Doing Covers - Figuring out the music

  • Thread starter Thread starter bigbubba
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bigbubba

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Hey guys,

I've been thinking about all the covers going around lately.

This reminds me of all the times I think I'll sit down and figure out how a song is done but then I think it will take too much time or I simply can't figure it out because the music or guitar parts are buried and multilayered sometimes.

So I thought I'd ask here, How do you guys that do covers (and keep the music the same as the original) figure out a song? Do you use headphones to isolate different guitars or just pan the player left to right while writing down your guitar parts or just wing it with a close enough sound or what?

I think trying to do a cover will also help me learn new material. Triplet solos are great here and there but there's way more to playing than a memorized method. This should also help explore new technique. :)

I would like to do the following song, by the way. It's a cool song so I thought I'd share the link.

Little Bit of Lovin'
by Europe
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005NTP2/ref=m_art_li_4/104-7588202-0940759?v=glance&s=music

Thanks. :)
 
I will try and just figure them out from a cd, but also, if parts don't seem so easy, I try and find the tab for it. That's what I had to do for War Pigs. I wanted to play a bassline similar to Geezer, so I needed to know better what he played. Too many grace notes for me to figure out.
 
Personally I crank the song up on the CD player, turn on my guitar just loud enough so that I can hear it, pick a part, and try to play along. I just have fun pretending like I'm a rock star and keep playing along as it loops. I can always tell if I'm playing the wrong chords and just keep adjusting on the fly. The more and more I play along the more I figure things out. Some songs take forever and I need reference like guitar tabs and some songs take a few tries.

When I get stuck on one part I cut up the song on the computer and keep that small part looping till I get it.

For leads on covers I usually never sit around and learn note for note, I usually improvise my own thing.

I might post a cover later this week. Axman inspired me to do a punk cover just for the fun of it :D

P.S. - you have a totally out of control PM.
 
It's always came pretty intuitively to me. I can hear a song and most of the time I can just "hear" what's going on (what chords and what position is being played).
 
Track Rat said:
It's always came pretty intuitively to me. I can hear a song and most of the time I can just "hear" what's going on (what chords and what position is being played).
Click to expand...

I can relate to that.

Even though I'm a drummer first, I think I have a knack of being able to tell more or less what a guitar player's doing. I find many rock chord progressions are easy to visualize in your head once you have some knowledge of theory. For example, if you hear a song with a 1,4,5 progression (a la Johny B. Goode), once you figure out the first chord, you KNOW where the rest is going. The better you get at theory, the more songs that you can predict the pattern of. I find that if I have trouble finding the chords, listen to the bass, which is usually playing the route of the chord. From there it's just a matter of figuring out if it's a major, minor, 7th, etc...I've played in cover bands for years and watched the guitar players in my bands figure out tunes, which helped me alot. And I don't care what people say about learning covers, it's a great way to develop your own song-writing skills.
 
we usually sit down as a band and listen to the track a couple of times - then play along with it. We do primarily all cover tunes and we are working on a couple of originals. I had some help mixing the two demos I put up on our website. But they are pretty close to the originals.
 
My main issue is that I can figure out the chord progression without much issue. If I can hear the bass, I can mostly get the chords from there. Like RAMI said, it is just a major, minor, 7th, sus, and so on.

However, other than the underlying chord progression a lot of times rock 'n roll bands and other heavy bands are playing guitar lines. Example, two notes on the first two counts of the beat but silence on the remaing two counts. But when it gets complicated what they play, and there's two of them and they play the same thing but one varies a little to create a certain sound, it becomes harder to figure out how to do that.

Also I guess I'm not real familiar with certain patterns so when I hear a certain sound I don't know how to go about playing that. :)

I do google for chords and tabs, but I'm trying to bring that to a minimum now. I've been trying to figure out the chord progression myself and it's really helping me learn and play better. :)
 
Well, I'm probalby less qualified to give you a good answer because I rely a lot on having perfect pitch, which not many people have (and is a mixed blessing at best!!!). Hearing the chord changes is usually routine for me. And as I'm an arranger too; my ear is always in that mode; so transcription is not ususally a problem. But, using good listening techniques, as a player you can isloate commonly repeating patterns and modes and kind of back into things if you can't quite hear them outright.
 
having near-perfect pitch is where it's at. you get most of the advantages of perfect pitch (easily transposing keys, figuring out songs) but none of the infuriating madness.
 
shiatzu said:
having near-perfect pitch is where it's at. you get most of the advantages of perfect pitch (easily transposing keys, figuring out songs) but none of the infuriating madness.
Click to expand...

It's so bad that if you say to me "hey, do you know this tune?" and you hum it in a different key than I learned it, I won't recognize it. I'm also a mild synesthete; keys have visual colors for me....
 
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