Kindling for the Master: the Malkmus Cover

Ok this is several months old but I have nothing new so I am going back a bit. One of my all time favorite songwriters is Stephen Malkmus. For those unlucky enough not to know, SM was the leader and primary songwriter for the greatest indie band ever. they were called pavement and they were the bomb.

I am something of a regular on the Malkmus message board (the only one i post to really) and there is a nice little community of bookish, very funny, and interesting posters. Many of us are musicians (or like to think of ourselves as that). Many of us went in to cover pavement or malkmus songs. There have been two collections so far. This song comes fromt he second. maybe I will post the first at a later date.

Download the song here

(if you are not familiar with the original, grab it HERE)

So, “Kindling for the Master”…

This song is from the album “Face the Truth”. An album that has divided malkmus fans. It is an album that was recorded in his basement and is mostly “just him” without his excellent backing band, The Jicks. The album was a hodgepodge of all different styles. From sucessfull (and failed) expirements to standard “jicks” tunes. Some hate it, some love it. I think about 60% is ace and the rest is good for the rubbish bin.

This song is, in fact, in my opinion, one in the later category. After the first round, where i covered a song I really wanted to, I had no desire to cover any other song. Someone (I think it was you, swede), suggested choosing the song I liked the least, and cover that one.

Stephen Malkmus’s Version

This falls into the failed experiment category. Its something of a techno weird-out. it’s all fake drums, keyboards, quirky guitar parts, sampled vocals (or at least processed vocals) and it all really doesn’t go anywhere. It’s not even a good failure. Its just bland.

Malkmus vs. Britney

There is a whole side story that i will not go into. (see the Spears 50 Post game link on kebabdylan.com) but… when I started working on this version, i was working on covering “piece of me” by mrs. spears. I quit working on it, to do this song. so i decided to imploy the same methodology to Malkmus as I was using with Britney.

My Version of Kindling

In short, here was my challenge. keep the lyrics and melody, but rewrite – entirely -  the music. It was what I was doing with the britney song, so I decided to do it with this one.

The song starts of with an intro. This is a pretty obvious example of what I was trying to do. The intro in the original song is pretty much just static G chord with a simple 4 note melody (b-c-d-g).

I kept the melody but the chords are changed to:

G | D#m | Em | D#m | Bm | C#+5dim  | E/C+5dim

There is the guitar part along with several midi tracks orchestrating it. The original is primariy midi, so I wanted to make sure I had a lot as well. and i do.

Next it kicks into the chorus which melodically is just a two note melody, which gave me a lot of freedom to do pretty much what I wanted to do with it. In Malkmus’s version, it is a one chord chorus. In my version it is a very active, somewhat non-traditional, progression (with the two note melody on top). The progression uses several diminished notes and turns out to be:

A | G | B | Bb | E | Eb | D

The main verses also deviate from the original. I honestly do not know what they original is. Once I got the melodies down, I stopped listening to the song. Main verses turned out to be:

Em | Em7 | Ab G  | Eb

The one part that returns to the original is the last part where the basic chords are  E G A. It is out of order, due to my not listening to the song much. oops.

I did throw in a nod to talking heads with the synth part. Filling in the space I took the basic melody and bent the notes with the little bender thing on my keyboard. Making many of the notes go slightly out of tune. I got a sound that resembled Houses in Motion -  the bumble bee sound, as my dad once called it.

The last part is just guitar parts building up to the conclusion, which turns out not that different from the original.

Download the song here

Wham Take 2

I have r-etracked all the distorted guitars and the vocals to what I think is a much better version. I no longer cringe (too much) at it. A missed note here and there. Still not super happy with the fuzzed out vocals. But it’s sounding a lot better. And I am pretty much done with it.

Download Everything She Wants

For the distorted guitars instead of banging out the chords on the verses like previously, I decided to try something different. There are 4 (count them, 1-2-3-4!) distorted guitars. I seem to rather layer simple parts over each other than work to come up with one or two more involved parts. It’s either a recording technic or I am lazy. There is one gutiar just playing the bass notes of the chorus. Two guitars (panned 100% in each speaker) playing alternative ocatives – the ones that break into the chorus to start. The 4 guitar is playing a higher scale of notes that is closely linked to the harmony vocals (george’s singing part). I put a nasty chorus and LFO effect on it as well.

Breaking into the after chorus riffage, the bass guitar part plays the origingal bass line, the two panned guitars play the riff (with some shredding between) and the higher guitar plays the riff an octive higher with a different line between.

The vocals are pretty much the same, just sung better.

Download Everything She Wants

Everything She Wants (Wham!)

So this makes it almost 3 weeks in a row (and I even have one more completed track in the bucket)

So this weekend I recorded Wham’s “Everthing she wants”. It has been on my “short list” of songs to cover for years and years. So I decided to just do it with mixed results.

Download Everything She Wants

Before going into the arranging/recording of this song and what I think works and doesn’t work. A little about covering songs.

Why this song?

This, you could file under “semi-ironic cover song”. I say semi because I don’t think I have ever covered a song that I loathe simply to make fun of it. In fact, I never really try to make fun of a song. Have fun with it? yes. But I usually latch on to something I really like about a song and augment whatever is good about it. In the past I have been partial to R&B pop songs (pink’s most girls, britney spears, shakira, tlc’s waterfalls — man, that was over 10 years ago?)

Most of those songs have very nice melodies over what amounts to absolutely no inteligble music. I did a cover of the Car’s “Just what I needed” and by changing the mood of the music, brought to the foreground what sounds to me like some really dark lyrics — but I degress.

So, Wham’s “Everything she wants”. Man, what a bitter bitter angry song. Not that it’s saying much, but this song has always been my favorite wham song. I remember secretly liking it. It falls into the “nice melody on top of nothing” camp. It makes it pretty fun because there is very little there to either work around or ignore. So what I had was a cheesey 80’s song with some nasty lyrics. A canvas to repaint the entire thing. Like most of my covers, I arrange them without listening to the original (or at least as little as possible). Most of these have been in the back of my head for sometime. I had figured this one out musically over a year ago, so I knew the chords. I actually got some of the music wrong on this one! I realized once listening to it again.

What horrible productions!

I did end up getting this song of itunes to listen to it. And its production is just horrible. It’s an ANGRY song, so stop singing everything with such pin point accuracty with a gazillion effects on your vocals. From the very first “yee-he oh!” — its delayed for like a minute back and forth between speakers. And all “oh oh oh yeah yeah yeah”. You are telling your pregnant wife that you don’t love her!!!

And that horrible synth sound? Really, was that necessary? What’s bitter about that?

The Arrangement

My only real jab at this song is the arrangement. I went for the opposite effect of the original. Immediately instead of pin point syncth glibs and glups, you get a very sloppy distorted bass banging out the most simplified element of this song. There is a nifty minor to major chord change and originally I thought the bass should reflect. I decided against that. So pounding bass, slow moving synths, and muted or droning guitars make up the verses.

The other decision I made early on was to not sing ANY of the ohohohyeahyeahyeah’s or corny “won’t you tell me” parts. That was all left to instruments. The vocals would be fuzzed out themselves getting even further away from the preciseness of the original.

What Worked

I have mixed feelings about how this one turned out. I really like the arrangements of the verses. This was the least planned part. I knew the droning guitars would be there. Originally I was not going to use an MIDI. I wanted it to be a “rawk” song. The MIDI when it comes in is by far my favorite part of this song. Juxtaposed with the fuzzed out bass, I think works really well. I also added a MIDI “guitar harmonic” sound underneath the droning guitars in the verse that I really like.

What didn’t work

The vocals don’t sound very good on two fronts. 1. I have a cold and stuggled through it. I had to do some serious cutting a pasting the “two takes” to get a single take without horribley missed notes. I think I salvaged it mostly, but it’s not my best singing. The fuzzed out effects are not what I had in my head either. Not sure how to fix it.

The chorus (what I thought would be the strongest part) is the weakest part. The loud guitars seem to be washed out of any detail. I cut most of the reverb from them — it was work in an earlier mix. Relying on the gutiars to fill in some of the singing parts and then not really hearing them that well make the chorus a little bland.

Download Everything She Wants

I will probably revisit this song in the near future and re track the vocals and work on the chorus more.

Anyway. it’s here. it’s, um… something. get used to it (or don’t listen).

Oh, and THIS…

Casting Out the Shadows

so I was thinking about whipping out one of the semi-ironic cover songs that I have recorded in the past, but this last weekend I ended up recording a very un-ironic cover of a song written by a co-worker. My reason’s for recording these songs and my approach is pretty similar to the silly r&b songs I have covered so here it goes.The song is titled “No more casting out the shadows” and it is written by a dude named Brandon. He’s from Texas, but we won’t hold that against him. You can hear the original
HERE.

Kebab Dylan – No more casting out the shadows (download)

One reason I cover songs like “most girls” by pink and “hips don’t lie” by shakira is that they do one thing really well. the melodies are totally catching and infectious. but there is absolutely nothing else there. No music, as far as I am concerned. So I take songs like that and then fill in the music around the hooks. Add in really ridicouluos lyrics and you have the trifecta of “good music” (hopefully), catchy melodies, and funny lyrics.

The original, if you didn’t listen, is a very sparse elliot smithish acoustic number. One guitar and a double tracked vocal. that’s it. the guitar is just chords strummed.

What I liked about the song is that the melody, while pretty strightforward, was compelling and fit the lyrics well. I have no idea what this song is about but its slightly ominous to me and the minor melody seemed appropriate. The chords are all strummed up-stream that lead me to thing that there could be some interesting uses of rhythm.

One of the main challenges is that the melody for the verse and chorus are almost identical. The chords and the strumming are also similar for all three parts. so my goal was to separate all three parts into very identifiable parts.

So on to the song.

It starts off with my “ticking timebomb” effect which is simply playing two muted notes back and forth. Layer some synths on top and you got a nice atmospheric effect. It based on the main chord progression (C#m – F#m A). I decided early one to leverage the shared notes in the progression to have a drone going on. In the this section, i keep it based on the c# note and then augment the G# to A. It sounds like i am just augmenting a chord but the notes are actually just the appropriate notes for the current chord. This is used in the pre-chorus “ohs” section as well. the keys are slowing working their way through the progression

For the verses, I decided to emphasis the melody and not the chords, so the predominant part is the vocal line. I first tracked the base chords (muted power chords) so I would not loose focus of the actual progression. I added one small change to the progression ending on E the first time through instead of A. I then added a different rythmic guitar part that becomes more obvious later.

Where the verses emphasize the meoldy, I decided th emphasis the banging out of chords for the choruses. That way the emphasis would separate the parts unlike the original. I also go from a distorted vocal effect to clean vocals for the chorus.

There is a counter melody at the end of the song, and I went ahead and added that melody via keyboards from the get go. I kick it up an octive once the chorus fully comes in to make it more prominent. The chorus is more smooth (less jerky like the verses) so I added on guitar part in the mix that is still baning out in a jerky fashion.

after the chorus I added the one major addition, which is a riff. I just started playing it while i was becoming familiar with the song and liked it so I incorporated it. My favorite moment in the song, for sure, is the transisiton from the riff to a highly syncopated passage that just stays on the C#m chord for 4 measures, and then the transition to a very smooth playing of the verse and melody emphasized by keyboards playing the vocal line. there is a beep-beep keyboard that initiall reminds the listener that this is the jerky part. I also added portions of one guitar part that later becomes a constant.

The last chorus includes the the counter melody forshadows as well as a climax of a semi-screaming octive higher deliver of the chorus. Unfortunately i did not count right and it cuts out half way through.

Then the riff kicks in with an increased “noise level”. As soon as that ends i decided to see what cutting all the keyboard parts (6 i think?) sounded like all by themselves, so i just pasted them after the song ended which I think is a real nice effect.

Kebab Dylan – No more casting out the shadows (download)

so in the end I spent one evening sequencing the drums and laying down the guitars, another evening with the keys and vox, and then an hour or two mixing on sunday and monday. I am pretty pleased with the outcome.

hope you likes…