PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic What are the best sites to download Midi Karaoke or Song files that are truest to the original arrangements ?

It's my experience that a BIAB created cover will almost always out perform any of the local Myrtle Beach live bands if they attempt to play a request from out of their practiced playlist.

I use a similar workflow of Pat to create covers. The main difference is is the source material I use. I scour YouTube and Facebook for isolated tracks. Finding quality source material can take longer than the BIAB/RB work so when I come across something I like, I download to a folder and save it for a future project. Sometimes, I do a song that I normally would not do but the track is so good that it is worth my time to use it. The best sources are isolated tracks by original artists normally taken from box sets such as the Beach Boys Pet Sounds. Vocals, instrumentals, BGV's and Harmonies are all available.

Good tutorials are the next best. Most play through the song close to the original tempo, recreate the song accurately and also in the original key. Even if they differ from the original, they do so because the key is normally better suited for the average player. The chord progression and strumming patterns usually closely follow the original recording. Signature licks are accurate and at some point in the video, played at the proper tempo. Again, isolated and usable as a 'scrap' in RB.

A fun and excellent example of a great tutorial that can be used to get 'scraps' to do a very accurate cover: Former Eagles guitarist Don Felder does a complete tutorial of all his licks, leads and fills of "Hotel California" just playing the guitar with no other instrumentation in a YouTube Video. A helpful thing for me is he transposes the song to Am, a better key for my voice. This is essentially a RealTrack from Don Felder to me and mixing his performance into an accurate BIAB backing track and using midi produces an exceptional cover in Am.

Acoustic covers can also provide gems to work with. Here, the workflow is the same as Pat's. The benefit is the artist arrangement may differ from the original by removing other instrumental parts in order to showcase the artist prowess in executing a difficult signature lick and providing a more isolated track than the original. I'm not being critical of the artist here, just mentioning that covers sometimes vary an arrangement enough for me to get clean 'scraps' to use in my cover.