Originally Posted By: lambada
Hi Rockstar_Not

I think that is a wonderful idea. I would really benefit from a session that ran through things like drum feels and styles etc. I am clueless when it comes to hearing those kind of things. I can usually hear and work out chord changes etc for guitar or base and melodies, but drums, Swing or Even, 8 or 16? I've no accurate idea of what it really means! I'm sure I'm not the only one. I just follow my ears which kind of works. How about a video recording of the steps you go through?

Regards


Neil


Neil - pick a song on YouTube that you would like this exercise - one with good audio quality. I won't be doing a video, but I can walk you through the steps of what I do. This isn't figuring out chords and lead lines, but more of an orchestration/arrangement/production exercise.

Here's an example of where I did this with Beck's excellent song, The Golden Age:
Original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6zAT15vaFk
My 2 minute version (for a song contest): http://rockstarnot.rekkerd.org/songs/newer/rockstar_not%20-%20The%20Golden%20Age%202%20minute%20cover.mp3

The process I use is to go through the song MANY times, with a spreadsheet as a note-taking tool, with song sections in the rows, and 'parts' in the columns. I start with the drums, making notes to myself about feel (usually just kick, snare and hats as a start) in each section. Then bass, then all of the guitars, then keyboards, then vocals, sound fx, etc. On this song, I think I had about 10 tracks total. One thing that I could tell is that in the original, I think the acoustic guitars are double-tracked, and that was the primary thing I wanted to try in this recording - to see if I could actually play the acoustic closely enough take to take to get that wider than imaginable sound. I didn't get the rhythm just right. Also to keep this under 2 minutes, I cut out half of the intro. This was also the first time I ever recorded background vocals. The cool thing about the original is that some of the tracks are just dripping with reverb and that helps to cover a multitude of singing errors! But anyways, I think I got the feel and mood of the song nailed pretty well using this technique. I tweaked it quite a bit, going back and forth between the original and my individual tracks. In the cover contest I entered this into (KVRAudio.com) some folks accused me of copying. I didn't, but paid very close attention to each little audio piece of magic that is in the original song. Even though there's lots of reverb on some of the tracks, others are really dry. I wanted to see if I could duplicate the dreamy yet very present nature of this song and it's production.

That's really what Joe is asking about in his original question in the thread.

If anyone is interested, I'll put up a Google-docs spreadsheet of a song I've recently 'reverse arranged' in order to make notes on our band's cover of the song.

For a great on-line cover band where it's clear to me that they have done something like this, check out Lexington Lab Band. Lots of great 70's & 80's rock covers (Boston, Journey)
The cool thing about their covers is that they are mixed really well with great separation of the individual tracks for easy note taking.
https://vimeo.com/185352494

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