PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Songwriting Faith, She's the one, Bo Diddly style

Does anyone happen to know what style conforms with Faith (by George Michael), She's the one (springsteen), I want Candy (Bow wow wow) or many Bo Diddly songs? I have search the real styles database and the offerings aren't quite what I was expecting. Even if someone happens to know the real drum tracks, it would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance

One of the things about BB is how easy it is to work with a given song and edit it. However, when you are attempting to do a cover song, and you want to stay faithful to the original version, you may be faced with a fairly large task. This is especially true when the song has signature licks and riffs that are part of the original that don't conform to what BB is capable of delivering. There's literally too many signature licks for BB to be able to provide one for every song. They give you generic backing tracks. It's up to you to be creative and create the signature part of a given song. Quite a lot of old rock tends to be very non-generic. That just makes it harder to cover but not impossible.


I have done this for a few covers I created for my listening pleasure and on a few occasions for a client who wanted a good backing track for a particular song. What you have to do is find a good rhythm track.... generally the bass and drums, that are in the original. This isn't that hard to do in BB. Even in most signature lick/riff songs, the rhythm is fairly standard or generic enough to find a suitable set of tracks in BB. You mentioned Bo Diddly in the list of possible covers.... You should be able to find styles that are similar enough to grab the basic rhythm section that will work for you. Type in the name of the song in the style search bar. See what it returns. I like to mute everything except the bass and drums and play along to see if it is a good fit. If not, try another suggestion from the search results. If it works.... move on to the next step in the process.

Once you have a workable rhythm.....You then must move the tracks into a DAW and create the remaining tracks some other way. In my case.... I played the guitar parts, I played the keyboard parts, and in some cases, I can play the bass part using midi and a nice sampler. In one of the song projects for a client.... he wanted a song by a certain artist, but in the style of a different artist which he was able to send me a YouTube video for me to understand clearly what he was wanting. Using the method I just described, I was able to get it close enough to what he was envisioning that he was quite satisfied with the resulting track.

It all depends of the amount of work you are willing to put into the project and your ability to think out of the box and to play or have someone else play the key parts that make those songs what they are. Bruce Springsteen is not going to be very easy simply because his music doesn't adhere to given patterns and generic progressions. Drums are key in his music, and he's always changing the groove as he progresses into different parts of the song. You're not going to find much of that in BB. Not saying it's impossible.... just saying it's not going to be slam dunk easy.


Hope this helps.

Hi and thanks for your reply. I am really not trying to do a cover of any that I mentioned, but wanted to see if there might be a style closely related. When I search those terms, I get a boatload of results, most of which don't have anything to do with any of those songs

Thanks again for your reply
Rich

Actually, in most cases, only the first one or two are going to be relevant to the song you searched. The further down the results you go the further you get from the target.

AND.... it's not a given that the style offered by the search is going to work straight out of the box. You often must be creative in your thinking to get the results you want.

Rich, This is very timely because I too have been searching for the Bo Diddley beat without any luck. I agree, the styles offered here have nothing to do with Bo's very distinctive beat (which of course is used in all those other songs you mentioned). I guess we'll have to make special requests and hope for it in an update. Glad to see that I'm not alone!

Rich, Further research revealed the thread below. Have you already seen it? I found it to have a couple of helpful leads. Not ideal but better than nothing.

https://www.pgmusic.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=665187&Searchpage=1&Main=90399&Words=bo+diddley&Search=true#Post665187

A few years ago, I was asked to help with a song in the style of Walyon Jenning's I don't think Hank done it this way.... a typical Waylon 4 on the floor style groove. It was difficult to find something that worked and ultimately, we chose to go in a different direction on that song. It seemed that everyone, at least around these parts of NC at the time, was writing and playing in that groove.

I came across NewOrleansMardiGras in even 8 or 16th. It's got the same feel (I think)

Good ones, Rich, thanks!

Much too late for a response, but have you looked at the MicroChord option (press F6 on a measure to bring it up)?

For example, you could set up a Motif pattern like this:

x . . x | . . x . | . . x . | x . . .