Project 7: Do it Yourself

Based on suggestions and feedback, we changed course for Project 7. Rather than have another covers round, we’ve opened this project up to be anything you create yourself. I’m so curious to hear what people submit. I’m also curious if people submit songs for this project. It is a totally different animal from reinterpreting an existing song.

I’d love to hear about your thoughts on this project. What do you like about it? What don’t you like about it? What might be challenging? What’s easier? Discuss.

Andrew Charon’s bonus track: Anesthesia (Pulling Teeth)

As for Anesthesia that was a song I selected in my song list so we should probably consider it a bonus track. Because I’m a newbie to Basement Sketches, I really wanted to do two tracks for Project 5. I took a pass at “Hey” by the pixies, “You Make Loving Fun” by Fleetwood Mac and even wanted to do a cover of “Down in Mexico” because in elementary school I used to have that “San Fransisco” shirt that Arlene (from the movie) wore. At the same time, I ended up picking up a Banjolele and wondered if I could have pulled off this Cliff Burton masterpiece on it. I put quite a bit of time working it out but ended up trying it on my classical guitar and was somewhat happy with the results. It really is a sketch. I used Garage band to record guitar and ran it through a Dyna-Trem.

-Andrew Charon

Neil shows his work

Per my earlier post, my time has been quite limited for this project. I knocked out a version of “Hope She’ll Be Happier” really fast. I also started two other songs, but those only got as far as the initial experimentation phases. In the spirit of sharing sketches, I decided to include those really rough concept explorations.

I had grand ambitions of covering “Anesthesia” on accordion, but only spent a very short amount of time trying to wing it more or less by ear. I got about a minute deep into the song and realized this would require far more intense learning than time would allow me.

I also wanted to experiment with how to get different vocal effects out of GarageBand, so I picked the other more repetitive song from the submissions, “Let It Go By,” so I could quickly establish a very simple foundation and then experiment with effects. Clearly, this is just a study and not a finished expression or song. Again, I figured, what the hell, I’ll just share my process for something to share.

-Neil

Kearns provides his take on “I’ll Wait”

Well, I wanted to hang with Eddie. He kicked my ass but I got a whiff of the silent brilliance at the heart of his rock. I seem to like to crawl into problematic characters and like Dave on his psychosexual edge. Thought about Michael McDonald helping write this tune and being pissed about the lack of credit. Armed with the uke but had to take a straight shot at the solo which I've always loved. Came out the other end with the clown meme lurking but fun just the same.

-Jeff Kearns

Noah does “Fly Me to the Moon”

Well this turned out weird. I had a geometry teacher who would play oldies radio while we did math in class. That was where I heard Roy Orbison's "Pretty Woman", "Only The Lonely" and "Unchained Melody". I didn't think much of Roy until I heard a Spanish cover of "Crying" in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. That made me return to his catalog and appreciate it in a new light. I didn't know that he performed a version of "Love Hurts" until late in life, (I grew up on the Nazareth version that I constantly heard in an Aspercreme commercial).

Fly Me to the Moon is such a happy song, I wanted to see if I could put Roy Orbison's sad-yet-soulful stank on it. It ended up being more, (to quote the Beastie Boys), "Intergalactic, planetary, planetary, intergalactic" than I intended, but that was a risk I was willing to take. Also, I almost gave myself a brain aneurysm while recording the horn section. Happy Thanksgiving!

-Noah Warren

Esterby tackles “Like the Weather”

Sorry for the last minute entry – I, too, am in a similar situation to Neil (sans all of the moisture) and had to recently dismantle my music studio to make room for my work setup so I haven't been able to work on much music lately. After reading Neil's heartfelt story, I broke down and hooked everything back up just in the nick of time to do a weird half-cover/half-instrumental thing of Like The Weather.

All software again (Ableton) and my Telecaster - guest vocals by your favorite tall weatherman.

-Jeff Esterby

Randy’s Musings on Nile Song and Coming Around

On the Nile Song, originally by Pink Floyd:

Long, long ago in my late adolescence, my first band covered The Nile Song (along with Karl Q. and Brian E.). Andrew C. put it on his playlist with the hope that I would do something with it. I had to, because I already knew the song (it’s easy), and to honor Andrew’s longstanding friendship. 

Considered to be the heaviest song in the Pink Floyd catalog, I kept it as a big guitar rock song.

I came across a set of walkie-talkies that were a wedding gift from my brother and was delighted to find that they had input and output jacks. Always up for a convoluted recording process -- I sang the vocals over the broadcasting walkie-talkies. Anyone who happened to be listening to FRS channel 9 that night had a nice little private performance treat. 

I used Reaper and Audacity for recording and editing, drums on the Elektron Digitakt, guitar and bass through the Zoom MS-70 CDR and the DSI Evolver, a single synth part from the Korg Poly-61 and the outro thing was made on the Digitakt. 

Regarding my version of Carly Simon’s Coming Around:

I was really unsure if I wanted to do this one or not, but I listened to it so much and internalized and obsessed over it so much that I passed a point of no return with it. So it goes with me. Brenda is a saint for putting up with weeks of me vocalizing random blurts from the song as I process the ear-worms.

I cheated and bought a commercially available midi file of the song ($5). I had sat down to learn it on keys and bass, but I just needed to get things moving. I edited and remapped the midi notes to synth voices of my choosing and changed the tempo. I have always wanted to use the sounds of the “Joust” arcade game into a song, so yeah there’s that too. The vocals went through many versions (such cringe) before I went with familiar territory of doing spoken word into a micro cassette dictaphone -- pitched down and heavily affected. I had a quarter of an idea of what I wanted to do for the end and ran with it. Ripping off my favorite Cars song didn’t hurt things any either.

I use Reaper for most tracking and such then take it over to Auacity for quick and easy manipulation and also to get things off the tempo-locked grid. All synth sounds are SQ-8L soft synth (an excellent freeware emulation of the Ensoniq SQ-80 and ESQ-1 synths). “Joust” samples played back on the Digitakt. Vocals recorded on micro cassette dictaphone. Outro journey is mostly samples coming from the Yamaha SU700. That thing rips. It sounds so alive as it makes sounds sweat, breathe, and throb. I run most things through it at some point in the process for its special qualities. 

-Randy Dever

Why Neil’s been such a slug for this project

First off, for those who don’t know, I’ve been battling house issues related to moisture, mold, and air quality for more than a year now. Each time I’ve thought that I had it figured out, it would quickly become clear that there was more to be resolved. The only thing worse than feeling unsafe in your own home, is being in a pandemic that requires you and your family to spend most if not all of their time in an unsafe home. I’ve had a bunch of work done on my basement this past month as part of this on-going quest to save the house, and this has displaced me from my music making space. Luckily, some friends moved to California for the winter and asked our family to watch their house while they’re gone. This has provided me with a temporary recording location, which I took advantage of today (Saturday, Nov 14), so I could knock out a cover.

So about this song… I had no intention of covering “Hope You’ll Be Happier with Him” for many reasons. For one, the subject matter does not resonate with my life right now. I’m a happily married man with a great family. Nobody (fortunately for me) is leaving for another man. There’s no heartbreak. Things are hunky dory.

Another reason I planned to avoid covering this song was because of the vocals. I love Bill Withers’ amazingly emotive vocal style. He brings a passion and power to his deliveries that cannot be matched. There’s nothing I could bring to that vocal that could possibly improve or enhance it.

I had other much more ambitious plans, but time and circumstance was not on my side. As I mentioned earlier, my house is in disarray. Tensions were high leading up to the election (though obviously that’s much better now), we all had anxiety from the house problems, and my job also became super intense. It was almost impossible to find time to actually go to another house and record.

I finally had time this morning. I reviewed the songs and realized that “Hope She’ll Be Happier With Him” was very simple, repetition, and ultimately attainable for a fast cover. I do love the song, even though it’s not very relatable to my present life. If nothing else, hopefully this is a fun adaptation.

-Neil

Andrew’s reflections on Van Halen

Before I saw the playlists for Project 5 Eddie Van Halen passed away and I found myself listening to 1984. It had been awhile. I’ve never been obsessed with Van Halen like other bands, however the thing about 1984 was that I was 13 years old and living in Moorhead Minnesota when it came out. I remember staying up as late as I could watching Night Tracks on WTBS, seeing Hot For Teacher and being traumatized (or something of the sort) by this alternate reality. Fast forward 37 years and now I have a 13 year old and I’m curious about how music is influencing her, especially in this time of COVID where she’s pretty isolated. This is my ambient tribute. Maybe some day I’ll release my own Selected Ambient Works Volume 2 of Van Halen covers. I used a program called “Reason” which is a combination of synthesizers, drum machines, samplers, mixers, effects, appreciators and anything else. It’s been awhile since I’ve used it so this was a great refresher.

-Andrew Charon

Barrett “Dreaming”

Sometimes with digital recording it feels like it all makes sense, sometimes it feels like I’m crawling around a dark room looking for something. This one was tougher to get to a good place than I expected, mostly my mix sounded good, then horrible on other speakers. In an effort to utilize the soft synths and drums I’ve been collecting and tinkering with, I wanted to do a super synthy, dreamy, slow take on Dreaming. The original has a lot going on for being as punk as it is, so I stripped it down. I played the drums on our keyboard, but getting them to work with the vibe took a bit of effects, maybe overdid them but like the warbly sound.

I used a mix of Garageband synths and a mellotron, Dexed, Tal NoiseMaker and Tal Chorus. Drums came from a synthwave plugin, super cheese but worked great.

-Barrett Haroldson

“Scooter and Jinx” as interpreted by D

I made this Sonic Youth cover using a handful of field recordings I gathered earlier this fall with my daughter while staying in the Adirondacks. Everyday, promptly at 12pm, the town of Keene Valley sounds the noon whistle - a civil defense siren that makes a short wail that echoes through the mountains. Every few days we would hike to a new place to setup our field recorder; in the middle of an old twisty mountain road, next to a trout stream, in the middle of a clearing guarded by screechy squirrels.

I’ve been wanting to use these recordings for a Basement Sketches project and “Scooter and Jinx” seemed like a reasonable excuse.

-Chris Danforth

Ida

Before Lita…

Kiss me once. Kiss me twice. Come on pretty baby. 

Fun fact. The songwriter, Mick Smiley, also wrote “Magic” from Ghostbusters. 

-Tom S.

Tom talks music with friends and his Roger Miller cover

The idea of basement sketches was an attempt to figure out how to continue making music while in isolation during the pandemic.  One very fortunate side effect has been making music again with my oldest friend and 30+ year musical compatriot.  

The goal was a spooky westworld version.  As usual, the results are mixed but overall, it's pretty atmospheric and reasonably sad.  So, success.

Jay plays ukulele, space jam guitar, and adds vocals.

Against all odds, this track features no drums.

-Tom S.

“To Bring You My Love” PJ Harvey – Noah’s Cover

I hate acapella. I hate Christian music. I wanted to explore why. There’s a list of things I love about PJ Harvey’s To Bring you my love. I tried to subvert each element on that list and see where I ended up. Plus, the culture really needs me to mansplain PJ Harvey right now, I can feel it.  

We’ve had several COVID scares at work while I was doing this, so it was a nice distraction. I’m now convinced that since I’ve ruined a good song, I might not die in a field hospital. People who make terrible music tend to avert disaster, although I’m not willing to test this. Please play it at my zoom funeral. 

All done on GarageBand IOS, with gen z youtubers giving me tutorials on how to process my vocals and loops. 

-Noah Warren

Tom’s cover of “Moon Over Marin”

Moon over Marin was always one of my favorites as a curiously catchy song (by DK standards) on one of my favorite albums. The concept was to play off that and record it as if one of their contemporaries recorded it. Synths, up tempo beat, heavy reverb, etc. I’m not sure if it got there but, it was fun. 

-Tom Stromsodt

Jim Beam will keep us together.

This is the sound of 2 people and a bottle of Jim Beam.

-Tom Stromsodt

“Life in a Northern Town”

Such a great song, I think I pick up on new things every time I listen to it. My plan with this was to make something that felt more like an intimate chamber music version, rather than the expansiveness of the original, but I just kept working at it 😬. There are a ton of musical ideas going on in the original and I felt like I needed to strip it down and then layer elements back in slowly. This meant losing some of the signature elements like the vocal chant on the chorus, but it just didn’t seem to fit. I started with just piano for the chords and a theremin for the melody which was haunting. To offset the theremin, I liked using a harp to add some of the classical percussive vibe from the original. The other piece that I wanted to reference was the big dynamic changes from the verse to the chorus, so I recorded some real drums and tambourine to accent that shift.

Tonally, I wanted to take many of the textures and layers from the original song and use them in new ways or reference them with different instruments. For some of the more ethereal tones I used a Rhodes piano sound, doubled with some layers of piano with space-y reverb. Getting the theremin to sound “real” took a lot of subtle shifts in volume. There is an underlying organ beat in the original that comes in after the first chorus, I love that so brought that using a Hammond Auto Rhythm unit sampled from a YouTube demo. This was fun as I had to beat match and fix some of the irregularities to make the loop. Being new to digital recording, figuring out how to mix midi tracks, samples and elements recorded practically is tough, but an exciting change from trying to record everything practically. I’ve learned a lot from videos like this: https://youtu.be/PioeeX5LjGY 

Soft Synths / Midi Instruments

Recorded in GarageBand

Voltage Modular - Theremin

Rhodes Mark IV, Hammond B3 for Bass

Harp, Shaker, Piano - Garageband

Drums - Mix of live and Sampled Hammond Auto Rhythm beats from YouTube

Effects

Vallhalla Supermassive (Free!)

To add warmth to some of the midi stuff, I used a few compressors, distortion plugins and tube amps from this list: https://blog.landr.com/8-free-vst-plugins-warm-sound/

-Barrett Haroldson

A reinterpretation of an excerpt from the interlude in “Orion”

Ok, this isn’t a full song, obviously. At best, it’s barely one part of one part of that song, and yet this little interlude is still my favorite part of Metallica’s “Orion.” Coming in at about a minute and a half, this would not stand up in a court of law as a proper cover, so consider this a collaboration experiment referencing a song.

I played the bass and accordion lines and sent it over to Tom who added drums and a few ambient layers.

I’ve always loved noodling around with this bass line and have heard it with a minimal accordion line. It reminds me a little of the vibe from the theme to Midnight Cowboy.

Yes. This is what I look like now during the pandemic.

Jeff Esterby covers Anna Domino

This song immediately grabbed me – I wasn’t familiar with this cover or the Aretha Franklin original but I couldn’t stop listening to it – amazing lyrics and the Anna Domino version has sort of a weird icy sadness to it.  A part of me wishes I hadn’t done such a straight cover of it but I’ll get over it.  Thanks, Karl! I was really going to try to use actual hardware on this next round and I totally blew it and leaned on all software again.  Some dopey amp sim plugin on the telecaster track - drums are Roland TR-606 samples, Roland SH-101 on bass, Yamaha DX7 koto (Dexed) and Korg Polysix for the dreamy lead.  Using two different spring reverbs and tape echo from Altiverb and a Valhalla plate reverb - everything recorded into Ableton.

-Jeff Esterby

Randy’s love of “Holiday”

Holiday by the Bee Gees has become one of my favorite songs and I’ve always wanted to make a heavy version of it. I illegally colluded with another participant to get this song on his playlist. I apologize to all who were hurt by this and I welcome any disciplinary action. 

I recently bought a ZOOM MultiStomp effects pedal in order to get Amp/Cab emulation so I can record axes without running a loud amp. I can’t recommend these units enough. At $120 new, they offer great bang/buck ratio. One can set up chains of up to 6 effects at a time. Neat.

I’m getting a little better at using Reaper. Automating track levels and parameters is still beyond me. The software is so deep it is really easy to get myself into a place where I am helpless. I have to ride the “undo” function a lot to get out of trouble and lose a few tracks in the process. God help you if you accidently brush the “L” hot-key as it will make you unable to select audio to edit. I wasted like 45 minutes on that. 

Gear used: 

Reaper DAW

Effects:

ZOOM MS-70CDR for guitar&bass sounds, Dave Smith Evolver, Yamaha SU-700

Synths:

Korg Poly-61, Sequential Prophet Rev2

Elektron Digitakt (for drums)

My beloved Precision bass

DeArmond Les Paul Studio-style guitar

-Randy “Devetron” Dever