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.

In the table below, there are one to three versions of each song. The different versions are as follows.

lesson

This is the version recorded during the lesson with Steve

clean

During the coronavirus lockdown of 2020, I went back and re-recorded each of these covers. Between having a bit more practice and having fewer issues with room acoustics, this version is a lot cleaner. All the same, each is a single take with no edits, though usually there is some EQ and compression to make it pop more.

bass

This is the isolated bass track from the clean recording. It is remarkable how much sloppiness is hidden in the full mix!