Anatomy of a Cover Version - Blackbird

Cover versions are a common jump off point for musicians trying to get some exposure. They are an easy way to get clicks and show off what you can do as a musician. My favorite cover versions are ones that stray a ways away from the original either in lyrical content or the genre of the music.

I am going to breakdown a cover version I did of Blackbird by The Beatles.
This is one of the most covered (and probably over-covered) songs of all time. Just in terms of commercially recorded covers of Blackbird available to buy there are over 80 and hundreds more on Youtube.

⬇️ I made Blackbird cover version below entirely using music production apps on iPad ⬇️

Many versions have the same stripped down guitar and vocal sound of the original but I decided I wanted to try something different. Partly because I am not a great guitarist and I cannot sing I decided on a more modern synthy take and asked a talented vocalist Melody Romancito I have worked with to take on the singing.

STEP ONE - Shortcuts
My first step was to take a huge shortcut. I probably could have found the chords, learned them and played them but I decided I wanted to focus more on the production, style and sounds so grabbed a midi file from online to use as a base to work from. There are numerous websites that have midi files you can sing along to or import into a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) to edit.

STEP TWO - Editing the Arrangement
Next I took the Midi file in to my DAW (Auria Pro which is a very capable Pro Tools alike DAW for iPad with channel strips and Fab Filter plug ins).
I edited out some bum notes that were in the midi file and change the bass notes a bit as I was not liking the bass notes in the midi file. I separated the melody, chords and bass to different tracks.

STEP THREE Choosing Sounds, Genre and Tempo.
This happened fairly organically. I started off by taking the Beats Per Minute (BPM) of the track down a bit from the original. Next I got a simple electronic beat going with just a Kick and a Snare I made by layering a couple of different snares and adding slight distortion to make it less flat sounding. Then I picked a bass synth from an emulation of the classic seventies synth the Oberheim SEM. I ended up also designing sounds for the main chord structure. I layered up a couple of sounds to make the bass and three sounds for the other lines. I added some effected piano from iGrand app for the middle eight section

STEP FOUR Vocals
The instrumental was rhythmically more complex than the original so when I sent the instrumental to the vocalist I sent an instrumental with a piano playing the vocal line so it was clear where the vocals were to start/stop and where the middle eight was.
Because the instrumental was so different from the original Melody ended up not entirely sure of timing and inflections to use so ended up recording two different takes for me to choose from. By happy coincidence when I layered up both takes together there were a few spots in the track that the two vocals complemented each other almost as if they had been recorded as harmony/backing vocals although they had not. I did a bit of additional production on the vocals with Fab Filter ProQ also adding some saturation from Fab Filter Saturn and some reverb from a Convolution Reverb app called AltiSpace.

STEP FIVE Mastering and Video
I mastered the track myself using TRacks on my Mac. This was the only part done not done on the iPad.
I like to release music with something to watch while you listen. There are plenty of Creative Commons video out there that let you use video as long as you provide attribution link to the video creator. For some videos there is also a requirement that use be non-commercial. I found this great student video that had a attribution non commercial license so I edited a bit to fit the music using iMovie on the iPad then exported to Youtube.

Anyway hope this was a useful helpful workflow description and maybe gave some inspiration to try an out of the box cover version of your own.

My personal philosophy on cover versions is

1. Try not to wreck a classic
2. Don't cover a song you don't actually love
3. Try and do something beyond a carbon copy of the original

Here is a MondayMixtape post I did a while back that has some more covers for inspiration:
https://steemit.com/mondaymixtape/@redskylullaby/redsky-monday-mixtape-vol3

Feel free to 🚶🏃 and 💬and even Re🌋if you enjoyed.