Ziggy Stardust cover by Greggy Buttcrust

G

Greg_L

Banned
I'm a fan of David Bowie's Ziggy/Spiders era stuff. I like it. Mick Ronson was a cool as shit guitar player. So I tried to do a pretty respectful and faithful cover of the damn song....except I suck and they don't. So there. :cursing:

Ziggy Stardust

Let me know what you think about the mix. :)

Thanks,
Greg
 
Didn't you say that you hate acoustic guitars a week ago? :P

Liked the mix. I wish I could get my low end to sound this convincing.
 
Hey greg, that's killer man. The guitars sound absolutely fantastic. The drums sound fantastic too. The bass drum and then bass guitar are locked perfectly. No nits here at all. I have a really hard time with the bass guitar. It's either too loud in my mix or the mix lacks bottom...I know it's probably a matter of EQ or having it set right when cutting the track. Just wanted to say that you nail it (bass guitar and bass drum) every time.
You da man!
:)
 
You do have recording down to a science. You could tell the vocal style was a stretch for you, but you worked rather nicely.

Really nice job. Only nit I could make is, it is probably cleaner than the original.
 
LOVE the LP on the side..
Good, good, good solid bottom end indeed.
There's a fair bit of sib on your vocal.
Other than that I'd say this is a fitting tribute to Mick Ronson.
 
jimistone said:
Hey greg, that's killer man. The guitars sound absolutely fantastic. The drums sound fantastic too. The bass drum and then bass guitar are locked perfectly. No nits here at all. I have a really hard time with the bass guitar. It's either too loud in my mix or the mix lacks bottom...I know it's probably a matter of EQ or having it set right when cutting the track. Just wanted to say that you nail it (bass guitar and bass drum) every time.
You da man!
:)
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Cool man, thanks a lot. :)

In my opinion people tend to over-emphasize the "bass" in bass guitar tracks. It's a bass. It's automatically bassy unless you did something very wrong. If you have a good bass sound and record it smartly, I don't think you'd have to do much to it. It blows my mind to read some of the stuff people do to their bass tracks. But whatever, it's not like my bass tracks are setting the world on fire or anything. It's just bass.

DM60 said:
You do have recording down to a science. You could tell the vocal style was a stretch for you, but you worked rather nicely.

Really nice job. Only nit I could make is, it is probably cleaner than the original.
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Thanks, yeah, the vocals aren't great. I know it. I just do what I can.

rayc said:
LOVE the LP on the side..
Good, good, good solid bottom end indeed.
There's a fair bit of sib on your vocal.
Other than that I'd say this is a fitting tribute to Mick Ronson.
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Thanks Ray. Sibilance huh? I'm not really getting that, but I haven't really gotten away from it yet either. I did leave the doubled chorus parts pretty raw and dry because that's how they sound to me in the original.

The guitar on the left is my attempt at a Mick Ronson type sound. Les Paul into a half-cocked Crybaby into a Marshall Super Lead. That's about as good as I can do. The half-cocked wah was the hardest part. That amp is sooooo loud. I had to, by hand, move the wah with micro-movement so the sound wasn't too dark or too ear splittingly bright. It took a little while to find that just right spot....with "just right" being close enough. Then it took a lot of guitar vol rolling to get all the soft-to-loud sounds in one track.
 
Anything by Bowie gets a tick from me.

Tackling a Bowie song is always going to be a challenge given his huge vocal range and the amount of control he can exercise over his voice.

This is an energetic, highly creditable version.
 
Always was a big Bowie fan...and the "Ziggy Stardust" album has always been one of my favorite Bowie albums.
And of course...Mick Ronson just plain rocks.

Really good job on the cover...solid guitars, drums, the works.
If you toss a little reverb on the vocal...you'll get the complete Bowie vibe. ;)

Did you track with platform shoes and some glitter? :p

Which of your Marshall amps & guitar setup did you employ for the tones?
 
You got balls.

I like your doing of the tune a lot.

Miro's talking about verb on vox. The only thing that occurred to me after two listens was the possibility of some slapback on the vocal, just to see. Lennon slapback. It'd work, but I dunno how well. Don't hold it against me - I can't just applaud - but yeah, I applaud this one.
 
I don't begrudge you your question and I look forward to the answer myself, but indulge me in letting me opine that his guitar chain is a mere interesting detail in the context of the fact that his participation in one band as a drummer and another as a guitarist has placed him in the unusual position of being able to nail four fifths of the rock songs on this planet. Only one thing wrong with that. Life's so short.
 
Did you embellish the drumming from the original, or is that the way they were played for the studio version? I never really noticed the drumming in the original, and several parts in your version stand out (like the "so where were the spiders" part until the end of the verse). I don't know if it's because of 1970s vs 2014 sound quality or if you just came up with a better drum track for the song.
 
Fantastic, Greg! Everything sounds right in place. You really need to reconsider your position on the acoustic, man. It's my go-to. It's so pretty. Hey, would you mind if I tried the vocals on this? I've always wanted to try my hand at this song but have been to lazy to record the music. :D
 
gecko zzed said:
Anything by Bowie gets a tick from me.

Tackling a Bowie song is always going to be a challenge given his huge vocal range and the amount of control he can exercise over his voice.

This is an energetic, highly creditable version.
Click to expand...
Thanks for checking it out gecko. :)

miroslav said:
Always was a big Bowie fan...and the "Ziggy Stardust" album has always been one of my favorite Bowie albums.
And of course...Mick Ronson just plain rocks.

Really good job on the cover...solid guitars, drums, the works.
If you toss a little reverb on the vocal...you'll get the complete Bowie vibe. ;)

Did you track with platform shoes and some glitter? :p

Which of your Marshall amps & guitar setup did you employ for the tones?
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Lol. I don't do platform shoes or glitter but I did shave my eyebrows just for this. I'll detail the guitar stuff in a bit. Thanks.

dobro said:
You got balls.

I like your doing of the tune a lot.

Miro's talking about verb on vox. The only thing that occurred to me after two listens was the possibility of some slapback on the vocal, just to see. Lennon slapback. It'd work, but I dunno how well. Don't hold it against me - I can't just applaud - but yeah, I applaud this one.
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Thanks dobro. I don't know about "Lennon" slapback. I have no idea what that is. I don't know if you're aware of this, but Beatles references are lost on me. Now had you said "Lenin", then you'd be speaking my language.

Unless it's a rockabilly song, any kind of really audible reverb or delay on vocals makes me cringe. I assure you there is reverb on my vocal, but it's just a hint.

ido1957 said:
Mix sounds great Greg I wouldn't mind some details on your guitar/pedal?/amp set up.
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Thanks Ido.

I touched on it in my earlier post to Ray, but here's more details.

First, the stupid acoustic. I did nothing to try to get a good acoustic sound. I put a condenser in front of me, almost touching my forehead, and pointed it down at the guitar while I strummed that stupid thing. Then I compressed it pretty good and let it be.

Electric guitars used:
Left - Gibson Les Paul Traditional - Burstbucker 3 bridge pickup
Right - Gibson SG Special 70s Tribute - bridge minihumbucker

Amp:
Marshall Plexi 1959 SLP

Cabs:
Marshall 1960A and 1960B. Both hooked up, but I only mic'd one of them. I do everything now with two cabs blasting, but I only mic one of them most of the time. My cabs have a mix of speakers in X-patterns though so....

Speaker used:
Celestion G12M Greenback in the "A" cab. These are my "go to" speakers. Greenbacks are the shit. I'm gonna blow em up one day, but until then, they see more mics than any other speaker for me. I think people WAY underestimate the speaker's role in guitar sound. Many guitar players fret over meaningless things like string gauge, tube rolling, and monster cables, meanwhile they have no idea what speakers are in their cabs. Different speakers have wildly different characteristics.

Mics/position:
SM57 straight on axis, right up on the grill, pointed right at the seam where the speaker's dustcap "nipple" meets the cone.
Audix i5 straight on axis, right up on the grill, approx 3/4 to edge.

This is where the "magic" happen in my opinion. Through much trial and error and learning my own gear I've come up with an understanding of how I want to mic my speakers. By doing this "bright and dark" dual mic placement, I can mix and blend the two to get the results I want. With it being the same sound coming from the same speaker, I don't get any weirdness. I get a full and accurate representation of what is actually blasting out from my cabs. What I hear is what gets recorded, and to me, that is the ultimate recording win. The real beauty to this setup IMO is that I very rarely EQ my guitar tracks. These tracks in this song are literally and truthfully exactly as the came out of the speaker. No EQ, no compression, no side chaining, automating, no nothing. I do strongly believe though that before trying stuff like this one has to be able to get a good sound with just one mic first. If you can't get a good sound with one mic, how are you gonna get a good sound with two?

And lastly, for the left rhythm "Mick Ronson" track, I ran the Les Paul through a half-cocked-and-locked Dunlop Crybaby 535Q wah pedal before the amp. That was his sound and style back in the day, so I tried to approximate it the best I could. The whole track is done through the wah and I used a lot of vol rolling on the guitar, which isn't something I normally do, so I'm actually a little happy I pulled it off. I didn't want to do a cleaner track, and a louder track, etc. I like doing things all on one track honestly and purely like a live performance, so I had to sharpen my vol rolling skills to get it done.

Ugh, I guess that's about it. Good equipment that makes good sounds is pretty easy to record.
 
NotThatBright said:
Did you embellish the drumming from the original, or is that the way they were played for the studio version? I never really noticed the drumming in the original, and several parts in your version stand out (like the "so where were the spiders" part until the end of the verse). I don't know if it's because of 1970s vs 2014 sound quality or if you just came up with a better drum track for the song.
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I did most of this off memory, but I don't think I embellished anything. I certainly didn't try to anyway. I think I did the drums mostly pretty accurate, give or take a few beats here and there. My drums are more forward in the mix than the original. Maybe that's the big difference.

Bubba po said:
I'd like to know how you get your stuff so LOUD, Greg! Ha ha! :D
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I record loud!
I have this silly method of "mastering" that works for me. I stack a bunch of limiters and have each one tickle the mix a little at a time in succession until I get the loudness I want. For me it works better than one limiter smashing the shit out of everything.

propman said:
Fantastic, Greg! Everything sounds right in place. You really need to reconsider your position on the acoustic, man. It's my go-to. It's so pretty. Hey, would you mind if I tried the vocals on this? I've always wanted to try my hand at this song but have been to lazy to record the music. :D
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Thanks man. Um, acoustic guitar might be your go-to, but it's my run-away-from. I'll never change my mind on that. I don't do "pretty" and acoustic guitars do not rock. They're campfire guitars. You play one sitting around a campfire then throw it on the fire to keep the fire going. That's all they're good for.

Sure you can sing it if you want. Record it yourself, nancy. You trying to show me up or something? Go fuck yourself, pretty boy.

Just kidding. Lol. You want a vocal-less mix or something? Just tell me how you want it.
 
Greg_L said:
Thanks man. Um, acoustic guitar might be your go-to, but it's my run-away-from. I'll never change my mind on that. I don't do "pretty" and acoustic guitars do not rock. They're campfire guitars. You play one sitting around a campfire then throw it on the fire to keep the fire going. That's all they're good for.

Sure you can sing it if you want. Record it yourself, nancy. You trying to show me up or something? Go fuck yourself, pretty boy.

Just kidding. Lol. You want a vocal-less mix or something? Just tell me how you want it.
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First off ... you've heard Pete Townshend play the acoustic, right? I'd hardly call that "not rocking."

Yeah, a vocal-less mix would be just fine. And, no, Greg, I'd never try to show you up. I'd be too afraid of my acoustic having a little "accident." :D
If only you'd told me to go fuck myself sooner, I may have taken your advice but I'm pretty spent right now. Maybe in a few minutes. I can't make any promises. I'm glad you think I'm pretty, though. That makes me feel real' nice. Thanks!
 
Sounds awesome, man. I was actually thinking of covering this a few weeks ago, and then got side-tracked with I don't remember what.

Yeah, you did the drums pretty much just like the record.

This is the most melodic I've ever heard you sing and I was quite impressed. You always start and end up on the right note. There are a few transition notes that are slightly off, but this is still a great vocal performance for you. Everything else is bang-on
 
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