Project 10: 1977
For Project 10, we will focus on 1977, an amazing year for music.
Contributors picked any song or songs released in 1977, covered it, and shared their creations. I’m posting them now.
Colby Heston covers How Deep Is Your Love by The Bee Gees
Deadlines...they're arbitrary, right? All apologies to my Basement Sketches brethren for missing the original deadline. It's been a crazy summer so far.
Growing up as a child of the 70s, the Brothers Gibb were my jam. I had multiple albums of theirs and played them on my Dad's turntable frequently. When I started looking at songs from 1977 and saw that was the year that Saturday Night Fever came out, I knew my fate. I didn't do myself any favors with this one either. The song is in Eb Minor. A smarter person would have probably transposed it down to D Minor but I've never been one to make things easy for myself. Also, I'm not much of a vocalist so taking on a Bee Gees song was daunting.
Everything was tracked in Garageband on my iPad using my Akai Midi Controller, Sterling Bass and a Baby Taylor.
Hope that you enjoy it!
Colby
Brian Eveslage covers Ghost Rider by Suicide
Now I gotta let Wayne know I finally finished.
Brian
(For those who don’t get the joke, check this out.)
Mark Schumacher and Karl Qualey cover the Three’s Company Theme
Mark submitted some Three’s Company fan fiction, but it was far too long and questionable to post here. We can provide some links to this content for those who have an interest. Please reach out for details.
Tom Stromsodt covers Eddie Money and Wire
Tom’s comments on his Eddie Money cover, “I opened this up with the intention of “fixing” a few things…it is what is. Two old friends giggling uncontrollably on the floor.”
Randy Dever covers Dust in the Wind by Kansas
I don’t know what made me settle on this song when 1977 was such a musically-rich year.
I am an outsider to the world of turntablists and scratch DJs, etc. A few months ago, I discovered scratch DJ battle records. They are rad. Top-tier scratch DJs would press records specifically designed to help them win DJ battles. They would typically have long beats on one side and loads of short samples and scratch fodder on the other. After the battle, some would release the records to the general public for home-gamers to scratch it up at home. I used a song-length drum beat from one of DJ QBert’s battle records.
So, I just layered a bunch of stuff over the beat. I made this last-minute and all today (Saturday, 6/12/2021). It’s kinda raw.
I used the Elektron Digitakt (some samples), the Arturia Microfreak for vocoder, Korg Poly 61 for synth sounds and the ribbon controller on the Yamaha SU700 to simulate scratching actual records. I really wanted to put in more Queensryche samples, but I ran out of effort.
Dtron
Grant Eull’s 1977 Covers
When starting project 10 (1977) I was super inspired by the amount of amazing music from bands I knew… but records I had been less familiar with. I originally had a very very hard time narrowing down songs to learn and record. In my mind I wanted to attempt 10-15, so I could cover a number of styles and make up for not having as many songs on my “music makers” page. However, once I started I found that I was getting frustrated by the process of trying to mimic original tones and production sounds. Without owning any original vintage gear, not being able to find exact matching midi-drum patterns and being limited with my skills in drums programming and sound synthesis I eventually settled on the approach I call (good enough/have fun). Once I settled into this more laid back style the process was much more comfortable and I really had a blast tracking and mixing all these songs in my home studio.
Studio GEAR Used for 1977 project:
DAW - Reaper
Interface - Zoom R8
Drums - Addictive Drums 2
Electronic Drums & Synth Sequencing - FL Studio
Bass & Guitar Amps - IK Multimedia Amplitude & Zoom R8 onboard Emulation
Guitars - Modified Gibson SG special / Gibson Les Paul 65 Special Reissue with P90s
Synthesizer - KORG Minilogue XD
Grant
Noah Warren covers Tonight’s The Night by Rod Stewart
“If you’ve made it this far, you’re the real hero.” Actual words on their website.
Noah quoting Little Cesar’s Pizza
Bill Fricke covers Eno, Kraftwerk, and Donna Summer
The legend goes that when David Bowie and Brian Eno were working in Berlin (possibly on Low or Heroes), Eno came into the studio with a copy of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”. He is purported to have said something like, “I have heard the future of music, and this is it.” To which Bowie allegedly responded with, “Well, you had best put it on then.”
I can attest to that feeling when I first heard “I Feel Love”. Being 12 in 1977, and at the height of my KISSmania, shunning disco as being the devil’s music, my head exploded when I first heard “I Feel Love”. The synth bass line blew me away, and the whole song was almost trance-inducing.
I can’t remember when I started getting into Kraftwerk, probably at 14. Trans-Europe Express was also eye-opening. Its evocative of train travel and the thrum of the rails. It was interesting to hear how they updated it over the years as technology caught up with them.
In trying to decide what to cover for this project, I really wanted to do both songs. Then, after playing around with them, discovered that they share a common key. Why not combine the best of both and see what happens? I’m very pleased with the outcome.
I’ve uploaded three versions: “I Feel Love on the Trans Europe Express”, using the IFL disco beat and “On the Trans Europe Express, I Feel Love” using the TEE beat. There is about a 50/50 split in terms of parts of each song used. Its essentially TEE all tarted up in different ways.
Both turned out way beyond my expectations. I decided to add Trans Europe Express as its own cover as well.
This was done in Garageband with stock GB synths and drum sounds, with modifications. The mellotron proved to be very useful. Most of the melody lines are mellotron with choir or mellotron with flutes. Now I just need a real vocoder.
This project was a blast. Looking forward to hearing what we all came up with.
Bill
Jeff Kearns covers Just Remember I Love You by Firefall
Neil covers Billy Joel
For those of you who know me, this isn’t surprising. For those of you who don’t know me, this might change your opinion of me.
Neil
Andrew Charon covers Dogs by Pink Flyod
I'm not sure exactly what happened with this one: I spent a ton of time working on Pigs on the Wing and ended up covering Dogs. It ended up being a true sketch, and I wanted to experiment with transitions between quiet and abrasive. "Dogs" was interesting in the sense that it's this 17+ minute "journey" with many parts...more of an experience similar to Pink Floyd's older work however this album was a bit less electronic then their previous few albums. By the time I started listening to Pink Floyd in 1987, in my opinion, it had been awhile since they had really released anything interesting so I was really discovering their older releases. I guess that was the challenge with growing up and getting into music in the 80's...having to resort to music from the 70's.
Andrew