PG Music Home Forums General Discussion I just heard Band-in-a-Box on YouTube All the Young Dudes

This is an old Mott The Hoople song.... written by David Bowie. This came out my final year in high school... 1972

All the parts are Band in A Box except the guitars. I'm doing the guitar parts.





Anyone who says you can't cover a song as close to the record as possible isn't trying very hard. It took some effort but it's totally possible to do close covers with BiaB. This was originally recorded in my studio about 4 or 5 years ago.

Hoping you like it. I don't do many covers and this is the last for a very long time.

Very cool. Great job. How do you get the video embedded like that? My posts just show the link.

Wow! This is good! It's so close to the original that I'm going to have to go back to the original to hear for any differences. Great job!

Jeff

I use the full reply vs quick reply. There's a button for "Enter a Media Tag" looks like a TV screen 5th from the left.... Copy the link from the video and enter it .... waa laa

Glad you like this.

Thanks... yeah I wanted to get as close as I could using the default BB/RB tracks. I tried several styles and swapped the drums and bass around until I found something that worked well.... added the B3, and played the guitars myself. Mott was a simple band.... bass, drums, guitars, and keys. I believe the guitars are doubled and there's a lead.... but the BB tracks are just like they were generated.

I saw a Bowie concert where he was playing this slightly faster.

Thanks for listening.

I hope those who doubt the capabilities of Biab will find & listen to this cover...
You've done a swell job...
I wonder how much time you have invested in creating this piece to get it so close...

Good chops Herb!

This was really cool! The guitar especially sounds amazing. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Great Cover. Very cool.

I don't recall the amount of time spent on this. It was really not appreciably more than any original I work on. But yes, BiaB is certainly capable of doing some pretty close cover work.

Thanks for listening

Thanks for sharing I've never really listened to Mott the Hoople so this was new to me. You did a great job though - really catchy and some great progressions. I'll need to check out the original!

COOOOOOOOL!!! A friend of mine turned me onto this song in HS. I think it was on the same record as All the Way from Memphis? They had a cool sound. Ian Hunter did some really good stuff after as well. Enjoyed!! Take care. Greg

That guitar is my Gibson SG, and yes I will absolutely agree with you that it sounds amazing. Glad you listened and enjoyed.

Thank you

Takes me back a bit, great stuff well done.

Nice cover Herb. Very impressive guitar sound, it blended well with the rest of the tracks.

You did a great job on this Herb and your guitar work sounds great. However...

I have to take exception with your statement

Anyone who says you can't cover a song as close to the record as possible isn't trying very hard. It took some effort but it's totally possible to do close covers with BiaB.

DUDE! This is a very simple song, it's all strumming guitars and a basic bass. Of course this can be covered by Biab RT's and some good editing. This is straight ahead strumming guitar rock and roll. Same as a lot of folk stuff. But take a song with hooks, specific musical licks, full band rhythm punches, or a horn section. Biab cannot cover tunes like that without a ton of work and you recording a bunch of specific parts and even then the feel is wrong. Wanna try some Stones like Satisfaction or Jumpin Jack Flash or Brown Sugar? How about Santana like Black Magic Woman? The Doors, Light My Fire, LA Woman? Joe Cocker? Motown? Sam and Dave? James Brown? I could go on and on.

Yes you did a good job on this but Biab can NOT do a whole huge bunch of classic covers. And, that's ok because it's not designed for that anyway just don't tell folks it can.

Bob

Bob... yes indeed. The easier tunes are simple to cover. And your point is well taken. And I would venture to say that even doing the simple songs in BB.... my song is a great example.... It still takes a bit of work to make it sound like the record.

I'd have to go search the hard drive on my DAW to find it, but ..... more than a few years ago I had a guy contact me to see if I could get him a reasonably close to the record version of Southern Nights. The old Glen Campbell song but by a different artist who, if I recall the details correctly, wanted a slightly different vibed version. I listened to the song he indicated on YT and was setting on the fence about whether to take the job, knowing all I had to work with was BB. I figured I'd give it a try and set about finding a style that would work. It was an enormous amount of work and I ended up having to play several of the parts with midi. I think the guitars and bass ended up live. Bass was the midi track simply because nothing I could find in BB worked with the groove the guy wanted. And the arrangement IIRC was slightly different too.

Long story short, I got an almost finished track and sent him a section to see if it worked for him. He was, apparently, pleased. He instructed me to finish the track and I ended up sending him the wave and got paid for the job. The hourly rate when calculated was pretty slim if I do say so myself but it was a fun challenge.

But you are correct. Many of the classic songs are not a simple wham bam thank you and it's done. I suspect that stuff like James Brown, with the accents and other such things would present a real challenge to anyone trying to cover them accurately by just using BB. That is but one of those times you have to think out of the box and create many of the tracks yourself and be really sharp with the audio editing.

Edit to add: I think I actually scrapped the entire project 2x and started over because the customer was not satisfied with the vibe in those earlier versions. I had given it one more third and final attempt and the guy liked it so with a bunch of wasted time behind me, I plowed forward to finish it.