Cover Challenge 16 "C"

enjo

poopot said:

enjo said:

Entry sent in, a cover of Gary Clark Jr's cover of Come Together.
My first time using reaper/programming drums and first time recording anything in a long time! 
Thanks for the inspiration.

Not got anything from you… where did you send it?

To the wrong email address (.com rather than .co.uk) - I hope they enjoy it.
If at first...

poopot

@enjo in the playlist

https://soundcloud.com/thefretboard/sets/cover-challeng-16-c?si=a4ada7e653ad491d9002e1f4c8aee4c3

stratman3142

As an exercise I've just tried to replicate the backing of "Cardiff" by Stone Sour, so there's no vocals or melody.

@poopot, is it OK to just upload that, to maybe get some feedback or abuse? I don't expect any votes anyway.

poopot

stratman3142 said:

As an exercise I've just tried to replicate the backing of "Cardiff" by Stone Sour, so there's no vocals or melody.

@poopot, is it OK to just upload that, to maybe get some feedback or abuse? I don't expect any votes anyway.

yep. no problem

stratman3142

poopot said:

stratman3142 said:

As an exercise I've just tried to replicate the backing of "Cardiff" by Stone Sour, so there's no vocals or melody.

@poopot, is it OK to just upload that, to maybe get some feedback or abuse? I don't expect any votes anyway.

yep. no problem

Sent it in.

poopot

stratman3142 said:

poopot said:

stratman3142 said:

As an exercise I've just tried to replicate the backing of "Cardiff" by Stone Sour, so there's no vocals or melody.

@poopot, is it OK to just upload that, to maybe get some feedback or abuse? I don't expect any votes anyway.

yep. no problem

Sent it in.

Not received anything 

stratman3142

@poopot rather than resending it, is it OK if I try adding it myself as I have access through the challenges I run?

The reason I suggest that is because the Soundcloud algorithm might reject it , if it sounds too close to the original. I guess I haven't done a good job if the Soundcloud algorithm accepts it

Habanero

stratman3142 said:

@poopot rather than resending it, is it OK if I try adding it myself as I have access through the challenges I run?

The reason I suggest that is because the Soundcloud algorithm might reject it , if it sounds too close to the original. I guess I haven't done a good job if the Soundcloud algorithm accepts it

Maybe upload to some other Soundcloud and paste the link here? Otherwise I have a personal website and could host an mp3 for you?

poopot

stratman3142 said:

@poopot rather than resending it, is it OK if I try adding it myself as I have access through the challenges I run?

The reason I suggest that is because the Soundcloud algorithm might reject it , if it sounds too close to the original. I guess I haven't done a good job if the Soundcloud algorithm accepts it

Yeah go for it… happy for you to upload..

although… can you send it to me again just to see if the email forwarding is actually working

stratman3142

poopot said:

although… can you send it to me again just to see if the email forwarding is actually working

I've just sent it again. Hopefully it will get to you.
Perhaps it ended up in your junk folder, which might be an appropriate place

In the mean time I'll try to upload it to Soundcloud myself.

stratman3142

I've added it to the playlist. Soundcloud didn't block it, which is probably an indication that I've failed in my attempt to replicate the track (without vocals).

Bezzer

stratman3142 said:

I've added it to the playlist. Soundcloud didn't block it, which is probably an indication that I've failed in my attempt to replicate the track (without vocals).

Are you alright fella? I haven't listened yet but this negativity can't be good for you!
Regarding soundcloud they don't block unless requested and as you've left the melody off anyway any detection algorhythm isn't going to find it.  I put my Steven Wilson "copy" on there (I went DEEP on the copy on that as practice) and never had any issues. You'll be fine! 

... and I'm going to go an listen now.

Bezzer

@stratman3142 right ... stop being negative!  That's a really, really good go at replcating the original backing.  It's always going to be a BIT off as you're mixing without any vocals so it's louder, you hear more, don't have to EQ around the voice ... but the sounds are on point, the EQing seems to be working.  It's great, really is.

If you want hyper critique to help you nail it, in the verse riff it's not muted all the way through, it opens up on the run of 16ths. The heavy riffs aren't quite right, the notes are right in the chorus but it feels you're missing the chugged C# and holding on the the chords a bit too long.  The outro heavy riff is a touch off, I don't know how much really heavy music you do and it's easy to miss, again the notes are right but that accents are in slightly the wrong place.

But ... that's it, those are details if you want to get it closer still.  I think you've done a bang up job there!

stratman3142

@Bezzer that's all really helpful. Thanks for taking the time to comment. I'll move on now, but good lessons for the future.

Habanero

@stratman3142 I reckon you've done a fantastic job. I just wish I knew how it was all done! I wasn't familiar with the original track, and if anything yours sounds clearer and less compressed, but I suppose that could be simply down to it having less going on (no vocals etc) or the quality of the uploaded recordings.

Are you going to complete it?

IMC1980

I am out for this one, don't have any capacity at the moment due to a combination of working on the Dirty Snake Mouth record and being too lazy to do anything else.

Didn't hear the track until last night, it is a belter! Would have enjoyed covering I think, initially I was thinking of doing a cover of Gary Clark Jnr's cover of Come Together, but @enjo beat me to it. Maybe I'll have the time to join in for the letter d. 

stratman3142

Habanero said:

@stratman3142 ...I just wish I knew how it was all done!...

Are you going to complete it?

Thanks. I think I'll leave the track for now as it was really just an exercise for me. Plus I need to start my Composition challenge entry.

As you asked, here's some detail.

It was a massive learning exercise which I'm happy to share. Maybe others know a better way and will point out the folly of my methods and mistakes.

As with most of the cover challenges, I purchased and downloaded the mp3 track from Amazon. Then I used the mp3 of the original in Reaper as a reference track. The mp3 of this track sounded fantastic (much better than the YouTube clip) so I decided to attempt to replicate the sounds as a learning exercise.

I started with the drums and found a couple of YouTube clips of drummers doing a cover of the track. I watched those in combination with listening to the original track to program the drums using the Reaper midi grid.

To get sounds I usually start by listening to loads of presets until I find one in the right area and then tweak it to suit. For the drum sound, I eventually found a preset called 'If You Want Weight' from the 'Fields Of Rock - Live' SDX in Superior Drummer 3. Then I tweaked the sounds and set up the SD3 mixer (outputs 3/4) so I could use a bus reverb (Valhalla Room).

The original track shifts a bit in tempo towards the end. While programming the drums, I had to move the original track around in Reaper so that it locally aligned with the Reaper grid. When it came to the other instruments I decided that was too much of a pain in the arse, so I watched a Kenny Gioia video on Stretch Markers (dated 2 Jun 2020). That allowed me to more closely align the original track with the Reaper grid. In retrospect I probably should have done it the other way around and matched my version to the tempo changes of the original (but the tempo changes were quite small).

To create the bass and guitar parts I needed to go down to a low C# and an occasional passing low B. That's when I decided I needed a 7 string guitar and a 5 string bass. Not just for this track, but for future use. This is what prompted the purchases at the links below.

https://thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/216200/ngd#latest

https://thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/217433/nbd-sire-m5-5-string#latest

Unfortunately the bass was on pre-order and took a little while longer to arrive than expected, so I decided to use midi programmed bass. A preset called 'Fat One' in 'IK Modo Bass' sounded closest, so I started with that and tweaked it. There are quite a few slides in the bass so I had to program that in the midi cc pitch lane in Reaper, which was another big learning exercise.

The low distorted guitars are just my Jackson JS22-7 Dinky and the sound is a tweaked version of a preset called 'Rabeaafro Chuggs' in Helix Native. Everything is double tracked. I overlaid distorted parts an octave higher (which might have been a mistake) using the bridge humbucker on my new AZ2204.

The clean sounds are mixture of single coil settings on my AZ2402 and AZ2204 using clean sounds within Helix Native. Position 4 on the AZ2204 seemed to work best for the choppy verse sound.

I let Ozone 9 Master Assistant do the mastering using the Modern, High Intensity, CD setting. Usually I end up tweaking things but this time I was happy with the job it did.

Here's a pic of the Reaper project.

https://i.imgur.com/acCmSwZ.png

enjo

IMC1980 said:

I am out for this one, don't have any capacity at the moment due to a combination of working on the Dirty Snake Mouth record and being too lazy to do anything else.

Didn't hear the track until last night, it is a belter! Would have enjoyed covering I think, initially I was thinking of doing a cover of Gary Clark Jnr's cover of Come Together, but @enjo beat me to it. Maybe I'll have the time to join in for the letter d. 

I would be in no way offended by someone doing a better version!
All is fair in love and covers.

IMC1980

enjo said:

IMC1980 said:

I am out for this one, don't have any capacity at the moment due to a combination of working on the Dirty Snake Mouth record and being too lazy to do anything else.

Didn't hear the track until last night, it is a belter! Would have enjoyed covering I think, initially I was thinking of doing a cover of Gary Clark Jnr's cover of Come Together, but @enjo beat me to it. Maybe I'll have the time to join in for the letter d. 

I would be in no way offended by someone doing a better version!
All is fair in love and covers.

It was of a half thought at some point when the challenge was announced, just weird we both had the same cover in mind to cover!

Habanero

@stratman3142

Thanks so much for that! One initial question though - are the doubled guitar tracks the same thing panned apart, or would you also use different 'takes' generally?

I may take a look at Superior Drummer in future. Having been using Garageband until now the ability to program drums was quite limited. Now I'm moving on to Logic it looks way more powerful, but also more complex. One useful resource I recently found though is "drum tab" websites, which I previously thought was only a guitar thing.

I'm with you on the digital bass usage. Not only do I know very little about the art, but my left hand injury will never allow playing the real thing.

Finally, in a another tip exchange someone previously recommended Soundtoys "Little Alter Boy" for vocals, which I finally picked up last week in the early Black Friday bargains. It did require a lot a grumbling though as I needed to create 3 logins to buy, download and license it!