Question to taxi admin. or any taxi members- Rock instrumen

[scottripple]

Question Taxi Admin and/or any fellow Taxians, in regards to "ALA SPECIFIC GROUP ROCK INSTRUMENTAL LISTINGS" , any suggestions on how close you can get to the original vocal melodies, instrumental melodies, rythyms etc. created by the original group & their songs (and not be sued) OR is there another way/ways to create the particular "Group" sound instrumentaly ? Thanks-SR

[orest]

Try to get as close as possible to the original sound.
If you use the rhythmical pattern, change the chord progression and so on.

You song must have the same vibe as the original, but you can't steal the whole song.
I try to get a similar beat and than I come up with new melody and chords.
I also try to use the same instruments/sounds as they do.

[mojobone]

It's really hard to discuss specifics; there used to be a rule of thumb that you don't wanna steal eight consecutive notes verbatim, but nowadays it's probably best to try to cop the instrument sounds and analyze the style. For instance, Bad Company is gonna have big drums, big bass and one humbucker guitar, cuz they're a power trio with a vocalist, like Zep. There are some specific tempos and patterns the drummer tends to gravitate to, the bass player plays lotsa eighth note grooves, and the chord progressions will venture out of strict I, IV, V 12 or 8 bar blues patterns about once per song. Paul Rogers is very bluesy, with a little growl and sings lotsa triplets at the ends of his phrases, but uses less melisma than Robert Plant. (he also had less range, back in the day, but the situation's way reversed, now) On records, they'd augment their core sound with subtle B3, piano and analog string machine, and real strings on the later recordings.

Often, the key to this stuff is nailing the guitar sounds, they tend to change more by the decade (and genre) than bass and drums; keyboard sounds are often a matter of having good bread and butter sounds (pianos, Wurli, Rhodes, Clav, B3, maybe a Vox Continental or a Farfisa if you're doing vintage Elvis Costello or British Invasion) and enough analog and digital keyboard patches to represent each decade by synthesizer. (Moog, ARP, Oberheim, DX7, Korg M1, Roland D-50 )