Covering My Ass; or, Hoot Can't Decide Which Jamie Paige Song to Cover
I mentioned in the previous blog post that I really wanted to cover a Jamie Paige song, but recognized the difficulty that would go into transforming a maximalist electropop track into my simplistic punk-rock style. It was mostly about a dream rig that I felt would make the process easier, but I ain't got the money to buy all the equipment necessary - and even if I did, I really can't guarantee that it would actually make the process of translating anything from Constant Companions any easier.
This much is very obvious to me now; I've already basically trashed two projects attempting to cover two different songs from Constant Companions that just aren't working the way I want them to. Either the ideas aren't flowing through me as cleanly as I want them to be, or retaining some level of faithfulness to the original track is making my version of it sound worse to me. I know I won't achieve that same full sound she's capable of producing, but there's still so much missing from my cover projects.
What makes things harder is that I haven't touched my music production software since I made the Smokeshows album two years ago. That album was made for background music during official broadcasts of the ESDA esports league to avoid copyright claims while still playing some kind of music in the background during replays. Ironically enough, the title track on that album is actually a cover of Noisia's Collider.
So why was I able to cover a Noisia track in a way I'm proud of, but I can't do the same with a Jamie Paige track? As it turns out, I started writing this blog post as a means of trying to figure that out. And, as I finish this sentence, I've got the answer: chords.
Jamie Paige explains in her breakdown of the track Not Quite There that she's a big fan of spicy jazz chords and KNOWER. In a lot of Jamie's music, the emotions and vibes coming from her music are almost always emitted by the chord progressions she uses. Her instinct to build and release tension with discordant chords that resolve into satisfying conclusions and her tendency to make slight change-ups in note choices throughout a phrase makes each second of the song feel unique. It's an incredible attention to detail that, unfortunately, doesn't really match up well with my own style.
Punks back in the day didn't need to be proficient in their instruments, they just needed to make sounds that could be vaguely translated into a song. You didn't need to sing well, you didn't need to play well, you just needed a noise that made people move or feel. You don't need to be Steve Vai or Eddie Van Halen to write music that makes people feel things. That ethos is what I drag into my own music; I'm not a guitar virtuoso, I'm not even good. I'm not insulting myself or putting myself down, that's just the facts; I'm not particularly ashamed of my lack of proficiency because I've not needed it.
Jamie's music, in comparison to punk music, is extremely complex. Note and chord choice is incredibly specific in each track, and simplifying the chords down to one note automatically removes the complexity that drives her music. The reason she's able to nail particular emotions so specifically is because of those small yet important details in her musical phrasing, and trying to make a punk rock cover of a song with that much intricacy is like writing a really bad fan fiction; it's just never gonna match the source material.
So, what's a dumb bitch to do when she's too dumb a bitch to evoke the specificity of an emotion?
I dunno.
There's a few different ways a musician of my posture - which is to say 'hunched and bent like a pretzel' - could try and answer that question. One could use synths to try and make up for all the notes I can't play, especially since Queercore music tends to use noisy synths in addition to punk rock guitars and simplicity. Another might choose to use sound libraries and skip the performance aspect altogether, especially since those sound libraries are so close to realistic and simple to program these days.
I think I've found my answer though: exaggeration. Jamie Paige's expertise is in creating a very specific vibe in her music, but my specialty is taking a generalized emotion and making it feel huge. I can't make people feel something specific like longing or wistfulness, but I sure as shit can make them feel angry that somebody's trying to make them feel that way.
As a result of this particular revelation, I've now picked the song I'm going to be covering. "Not Quite There," the same track I mentioned earlier, is a particularly jazzy track and already features guitar solos from telebasher. One would think this would be a deterrent since telebasher is a much more talented guitar player than I am, but the song's lyrics describe a lop-sided and unfair love, and one's frustration with that circumstance. I mean, shit, the last verse contains the line "god I need to get fucked up," and if that isn't some punk shit straight out of the 80's I dunno what is. I don't need to copy the song phrase for phrase, I don't even need to do a solo - there's no way I'm copying telebasher's beautiful licks anyway. I just need enough of the song's DNA to inextricably link my cover back to the original, then amplify the double-helix strands until we've got a real bastard-child of a punk cover.
Rather than emulate the particular longing for a fairer relationship, I can transmute that feeling into a less specific anger toward the unfairness. All that's really needed is a faster tempo, simpler structures and some good ol' yelling. SongBPM.com tells me Not Quite There is set at 170bpm, but the feel is more prominently in half-time at 85. We can just switch the snare over to a 2/4 rhythm and immediately draw the rhythmic feel back into 170 territory. A small problem might be the song's key of C, since dropping my bass tuning that low can cause muddiness on the open notes when the low string is that loose. Transposing the song upwards a bit might actually be beneficial here, both to keep the tone from getting unclear and to create an added sense of tension in the song when compared to the original. The beginning of the track starts with what sounds like a Rhodes piano or something of that sort, but I could replace that element with a simple hi-hat pattern similar to what eventually fades in toward the bridge.
...I could go on. There's a lot of ways I can fuck with this song until it sounds right in my ears. If I really wanted to, I could fuck with it so hard that the only real DNA linking my cover back to the original is the lyrics. The sky's the fucking limit, really.