Would? by Alice in chains cover - second take

L

Laynestaley

Newbie Shmewbie
I made this cover a couple of months ago and posted it in the clinic then. You guys helped me out and basically I just did everything you guys mentioned:
- I tried te eq the pitchy spots out of the chorus
- added distortion to the guitars in the chorus
- rerecorded some vocals with a pop filter
- doubled some vocals

Let me know what you think.

 
The drums sound great, what did you use. I think you did a great job. The guitars in the orginal are some of the best recorded so I can't fault your for not getting them perfect. Everything was dubbed twice for a total of three tracks on every rhthym, and each setup was diffrent.
 
Sounds pretty good there, man. Thumbs up.

I didn't get out a metronome and time it, but the drums are a bit gallopy in that they surge a bit... then fall off... the timing isn't real tight.

Singing wasn't bad; seems like the reverb on the vocals was a bit much, compared to the original. A few lyrics seemed off... the opening line is "Would? Would?" and instead it sounded like "Whooooooooaaa" or something.

Just a few nitpicks. A very very nice cover of a really good AIC song.
 
Hey man, Wicked job on this, if i didn't know this was a cover i would
think it was the original . Good work.
 
Thanks,
I know the vocals are a little wet, I did that deliberately to mask my poor singing.. :D, I'm pushing out of my range a little during the chorus..

As for the drums not being tight, they are programmed (Fruity Loops), so I don't see how that's possible. I did try to make them sound not too tight by making some deliberate mistakes but not too much..
That also might explain why the kick sounds weird, I used two samples there to to try and get a good kick sound...
I put a lot of time and effort into programming them up to the point where I can fool most people into thinking they're real I believe..

Thanks for commenting..
 
Laynestaley said:
As for the drums not being tight, they are programmed (Fruity Loops), so I don't see how that's possible. I did try to make them sound not too tight by making some deliberate mistakes but not too much..
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Computers aren't always the best tools for midi. Midi timing can be screwed up by a whole host of things -- the quartz clock on your soundcard, the hard drive doing a cache flush at the wrong time, DAW loading multiple .wav files into the playback cache, etc.

Again... I didn't sit down and time it. It just sounded gallopy to my ears, that's all. The drum sounds themselves were good.

Maybe what you can do is do a preliminary stereo mix-down of the drums (dry) with all other tracks muted, and put them on their own tracks... that way it's less likely there would be midi timing problems. Then, just mix the drums as audio.
 
participant said:
....
Maybe what you can do is do a preliminary stereo mix-down of the drums (dry) with all other tracks muted, and put them on their own tracks... that way it's less likely there would be midi timing problems. Then, just mix the drums as audio.
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As I said I made the drums in Fruity Loops, not using midi. Then I exported them as wavs and imported them into Cubase, where they were mixed as audio. The wavs were still in sync with the metronome of Cubase. Also when copying and pasting different parts I never found a problem so I'm pretty sure there isn't a timing problem with them.
I think you know the original song well.. The drums there are far more dynamic off course, during the chorus for instance, they are way faster..
My cover has the same bpm all through the song..
Ah... I wish I could play the drums..
 
that's really good... WOULD is my favorite AIC tune...

here's my inital impressions... likely to change as I listen to it over...

Bass needs more bite and low end...

guitars are scooped... needs a bit more mids and aggressiveness... again more bite... I kept wanting more in-your-face guitar

the VOX was enjoyable... one or two places for Autotune...

overall... maybe too much long tailed reverbs...

still... very good...
 
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Nice job. I thought the guitar work was excellent. The vocals were pretty good too. This is as good an AIC cover as I've heard.
 
Hey! I think it's an overall a great cover...It's hard to take a program like fruity loops and emulate Sean Kinney... I think it's just the lack of real velocity layers that make the tom rolls sound synthetic. If you used a drum engine like BFD with some real layers it would sound more realistic. Otherwise it just aint gonna come out when you try for that double china effect he does in the verses. Great job on the guitars though, you did great on the sounds even though you didn't completely have Jerry's layer soaked effect. It's a great undertaking, one that I wouldn't even touch myself, even though I covered "It Aint Like That" in my first band and it sounded great with our 2 unison guitars kickin in that chorus!!! Them were the days!!!

Great job though, RIP Layne...
 
scottboyher said:
I think You did a great job! Out of tune on the vocals some times but overall you did a hell of a job man!
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Out of tune?! Hmmm, I don't hear it. Can you tell me where?

Edit: Oh I see, that's the old version. Here's the new one:

 
Will someone please exlain to me the reasoning behind trying to record a cover song and make it sound as much as possible like the original? This doesn't make a single bit of sense to me at all. You haven't done anything to put your stamp on the song at all, and if someone's got the choice of listening to the original version or your "version," they're always going to pick the original because it's always going to sound better.

Laynestaley: Notwithstanding the above comment, your recording sounded pretty darn good. I think you did a good job imitating the original. (Like I said above, I just don't see the point.)


Silversurfer: I hate to say it, but yours almost gave me a headache. The compression on the guitars was unbearable. In fact, it sounded like the whole mix was breathing and phasing and all kinds of crap. Was it a really poor mp3 conversion or something? Regarding the out of tune vocal spots, the "oohs" in the beginning are a little out of tune, and the first "down in a hole" around 1:42 is pretty out of tune. Other than that, the vocals sounded pretty good, performance-wise. The mix was so squashed; it almost had a mono quality to it.
 
famous beagle said:
Will someone please exlain to me the reasoning behind trying to record a cover song and make it sound as much as possible like the original? This doesn't make a single bit of sense to me at all. You haven't done anything to put your stamp on the song at all, and if someone's got the choice of listening to the original version or your "version," they're always going to pick the original because it's always going to sound better.
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I think recording a cover and trying to recreate it is an EXCELLENT learning experience. I have done it and learned a lot.


famous beagle said:
if someone's got the choice of listening to the original version or your "version," they're always going to pick the original because it's always going to sound better.
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Sure people will choose the original because it sounds better.. They spent a ton of money. No one in their right mind would expect to do "Would" as well as Alice In Chains did. Just learn from the experience. Anyway, back to the business at hand..
 
SilverSurfer said:
Out of tune?! Hmmm, I don't hear it. Can you tell me where?

Edit: Oh I see, that's the old version. Here's the new one:

Click to expand...

My comments were not directed at you. They were directed to the original post on this thread.
 
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