Playing really modern pop hits - how?

pklima · #1 05-16-2011, 07:21 AM

A lot of recent hits are difficult or impossible for a cover band to reproduce live with all the loops, effects, autotuned vocals etc. in the original recordings. What do you think is the best way to approach those? Try to get as close as you can, get the key elements close enough that the song is easily recognizable and rearrange the rest, or do everything your own way? I guess the most popular options around here would be "play something old instead" or "play something new that sounds retro, like CeeLo Green", but never mind those.

My main band is acoustic so we have to rearrange things anyway, but we do make an effort to keep the structure, tempo, vocals and vocal harmonies at least close to the original. For the instrumentation we basically just keep the chord structure and make up our own arrangements to fit that, though I'll admit that most of the time it's just the lazy thing to do.

jaywa · #2 05-16-2011, 08:33 AM

The way my band handles Pink, Lady GaGa, Black Eyed Peas etc. is like this:

1) Lyrics, melody line and vocal harmonizations reproduced as close to the recording as possible.

2) Next most important thing is the drum pattern but we take liberties depending on how much of the looping our drummer can cop and still keep the groove.

3) Bass line comes next in importance... we keep the progression but if it sounds lame me trying to cop a synth bass line or sequence then I'll take liberties... usually towards the "fewer notes" side of the equation (i.e., quarters on the root and maybe some octave skips here and there)

4) Everything else in the tune we just try to cover as best as we can.

Disclosure: our 6-member lineup is drums, bass, a chick singer/keyboardist, a guy singer/keyboardist (BL), an all-purpose guitarist (acoustic/electric/slide) and a utility guy that plays guitar, fiddle or sax as the song requires and sings backing vox. So we have some flexibility with instrumentation. We do not use backing tracks, loops or any other trickery... everything is 100% live for good and bad.

With this newer pop/techno-sh*t we have found the crowd responds much more to the song itself than to how faithfully we reproduce it... so we can get away with a lot.

MNAirHead · #3 05-16-2011, 08:42 AM

First thing is to have a front person who believes they can do it...

Turn the vocals up.. everything else down.. then flavor it up with drum levels.

I find this to be easiest with Vdrum type drums as they can recreate many of the current sounds

jaywa · #4 05-16-2011, 08:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MNAirHead

First thing is to have a front person who believes they can do it...

Excellent point. This genre is so tied-in to the identity of the recording "artist" du jour that the musical content of the song is really secondary. And in many cases mind-numbingly simple and repetitive. Let your front person sell the tune and the rest of the band go along for the ride. And make sure you all look like you're enjoying the hell out of it even if you're not.

pasta4lnch · #5 05-16-2011, 09:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jaywa

take liberties

This is really the way. Most of what people will care about is the main vocal line. As long as the rest of what's going on sounds good, it'll work.

I play mostly in a trio (acoustic gtr/vox, bass, drums) and we do everything from Usher to STP to Motown etc . . . it all works out fine.

MNAirHead · #6 05-16-2011, 09:21 AM

I've seen a guitar bass drums trio do a great job pulling off poker face.. I've seen a solo acoustic guy screw up Jason Mraz

pasta4lnch · #7 05-16-2011, 09:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MNAirHead

I've seen a solo acoustic guy screw up Jason Mraz

funny you mention that - we do "I'm Yours" and for some reason the singer/guitar player can't play the guitar part when I'm doing the songs recorded bass line (even though the kick is doing the same rhythm. So he makes me play this ridiculous part - I feel like such a fool every time we play it . . . like PLEASE let there not be a bass player in the audience!

cableguy · #8 05-16-2011, 09:35 AM

Or you can do what a lot of those artist do, play air guitar to backing tracks.........................

Seriously it all starts with vocals as close as possible. If it's a dance club AKA meat market as long as the drums and bass are up and carrying the beat 99% of the crowd doesn't care. They just want to get drunk and dance.

plankspanker13 · #9 05-16-2011, 10:01 AM

As one who has been in a G/B/D trio that has pulled off Poker Face, I can tell you that it helps to cheat here and there, just a bit. I have a looper, and a keyboard, and only take the former on gigs. What I did was create the basic sawtooth sound of the opening line, which is the essential line of the song. I come in, high up the neck, playing the third harmony to the basic line. This sounds very close to the original. With singerbabe doing the vocal selling, these are the critical moments that get the dance floor populated, or moving. When we arrive at the first chorus, off goes the looper, and my bass playing switches to octave jumps on the root for the chorus, and does the basic line, thereafter. By this time, we have "sold" the song, and everyone's into it.

I developed a similar process for Britney's "Womanizer," as well, and have conceptualized how to approach NIN's "Closer," as well. Alas, with live band karaoke being off the menu, some of my better arrangements and performance concepts relating to it have yet to see the light of day. Work is mostly casinos, these days, and they don't want material with blue language in it (thus, no "Closer").

Perhaps my best idea ever was covering the George of the Jungle theme, as a trio, for karaoke gigs. Singerbabe would go out into the audience, letting a random member supply the atonal "ahhhhhhhhhh," George's Tarzan-like yell, in the proper spots. For the last one of these yells, I vocally mimic the horn lick, (and the syllables match "lemme hear ya now") -and the whole establishment gets to mimic the George cry for 2 bars. Great crowd-pumper to start the 2nd, 3rd or 4th set of the night. Instead of doing the original ending (the Jay Ward cartoon, not the Disney films), we get to the last "watch out for that-" and I stomp on the looper, which provides a nice 12-second crashing/wrecking sound effect that serves to end the song to wild applause, and we very quicly launch into something else. Of course, the crashing/wrecking sound effect is my own creation; an amalgam of the ending to the original Detroit Rock City, and the end of the Who's famous Smothers Bros. performance, so the audience is being prompted to applaud, perhaps a tad.

Performing in a small cover band requires a lot more musical skill than just mastery of the instrument. You need to be imiginative arrangers, too. Attitude in performance can make a huge difference in how you are percieved. For the most part, the audience will respect your efforts. There will always be some yahoo or drunk chick complaining that it might not sound like the original, but the simple remedy to that is to invite them up to try their hand at it. 99.99% of people immediately cave at that.

slaps76 · #10 05-16-2011, 10:06 AM

Not relevant to your situation, but I think having a keyboardist in my band really helps make those songs easier to cover. Fills the sound out a lot. We do Club can't handle me, I like it, DJ got us falling in love again(which still sounds kinda empty), Dynamite, ect...they're generally pretty easy.

MikeBC · #11 05-16-2011, 10:27 AM

Probably not what you are looking for but here is an example of a Gaga cover:

YouTube - Little Big Town Cover Lady Gaga's 'Born This Way'

I like the bass much better in this version.

pklima · #12 05-16-2011, 10:42 AM

Yeah, I agree with the consensus that getting the vocals right is #1. My band will probably add a drum kit (right now we have a cajon but the guy who plays it had a kit with no cymbals and just bought a hi-hat) and maybe also keys - we'll see how much those help.

I actually really like a lot of those songs, so I don't feel any need to "improve" them, though doing something in a completely different style (like Little Big Town) once in a while is fun. For example we do Britney Spears' "Toxic" as a tango (which I've posted before so here's a new version uploaded by one of our singers a few weeks ago). But I don't want to overdo that kind of thing.

jaywa · #13 05-16-2011, 10:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikeBC

Probably not what you are looking for but here is an example of a Gaga cover:

YouTube - Little Big Town Cover Lady Gaga's 'Born This Way'

I like the bass much better in this version.

Funny you should post that clip... my band was talking about it just this last weekend and we'll probably be working it up. Generally I'm not real keen on covering another band's cover, but with the identity and instrumentation in my band it would be a good fit.

MikeBC · #14 05-16-2011, 02:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jaywa

Funny you should post that clip... my band was talking about it just this last weekend and we'll probably be working it up. Generally I'm not real keen on covering another band's cover, but with the identity and instrumentation in my band it would be a good fit.

Even funnier because neither Gaga or Little Big Town are quite my thing. I forget how I ran across the LBT but thought good for them. Maybe they and your group will get folks interested in genres besides the current big commercial music on the airwaves these days.

Good luck.

hrodbert696 · #15 05-16-2011, 03:01 PM

The thing about a lot of those tunes is that they feature the vocal very prominently, plus a drumbeat, and there's often a lot of rather indistinct synth chords going on to fill in the sound. If a singer can pull off the vocal and the drummer can lay down a good approximation of the beat, bass and guitar can often fill the chord progression and an audience will recognize and enjoy the song just fine. But then I'm not a guy who thinks a cover needs to sound just like a CD - why go see a live band if not to hear it interpreted live?

jaywa · #16 05-16-2011, 03:11 PM

Yup. A lot of that stuff I just lay down root quarter or eighth notes in sync with the kick (which is often 4 on the floor)... easy peasy... gives me plenty of bandwidth to check out the hotties on the dance floor (or catch up with the sports scores on the big screen or whatever)... and save my energy for other tunes where creative bass playing is more appropriate (and more appreciated).

pklima · #17 05-17-2011, 06:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hrodbert696

The thing about a lot of those tunes is that they feature the vocal very prominently, plus a drumbeat, and there's often a lot of rather indistinct synth chords going on to fill in the sound. If a singer can pull off the vocal and the drummer can lay down a good approximation of the beat, bass and guitar can often fill the chord progression and an audience will recognize and enjoy the song just fine.

Yeah... true, but one thing I'd add here is that it's important to make the big-sounding parts sound big. If the original had a big contrast between the verses and refrain then retain that, for example by playing the verses an octave higher or just laying out on them completely (if the bassline does so in the original recording, then you can focus on more important things like fist-pumping). Then when the refrain comes around... BOOM BOOM!

jaywa · #18 05-17-2011, 07:46 AM

Another thing I've noticed is that on a fair number of those tunes, the bass (or whatever they are using to simulate a bass) lays out for large portions of the song. Usually coming in only to beef up the choruses and maybe the rideout.

My current band plays two songs where that's the case: "Raise Your Glass" by Pink, and "I Like It" by Enrique Iglesias.

Exactly the opposite of what a lot of us grew up on where the bass plays pretty much the entire song and the other parts come in and out.