So, How Did You Do It?

Telegram Sam

Telegram Sam

New member
There are artists and songs that have served as the inspiration to take up this home recording thing again.
I mean, I really like EXACTLY what they are doing.

Without getting specific as to artists and songs,
how can I take their work to heart
and use it to inspire my own work?

I guess what I am asking you guys is this:
I am very tempted to take several songs that I love and cover them in detail to get started.

Is this a reasonable approach?

I mean I have to start somewhere, and now that I have all this gear
and sort of have it working, it seems like it would be a good methodical approach to
learning, as well as helping me to understand some of the nuances of what I am hearing.

Did anybody else do this to learn?
 
I don't know about several, but doing a cover to get yourself going mightn't be a bad thing... depends upon how you feel about covers, I guess.

It's not something I'd do but I guess it depends upon your level of familiarity with your gear. If you want to "practice" on something, then knock yerself out, I reckon.

YMMV... :thumbs up:
 
If you're just starting out, doing a cover is a great way to learn the different aspects of home recording.

What works for you and what doesn't.
How to get particular sounds from different intruments/vocals.
How to get a mix to translate to different listening environments. home stereo, car, iphone, etc.
Time of day to record
Your room
Your monitors


There's a lot of things you can pick up just from doing a cover. Not having to worry about the creative side of writing. Just learn the technical side so later on, you don't have to think about it and you can concentrate on songwriting and recording what you hear in your head.
 
Telegram Sam said:
There are artists and songs that have served as the inspiration to take up this home recording thing again.
I mean, I really like EXACTLY what they are doing.

Without getting specific as to artists and songs,
how can I take their work to heart
and use it to inspire my own work?

I guess what I am asking you guys is this:
I am very tempted to take several songs that I love and cover them in detail to get started.

Is this a reasonable approach?

I mean I have to start somewhere, and now that I have all this gear
and sort of have it working, it seems like it would be a good methodical approach to
learning, as well as helping me to understand some of the nuances of what I am hearing.

Did anybody else do this to learn?
Click to expand...

Dude, definitely do covers to at least learn/hone your recording techniques. I used to record tons of covers. I didn't wanna waste original material on learning the digital recording process. Meanwhile I was writing songs and getting them ready to be recorded once I felt I was good enough to do it decently. I still do a lot of covers to try different things. Covers are my guinea pigs. And hey, you might learn something with your playing by trying to nail a guitar lick or drum beat or whatever.

How your musical heroes inspire you is a different story. That's a personal thing. Just make your own music and your influences will take over on their own. Steal a riff, cop a sound, who cares? Just do whatever you want.
 
I don't write songs, but I did record a lot of covers as a learning curve.

I figured if a guy comes here to record, I'm on the spot because I don't know his music,
so I just picked a cover every week or so and went for it.

I'd intentionally pick something a little out of my comfort zone, and it wouldn't matter if I finished it or not. I'd learn something from it.

I still do it once in a while, but it's mostly for pleasure and just to keep and hand in.


I think you learn a lot about arrangement and structure that you don't necessarily pick up on just by listening.
For example, I recorded cheer down by George Harrison, but I tried to do it lick for lick; I really paid attention to his structure.

If I had just learned the words and the tune and recorded it my way, I almost certainly would have had piano throughout.
George just had piano licks here and there.

I bet my version would have been too busy. Lesson learned. :)
 
I kind of take the opposite approach and just record imperfect versions of my songs, and over time as my skills improve I update the parts with better performances, etc.

It's kind of a mixed result, sure I made a shitty recording but on the other hand I made a recording.
Then, listening to it 100 times in my car, I can hear what works, what needs improvement, and what to do next.
 
I think recording covers is an excellent way to learn your gear - in particular if you choose genres that represent a broad range (let's say heavy metal vs. country) - since each genre requires different drum sounds, different use of effects, etc.

My recording is primarily to capture my original material to shop around to publishers - however, I occasionally have a period where the muse has left the building ..... so I will record a cover tune - just to keep the creative juices flowing Sometimes the muse returns in the middle of recording the cover - so I abandon the cover ........ but it's there to finish the next time the muse leaves for a day or two.
 
Xdrummer said:
I think recording covers is an excellent way to learn your gear - in particular if you choose genres that represent a broad range (let's say heavy metal vs. country) - since each genre requires different drum sounds, different use of effects, etc.

My recording is primarily to capture my original material to shop around to publishers - however, I occasionally have a period where the muse has left the building ..... so I will record a cover tune - just to keep the creative juices flowing Sometimes the muse returns in the middle of recording the cover - so I abandon the cover ........ but it's there to finish the next time the muse leaves for a day or two.
Click to expand...

Yup. Definitely. I frequently record covers to fill in the spaces between originals.
 
Ode to a stubborn, lost cause.

Greg_L said:
I didn't wanna waste original material on learning the digital recording process. Meanwhile I was writing songs and getting them ready to be recorded once I felt I was good enough to do it decently.
Click to expand...

fat_fleet said:
I kind of take the opposite approach and just record imperfect versions of my songs, and over time as my skills improve I update the parts with better performances, etc.
Click to expand...
The first quote houses a very interesting approach, but I was and still am the opposite. I learned a few covers when I was learning to play an instrument, but even then I was just itching to do my own stuff so I'd learn little bits here and there and incorporate them into jams and nick a bit here and there, change them up and recycle them as my own. Barawo Onyeoshi ! {Hausa and Igbo for 'thief'}.
I spent 21 years playing in various church outfits and conferences and meets and I learned and played so many songs in that time. I remember during 2009, a friend wanted to do an album of covers and wanted me to play on it but I wasn't very enthusiastic. I don't have that long left on this earth and if I'm going to record stuff, it'll be my own stuff or friends' originals ! I have CSO {covers saturation overload}.
I remember a conversation I had in 1981 with the first bass player I ever met, before I'd ever picked up a bass guitar. We were talking about making our own music {he played in a reggae group and their set was all covers. However, they'd come up with one song that I thought was wicked. I was well impressed} and I began a sentence with something like "I find that I love music so much" but I didn't finish it because he interrupted me with "that it's no longer enough to just listen....." That wasn't actually what I was going to say {I was going to say "I'd like to have a go myself"} but it kind of fitted with where I was headed. By 1984 one of my mates that I used to go jazz gigs and festivals with used to try and embarrass me when we'd meet other musicians by introducing me as "He refuses to play other peoples'songs !" because most of that crowd worshipped at the altar of the compositions of the jazz greats. I didn't ! I used to play in a three piece that could've been really good but the guitarist, Neil, was addicted not to drugs but to Charlie Parker and all he wanted to do was guitar versions of Charlie. Needless to say, our Zeppelin crashed and burned. My interest died after our first rehearsal. I thought 'I ain't sitting around getting older playing these stupid Charlie support basslines !!'.

But to Telegraaaaiiiimmm Sayyuuuum, I think you should follow your heart and record covers. Like has been pointed out, you'll learn so much about song structure and how things are recorded. Unlike Greg, I sacrificed a number of my songs in pursuit of learning to record and sadly {or as Nick Mason put it "Regrettably, these tapes still exist !"} some of those songs are never going to rise again. But I'm a gambler and it was worth it.
Funny thing is I'm not at all against people doing covers. I'm all for anything that gets people recording if they've fallen behind a bit in terms of their regularity and besides, people here have come up with some damned good ones.
 
I was really impressed with some of the responses, and just hadn't replied yet.
Greg it won't let me rep you any more.
But what you said rang a bell, drums are one of my tough spots,
and my question was in part about learning to do drum patterns this way.

It looks like I am going to be doing both.
I've got this original song stuck in my head and I have to work on it now while I can.
But there is a cover or two that I need to do as well.

Third tack is that I think I can take concepts from songs that I like and try to incorporate them.

The hardest part is that I realize now that the things that are impressing me in the cover songs
concern techniques that are beyond me at the moment. Mainly complicated and tricky use of
delays and echo, that give the tunes a catchy quality. Also, synth patches that I have no idea
what they are.

Hmmm.

I think the best thing might just be to spend time doing it and see where it leads...
 
Chili said:
If you're just starting out, doing a cover is a great way to learn the different aspects of home recording.

What works for you and what doesn't.
How to get particular sounds from different intruments/vocals.
How to get a mix to translate to different listening environments. home stereo, car, iphone, etc.
Time of day to record
Your room
Your monitors


There's a lot of things you can pick up just from doing a cover. Not having to worry about the creative side of writing. Just learn the technical side so later on, you don't have to think about it and you can concentrate on songwriting and recording what you hear in your head.
Click to expand...
^^^^^^ this ^^^^^^


And I absolutely loath the prejudice against covers. Some of the very best jazz players almost totally do already written songs and stretch them out into their own visions of it.
EVERYthing's a cover after the first time it's recorded.

I did a bunch back in the day because it was fun and it's a great way to have a specific sonic result in mind and learn how to achieve that.
 
I don't think it matters what you choose to record....covers, originals, yourself or the garage band down the block...it's all good in the end. With every new song you record, you add to your knowledge/experience.

Though I can say that honestly, I've never recorded a cover in all the years I've been recording, but I have recorded a few bands who did covers for their club demos.
It just never occurred to me to record covers on my own, since for me the whole point and reason why I got into recording was because of songwriting....so the recording was a natural extension//progression, and the minute I started recording my stuff I was immediately behind. IOW....I had more songs written than recorded, and I was and still am always too far ahead with the songwriting, so I'm forever trying to catch up with the recording of those songs. I think that's another reason why I never did covers. I have at this time about a dozen or more unfinished songs in various stages of production, and at least another half-dozen that I'm writing or hashing out.

That said...I've thought about a couple of covers recently that I would like to do, but it would more about doing them "officially" and actually putting them on a CD along with my originals rather than just recording them for the heck of it...but then I would have to get into all the licensing stuff....so in the end I might just not do it, and stick to the originals all the way.

I think also at the time when I got into songwriting and recording, I was just getting out of a couple of recent cover bands, and the last band was a hybrid, where we were doing some originals too, and that was really my main goal at the time...so when the bands fell apart, I just dove into writing/recording my own stuff and never looked up after that. :)
 
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