Lesson Cover Songs

In the middle of 2019 I started taking bass lessons from Steve Baranowski once a week for an hour. After a few weeks I asked if we could spend part of each lesson covering a new song every week. It didn't have to be challenging necessarily -- I just wanted the pleasure of making music, instead of it being me endlessly fumbling about with scales and concepts. Steve agreed to it, and so here they are -- the songs we've covered.

They are one take affairs, mostly the first/only take, captured by an ambient mic. This is quick and dirty, and the resulting mix is not great, but this way leaves more time for the real lesson. Usually we play along to a karaoke backing track which has had guitar and bass removed. Lacking that, we either play to a generic drum pattern or, once, to a youtube drum cover.

Recently I've started also recording a clean version of me playing along to the backing track using a direct input from my bass, resulting in a lot cleaner sound. By "clean" I don't mean it is perfect -- just a cleaner recording; all are single takes and could be improved with more practice or via editing, but that isn't the point. I may eventually work my way through the list and make clean versions of most of them.