This is for a cover contest. Overall time spent was between four and five hours from concept to bounce. Skyfall was originally performed by Adele Adkins and written by Adele Adkins and Paul Epworth who obviously maintain full rights to the lyrics. 

Skyfall was originally written in C minor. When adapting the music for this, I settled on G minor to get it closer to my vocal range. I used elements from 80s punk metal and modern douche rock as inspiration for the tone. Despite guitar solos being common elements in these genres, I kept more closely to the structure of the original and didn't include an instrumental section (with the exception of the piano outro.)

Some notes:
- The vocals were recorded while I had a cold (still have one as of writing this.) Consequently, they're quite rough, but it works with the grungy punk-like aesthetic. 

- The final chorus is just out of my comfortable range. It took most of my body to push those notes out. My abs were sore. I didn't even know that could happen. I now understand why metal vocalists often look like they live in gyms. I'd like to hit some more notes in that range one of these days, so I may have to commit a small part of my life to picking things up and putting them down. A very small one.

- The bridge was talk-sung. It was the last section written and subsequently tracked. I was mighty sore after belting out the final chorus, so the section was written so only the last line needed to be sung. The bridge riffs off G minor and ends with the diminished ii and V like the verses and chorus do (and I believe the original bridge does as well.) In retrospect, the bridge was a missed opportunity to get more creative with the music since the vocals were atonal, but it is what it is. 

-The contest was actually for "violent" songs, preferably with apocalyptic themes. I admittedly kinda missed the "violent" bit, though an argument could be made that the sky crumbling is a fairly violent way for the world to end. 

That's it. I hope someone can enjoy this as much as I enjoyed throwing it together. 

edit: Cleaned up the vocals a bit.  The mix needs all sorts of work. I told myself I wouldn't come back to this, so I'm already fucking up. Oh well.

Skyfall (Adele cover)

I got a new sampled piano and love the tone. This is an improvised piece. I'm having trouble getting my left hand balanced so pay no mind to the rhythmic unsteadiness of the left hand.

edit: Original bounce didn't render right for some reason so I uploaded a new bounce.

Pumpkins

SA Rockstar Entry.  The challenge: "Pick a song that makes you feel intensely, whether it's joy or sadness or excitement or dread. Something that sparks emotion in you, a song that sticks with you after you hear it, even if you've heard it a hundred times."

The challenge was tricky for me. A song that makes you feel intensely is a treasure. More often than not, I consider such tracks to be perfect on their own. Trying to cover a song of emotional value feels like a dirty thing to do, so I combed through the songs that have made me feel intensely in one way or another in my life until I found one that felt okay to take a shot at. I chose 1979, a song I was first exposed to at a very young age and one of the first songs I ever attached myself to. I didn't quite understand the lyrics, but somehow listening to the song made me feel free in a way that nothing else did at that age. As everyone else grew sick of hearing it over and over again, it never got old to me. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was the first album I ever owned and it is one of many things that inspired me to start learning how to play guitar and eventually write music. 

The usual stuff: 1979 was written by Billy Corgan and was featured on The Smashing Pumpkins' 1995 double album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. The original track is in Eb major. The cover was moved down 1/2 step to D major to make it easier to play.  Those vocal jumps are going to sound creaky no matter what key I sing it in.

Not much in terms of composition notes: I decided to do this yesterday and started it today about two and a half hours ago. As I was recording this, it was supposed to be a demo/skeleton track with some piano and vocals to cement the structure. Nothing fancy. Just a straight forward comping track and vocals with some harmonies for color. Once I'd laid everything down, I listened back to it and liked it a lot the way it was. I felt that adding a bunch of strings and bass and percussion would bury the sincerity under layers of shallow superficialities, so I decided to keep it simple. 

Not much for production notes either: A bit of polish was applied to the vocals. The piano just has some slight dips so the vocals sit a little better. Everything is running through a send verb. Vox are running through an additional plate verb. The reverb is a bit heavy. I like a creamy verb. I have until the 10th to tweak this up. If I take time to go back to it, I'll probably do some slight edits to the vocal tracks to take out miscellaneous noise and I'll probably tweak up the verbs a little to see how much clarity I can get while still getting a big, sad, empty room sound.

This is what I did tonight instead of going to the gym. Enjoy.

1979 (Smashing Pumpkins Cover)

Ambient synth stuff. 7 measure cycle, melodies between melodies, thirds on halves, built off a C major using a CS-80 patch I programmed wrong.  Soothing sounds and unsteady rhythms, order and chaos, beauty and asymmetry, lobbing crippling globs of oxytocin into your pituitary.

Neurophysins

This is my entry for SA Rockstar 71, the theme being "any song with something about SPACE in the title: Mars, Stars, Space, Sun, Moon, Black Holes, Pluto, yes, EVEN URANUS." I planned on trying a few songs, but never got around to it and settled on this one; one of my favorite tracks from the last few years. 

The song I'm covering is Black Sun. It was written by Ben Gibbard and originally performed by Death Cab for Cutie for their 2014 album Kintsugi. It is in B-minor. This version is structurally similar to Death Cab's original, but at a slower tempo. 

A lot of the musical ideas were inspired by a brief fascination with 80s New Wave-style synth lines and reverb/delay heavy arrangements. I pulled back on the cheese factor a bit, but it's still apparent in spots: the intro's synth line, for instance, and the dense synth pad used throughout. 

In pursuit of a more ominous sound to accompany the synthesized tones, the vocal melody for the verses was rewritten up a third with some melodic ideas borrowed from some other projects I'm working on. The harmony line remains similar to the original vocal, is mostly a tight repitching, and utilizes reverb and delay utilized to give the vocal an artificial sound.

Not much more to say. It's long, but there's not much fat to trim. In terms of the arrangement, no melody or harmony or chord goes to waste. The mixing was quick and admittedly a little clumsy, but the only part I have a real issue with are the vocals. There are obvious rhythm, clarity, and enunciation issues that I may still fix, and if I do, I will note it as an edit in this description. I am, however, eager to have a version of this posted up so I don't miss the deadline and there you have it.

Black Sun (Death Cab for Cutie cover)

Put this together a couple hours ago. Got a headache. Good night.

For The Survivors

class act strung up
by the throat for the prideful
and a slit cross the gut
to see what he's made of

touch those lights
bring those lights
home sweet home
let the hammer swing again

for the last time
draw the banner
for the listless survivors

flesh flood the curbside
etchings in the concrete erode
smooth as marble
on a new canvas crooked words encode

touch those lights
bring those lights
home sweet home
let the hammer swing again

for the last time
draw the banner
for the listless survivors

to the hopeless
victors write the textbooks
and your villains become heroes

For The Survivors

Someone sent me the acapella for this track. I've never listened to the original track, gleefully throwing whatever sounded good under it. The production emphasizes distorted and dirty sounding synths with a bit more active envelope manipulation during Nicki's verse. It's got house rhythms, dubstep rhythms, and breakbeat rhythms, with a little smooth, airy breakdown in it before the final verse. I thought of chopping off the ending with the back and forth talking as it seemed more obnoxious than salvageable, but cobbled something together for it at the last minute with a downtempo drum loop, a deep subbass loop, and a piano version of the chorus synths. Enjoy, if you must.

Out of My Mind (BoB/Nicki Minaj Remix)

I contain multitudes, multitudes highlighted by kitschy moments of hyperemotionality, a word I proudly made up to describe my simultaneous strengths and ineptitudes. This remix is an attempt to coalesce the vivid highlights of cliche sensitivity with the shuddering and callow shadows of pimplike stature.

Tempo-adjusted vocal track with all new music. I put this together on a laptop at a bar between shots of whiskey. Due to the cheap earbuds I had at my disposal at the time, I'm marking this as a work in progress until I can get to better quality speakers for a proper mix down. Could use a couple structural tweaks, but whatever, it was fun to put together.

David Banner's Like a Pimp (remix)

I have trouble with things. These are my songs.

Likely won't be putting anything else on this page. Soundcloud has been deleting my recent reharms, remixes, and covers, so fuck em.

edit: i'll still put my unfinished junk up here because it suits the site.

Joseph Ciavattone

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