Covers that should be almost impossible to reproduce ? - No 1 - King Crimson's Elephant Talk

[musicbassman]

So here's a local band from somewhere in the US doing an incredible cover of 'Elephant Talk' - bass player on a fretless fiver has to put himself into contortions to reproduce Tony Levin's Chapman Stick lines, but it's all good.

Anyone else like to suggest other amazing covers they've found of nigh on impossible to play numbers ?

 

 

[RhysP]

It's a 10 string Stick on "Elephant Talk"... 🤓

[Velarian]

Ambitious! 👏

[BreadBin]

Ambitious, and difficult to play in tune on a fretless it seems..

Top marks for trying though. 

[NikNik]

I'll watch this when home.

 

My fav ET is that one on Letterman.....Adrian Belew in that pink Modern Romance suit!!

[Nail Soup]

Somebody scored and played a live cover of Lou Reeds Metal Machine Music... all one hour of it, including the locked groove at the end (well for a while anyway!)

 

[Grimalkin]

It's the only way you can really recreate something like it on a bass, the double stops are a b5 shape you move over four frets in all, the left hand is root, hammered 5th and octave. Once you've got each hand fretting correctley, you put the rhythms together and practise it. But I agree with BreadBin, don't do it on a fretless, it's very difficult to keep in tune.

[Daz39]

That’s very cool all round to do Elephant Talk.

[NikNik]

I bought a 10-string Stick in '85. Gave myself 9 months to learn something on it and I failed. I thought, having a good grounding in Pianoforte, that I could hack the Stick. Nope. Flogged it for a DX7 which I could actually use!

 

Levin blew me away on that track. Then Trey Gunn arrives decades later and does it again on the Warr bass!

[StickyDBRmf]

Tony cheats. He de-tunes the upper string on the bass side of the Stick. When Adrian ate my chili @ Roxy & Dukes I told him I played Stick and said if we ever got together I promise not to play E.T.

[NikNik]

6 minutes ago, StickyDBRmf said:

Tony cheats. He de-tunes the upper string on the bass side of the Stick. When Adrian ate my chili @ Roxy & Dukes I told him I played Stick and said if we ever got together I promise not to play E.T.

 

[Grimalkin]

8 minutes ago, StickyDBRmf said:

Tony cheats. He de-tunes the upper string on the bass side of the Stick. When Adrian ate my chili @ Roxy & Dukes I told him I played Stick and said if we ever got together I promise not to play E.T.

 

That's interesting, so that's how he plays the top line in a 4ths shape, much harder in a b5 shape:

 

0.40

 

 

The ideal way to transfer it to bass, is to detune the G sting by a semitone to play it in 4ths too. Much easier. I've been playing it in a b5 interval since 1993...

[Grimalkin]

4 minutes ago, Grimalkin said:

 

That's interesting, so that's how he plays the top line in a 4ths shape, much harder in a b5 shape:

 

0.40

 

 

The ideal way to transfer it to bass, is to detune the G sting by a semitone to play it in 4ths too. Much easier. I've been playing it in a b5 interval since 1993...

 Edit: Tune the G up a semitone. Not down.

[NikNik]

43 minutes ago, StickyDBRmf said:

Tony cheats. He de-tunes the upper string on the bass side of the Stick. When Adrian ate my chili @ Roxy & Dukes I told him I played Stick and said if we ever got together I promise not to play E.T.

It's like how Jaco got that harmonic at the end of POT. It's impossible to reach otherwise. 

 

Or so I heard. I can't do it on a fretless off the cuff and I have s good stretch.

[TheGreek]

 

[NikNik]

5 minutes ago, TheGreek said:

 

Thank you. 

 

Had the 45. First ex-wife threw it out. But I had already melted it on my WEM Dominator combo.

[NikNik]

The Stick was an instrument that one neede that 'touch' for it to work, irrespective of tuning. I just couldn't hack it.

 

Francis Dunnery....he took it another level.

[Grimalkin]

I posted this vid in another thread but it is said that Paganini composed his pieces to be so technically difficult, that only he could play them. So he had a monopoly on his stuff. The pull-off section at 3.50, looks like a handful to say the least...

 

 

[NikNik]

2 hours ago, musicbassman said:

So here's a local band from somewhere in the US doing an incredible cover of 'Elephant Talk' - bass player on a fretless fiver has to put himself into contortions to reproduce Tony Levin's Chapman Stick lines, but it's all good.

Anyone else like to suggest other amazing covers they've found of nigh on impossible to play numbers ?

 

 

Kudos for that. Fknell..

[NikNik]

8 minutes ago, Grimalkin said:

I posted this vid in another thread but it is said that Paganini composed his pieces to be so technically difficult, that only he could play them. So he had a monopoly on his stuff. The pull-off section at 3.50, looks like a handful to say the least...

 

 

Rachmaninov was the same. The stretch needed was a challenge. 

[hiram.k.hackenbacker]

 

[Nail Soup]

Many of you may know of the Shaggs - a band from the 60's with a famously very poor grip on rhythm and harmony. Very hard to reproduce something like that -you'd think, but people have tried.

Here is there best known song (My Pal Foot Foot)... and two groups who tried to recreate the sound.. One in concert , one in rehearsal.

 

 

[musicbassman]

16 minutes ago, Nail Soup said:

Many of you may know of the Shaggs - a band from the 60's with a famously very poor grip on rhythm and harmony. Very hard to reproduce something like that -you'd think, but people have tried.

Here is there best known song (My Pal Foot Foot)... and two groups who tried to recreate the sound.. One in concert , one in rehearsal.

 

 

I would say "why bother ?" but you have to admit that must be really really difficult to perform !

By the way, if you haven't heard of The Shaggs before there's plenty of recordings and analysis - from the dismissive to the devotional - around, including a video of the 'band' playing at a festival in 2017 on YT.

Naive folk art, or gullible girls manipulated by a despotic father? You can decide.

[kusee pee]

Here's MK's version of ET.

 

 

 

[WinterMute]

oh, good try Mr. King.