone sounds like by itself anymore because I've gotten so used to listening and analyzing how it sounds in a full mix.

A guitar tone that sounds great on it's own will generally sound quite bad in a mix most of the time and because I have my POD X3 Live set up so that it sounds good in a mix, it probably doesn't sound so amazing when I play it on it's own.

Tone was alright for what it was, but unless it's a full mix, I'm honestly not gonna sit there and nit pick away at it.

Wah was alright, not amazing, but it didn't detract from it either I suppose.

Vibrato, nothing that seemed outright terrible, but sometime I felt it would have sounded better with a bit wider vibrato.

Granted, you've got smaller frets on your guitar than I have on mine so understandably it makes it easier for me to consistently pull that stuff off since my fingers aren't touching the fretboard wood as much, so I don't think it's totally fair to totally smack down on your vibrato when you haven't got the best guitar for it.

 

Anyway, yes, I need to get hold of the video camera still so I can do some video cover shiznitz.

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I don't really have much in the way of advice for classical guitar, since well, I kinda don't play it mang. I don't really feel prepared to give advice in areas I know nothing about, especially if there is something that actually knows what he's doing like you.

 

Anyway bitch, sell that goddamn SA, buy a used Ibanez RG 7 with that money (they go for cheap these days, quite cheap), put some active pickups in there and do teh metulz.

Nah, seriously though, the RG 7s that Ibanez made between 1998 and 2002 offer a massive step up in playability compared to what you have now.

I don't sit there and shred all day anymore, but I can certainly say the bigger frets and larger fretboard radius of the RGs compared to the SA do lend them themselves to a much nicer vibrato and bending experience.

And despite how much Ibanez RGs seem to go hand in hand with shred and metal, I think they make awesome rock blues guitars because you can just pull off massive bends and heavy vibrato with ease.

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A lesson in self-indulgence:

 

We Are Broken (final riot)

 

I was listening to Emergency from Final Riot because I was going to cover it, but then I thought "hmm, I might as well play the song before it as well, to make it a bit longer". Well, We Are Broken isn't really a guitar driven song, but then I got the idea to just have a little fun with it and not really follow the original guitar parts.

 

It's recorded with one take, so you can shove the mistakes up your punx.

 

Yeah there were a few issues of bad intonation there and i didnt think what you were playing suited the song. That said though there were some nice licks and good playing in there, and it was just a good idea to something like this anyway. Im doing something similar with only exception which should be up later on tonight.

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if i ignore the paramore track over the top, that was sick. i'd love to listen to that with maybe just the drum track or a simple beat track underneath, but with the lyrics/guitar/melody of that song and the like, i suppose you could say preconceived expectations i have of that song, i wasn't really digging it i'm afraid buddy ol' pal.

 

not a diss on your playing, but maybe a questionable choice of song to play along to.

 

i did feel the "tower over me" bit worked quite well for the most part, and the first bars of "we just want to be home" if you ignore a few note slips, but yeah.

 

this thread definitely needs to live, so y'all should definitely continue to post more stuff up jahh.

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Alrighty.

So there was the occasional dodgy note choice and you seem to still be getting some intonation problems. CHANGE YOUR FUCKING STRINGS:rotfl:

Your tone was definitely too mid range heavy, and maybe a tad bit over gained for the song, but otherwise it's not exactly a totally terrible tone either.

Good job I suppose, not bad, not great, not excellent, just good.

 

7/10.

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I'll change them as soon as they break :lol: The sound comes from the Boss ME-50 that goes straight to the interface (it IS 3:40 AM right now). I tried it first with lesser gain and it sounded absolutely HORRIBLE, so I had to crank it up a little.

 

I'm curious about what do you mean with the note choices. Tell me more:o

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Boss ME-50, urghh dude, that doens't even have any fucking amp modeling, it's a fucking effects unit, no wonder the tone was less than remarkable.

Hell, you could have used amp simulations and impulses perhaps, but I'm not sure if that would have induced more latency than just using your Boss though. Fuck, if you lived near me I would have let you borrow my POD X3 Live lol.

 

I dunno mang, just sorta in that pre chorus bit, kinda sliding around with these different octave chords that didn't totally gel with my ears.

Something about that last note of the solo was quite iffy too.

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I have some version of NI Guitar Rig, but it doesn't want to cooperate with Reaper for some reason. :/

 

Weird...I guess it's a personal preference thing then. Do you mean, like, out of key, or what?

 

The solo...at least that's how Morello plays it, and that's enough for me. :lol: The octaver on ME-50 can't slide up two octaves though, just one.

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Well just the fact you have fucking old strings makes shit sound out of key anyway:rotfl:

Well, dude, I gotta go out, like literally right now (it's 12:53pm and I have some stuff that is a bit more real worldly and serious than being on the PF Board to do) , so look, I'll watch it a few more times (since I've only watched it once) just so I can sort of pin point certain areas that didn't sound quite right.

I can't do that now obviously, I'll probably do that tonight if I'm not busy, if not tonight, definitely sometime over the weekend.

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Alrighty, so obviously I was busy last night, so I only just got around to watching it again more times now.

Right off the bat, the upwards tremolo bridge stuff just sounds kinda crappy to be honest, just doesn't really seem to fit.

 

As for the note choices spoken of earlier, when you're in the pre -chorus (both times), you're hitting these C and B flat octave chords and they're just not right sounding, and also some fuck knows what chord as well that doesn't seem to work either and as you're sliding around you're getting a bit sloppy too.

 

Solo sounds a bit iffy as I said, but that could be partly due to the crappy quality of your pitch shifting/harmonizer effect, I don't know. We can't all own the rather expensive Digitech Whammy pedal unfortunately, and well I don't own one either anyway.

 

After watching it a bit more and seeing more flaws that became evident, I'm gonna have to cut back the final score from 7/10 to 6/10, which still isn't too shabby.

 

What goes on in my head is that perhaps you kinda feel compelled to make things different, when really perhaps you need to give a few more minutes to think "Does this actually work/sound good in the context?".

I know when doing covers it's hard to resist adding all these extra bits, but sometimes just keeping things more simple can be a superior sounding approach.

Part of the genius of Tom Morello I think, is that for all the monstrous chops he has as both a lead and rhythm guitarist, he is really restrained and simple in his approach and the devil is in the subtle details.

Admittedly, despite the fact I used to know many of the riffs of their songs inside out backwards, I always felt I could never do their songs justice because I'd never be able to recreate so many of those subtle details and crazy sounds that Tom does.

Also doesn't help my guitar does not possess a killswitch type function, heh.

Up to you, you can re-do it knowing you've practiced it more, taking into account what I said.

Again, about that tone, aim for something less mid range heavy. It sounds a bit honky and annoying, less mids will tame that problem.

 

I'm tempted to do a cover, but the harmonizer on my POD X3 Live is honestly pretty crap and extremely sub standard compared to a proper Digitech Whammy and to the rest of the effects on my POD in general, so I'm worried the solo would just sound like total shit, plus if I were to do a Rage Against the Machine song I'd tackle another, less commonly done song anyway. And that's "if", no guarantees I will.

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Okay, so shut the fuck up muthafuckers, I did a cover:mrgreen:

But this isn't a keeper to be honest, but I figured if I didn't post one up to get constructive criticism on a few certain details, then I can't improve certain things for future covers.

Yeah I know I said I'd redo Crushcrush, but I just didn't get around to practicing that again to be honest.

So yeah, I figured I'd just use what I was currently practicing as a sample for y'all to tell me what sucks and what doesn't.

Admittedly I did about 5 full takes (about 15 all up if you count the ones where I fucked up at like 20 seconds in because I realized I was in fact playing a certain riff long and had to go and relearn it properly, so that was quite frustrating) this one I'm posting being the 5th, because the rest I watched and just thought "Harry, you are a fucking atrociously bad guitar player, FUUUUUUUUCK!".

Some of the 5 takes even ended up in me swearing at myself one or 2 times when I thought I had switched the recording button off, but actually hadn't, so I obviously wasn't going to post those up, since that would look a bit silly having me talk to myself like that.

 

So without further ado, here is the link:

 

 

What I want to know is:

 

1. Would you agree that at times perhaps that rhythm tone gets slightly honky in the mid range? It might not matter to 99 per cent of people, but that kinda shit makes me cringe and it's important to know if anyone agrees that specifically in the single note intro riff (that gets repeated obviously) it sounds a bit weird in the mid range.

 

2. The camera angle/positioning. I think I should fuck with it more next time to get more focus on the guitar, rather than seeing my stupid head bobbing in and out and seeing half my legs and stuff. Some people like to go for the "YOU CAN SEE THE WHOLE ME!" thing in their videos and that's fine and dandy.

What I usually aim for (and obviously what Pekka aims for too) is to draw more emphasis on the guitar playing itself rather than well, on me, and I think I partly failed in my mission to draw as much emphasis on the guitar playing as possible

Perhaps I should position it more to the left time. What say you?

 

Some other things to note are:

 

Probably should work on the solo a bit more.

There are a few bung moments where I kinda lost concentration and it didn't totally work out the way I planned but otherwise I think I've got something a bit better than what Josh came up with. Don't get me wrong, what Josh did isn't exactly terrible, but it just fits the song without adding anything to the song, whereas a good solo should aim to not only fit but enhance the song, which is why I spent time writing my own solo in the hopes of doing that.

 

Look forward to ze feedback

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Man that was a nice cover! The whole seven string thing really gave a different edge to the song that I really liked, the solo was pretty good to and loved the fast lick at the end. Only thing I didnt like was the verse lick you did in the second verse, It just sounded, well wrong, but it was just a minor thing, all in all great cover!

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Alrighty, so obviously I was busy last night, so I only just got around to watching it again more times now.

Right off the bat, the upwards tremolo bridge stuff just sounds kinda crappy to be honest, just doesn't really seem to fit.

 

As for the note choices spoken of earlier, when you're in the pre -chorus (both times), you're hitting these C and B flat octave chords and they're just not right sounding, and also some fuck knows what chord as well that doesn't seem to work either and as you're sliding around you're getting a bit sloppy too.

 

Solo sounds a bit iffy as I said, but that could be partly due to the crappy quality of your pitch shifting/harmonizer effect, I don't know. We can't all own the rather expensive Digitech Whammy pedal unfortunately, and well I don't own one either anyway.

 

After watching it a bit more and seeing more flaws that became evident, I'm gonna have to cut back the final score from 7/10 to 6/10, which still isn't too shabby.

 

What goes on in my head is that perhaps you kinda feel compelled to make things different, when really perhaps you need to give a few more minutes to think "Does this actually work/sound good in the context?".

I know when doing covers it's hard to resist adding all these extra bits, but sometimes just keeping things more simple can be a superior sounding approach.

Part of the genius of Tom Morello I think, is that for all the monstrous chops he has as both a lead and rhythm guitarist, he is really restrained and simple in his approach and the devil is in the subtle details.

Admittedly, despite the fact I used to know many of the riffs of their songs inside out backwards, I always felt I could never do their songs justice because I'd never be able to recreate so many of those subtle details and crazy sounds that Tom does.

Also doesn't help my guitar does not possess a killswitch type function, heh.

Up to you, you can re-do it knowing you've practiced it more, taking into account what I said.

Again, about that tone, aim for something less mid range heavy. It sounds a bit honky and annoying, less mids will tame that problem.

 

I'm tempted to do a cover, but the harmonizer on my POD X3 Live is honestly pretty crap and extremely sub standard compared to a proper Digitech Whammy and to the rest of the effects on my POD in general, so I'm worried the solo would just sound like total shit, plus if I were to do a Rage Against the Machine song I'd tackle another, less commonly done song anyway. And that's "if", no guarantees I will.

The bridge-thingy was just something I did "because I can", obviously it won't sound good if the band is playing a D chord and some dude comes and plays a D# on top of that. :lol: I probably wouldn't do that if I was performing publicly, but I saw this as more like my personal playground.:willy_nilly:

 

In live situations, Morello likes to throw the C chord to that pre-chorus part. That's probably the "fuck knows" chord that you mean, although, if I remember correctly, I might have extended it to a C6. Normal C chord hints to a minor tonality, but then I also used the octaves C, Bb and D#, which of course are the ingredients to a Phrygian sound. To my ears, they were all fine, even how it bounces between the two, but I guess I just hear the part and it's context differently.

 

If you thought it would a note-to-note cover of the solo, then you're mistaken. My first run of the weedly-woos in the solo actually harmonizes the original one in fourths. I was just trying it out, really, and I heard the minor pentatonic thing just asking for another line in fourths in a tr00 blues fashion. :shifty: I really don't know how the octaver can be of crappy quality if it's only job is to raise the pitch of a note by an octave (you know more about this than I do, so elaborate, if you can), but I doubt any iffyness is due to that. The three final notes are exactly like on the record, as far as I can hear it (an octave lower, though), but the violent? vibrato I did might make them sound a bit weird. I was only going for a sort of w000000-sound instead of an actual note there. Blame it on my eccentric nature if you find it wish:shifty:

 

"Does this actually work/sound good in the context?" is exactly what was going in my head during that song. It might be hard to know how the listener will hear it, but I can't really find out until I put it out there for everyone to hear. :P Not to say that I don't take your comments seriously, because I do, and I did review some sections with a critical ear, but we obviously see some things differently. For me, stuff like Bloodmeat and Misguided Ghosts were conscious efforts to push myself further, but Killing In The Name was just done because it's been in the spotlight everywhere, and I didn't treat it like I'm laying down a studio track. You don't need to talk to me about "sometimes less is more", I'm way through that already.

 

That said, I might do that again, this time "properly". I've known and played the song for years and years so I could do it right now, but let's discuss some things in MSN or wherever first. :P

 

Okay, fuck, I was going to comment on your cover right now but this just in: I have some recording and mixing duties tomorrow, so uh:willy_nilly:

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