Lady Madonna

Released April 14, 2021

I started this project late in 2020. To say it’s been a challenge would be understating it considerably. Imagine starting on a path to cover “Lady Madonna”, capturing a reasonable facsimile of the piano track and thinking that’s got to be the hard part, only to realize as months pass that the piano was maybe one of the easier aspects of the project.

The first issue, albeit a minor one: In the original recording, Ringo plays a little shuffle beat throughout the whole song using brushes, but Garage Band on the iPad doesn’t offer any brush samples. Instead, I had to use one of the softer snare samples and play some games with velocity and reverb and echo to achieve an approximation of the original.

Next came the “normal” set of challenges one faces when trying to copy a familiar song. The original recording has some nice — and unique — backing vocals that I was able recreate with some accuracy after finding a helpful YouTube video from a guy who broke down all the parts. There’s also a sax combo that plays through two sections as well as a sax solo, all of which I played on my RD-88, which has some very good saxophone samples (I used the baritone and tenor samples). And there are few electric guitar riffs, originally played by George and John simultaneously through the same amp, that I played (and then doubled) on my Rickenbacker using a couple of different amp emulators courtesy of Garage Band.

Next issue was a bit more impactful: I recorded a bass guitar track using my Squier, but I just could not dial in the sound I needed. I was also having trouble getting good separation between the bass guitar and the bass notes of the piano track.

Enter my good friend and former colleague, Brian. A few words about Brian: Musician, Beatles fanatic, Garage Band enthusiast, Albuquerque resident. I have mentioned in other posts that he has provided much needed and appreciated feedback on other projects while they were in progress, but here he went the extra mile and actually contributed an entire bass track.

Listening to a draft I had emailed him (I think the subject line was something like “Is this worth continuing?”) after having shelved the project for several weeks out of frustration, Brian offered to record a bass track using his Rickenbacker 4003, a model very similar to the one McCartney used on the original. Outfitted with flatwound strings, Brian thumb-picked the Ric, which he routed through a few amp and pedal combinations, until he had two versions from which to choose. We both concluded the better option was the version he had played through his Genz Benz amp head with a bit of compression applied and routed directly into his Mac. I added a tad more compression to the track to get the volume I needed, but that’s it. What you hear is all Brian … and my first collaboration!

The final issue was with the lead vocals. Turns out Paul McCartney knows a thing or two about singing. Who knew? Seriously, though, I never expected to get anything close to Paul’s vocals, but wanted something at least worthy of the rest of the tracks. The vocal track of the original was either recorded with a crappy microphone, or was intentionally overdriven a bit, which gave it a subtle distortion. In addition, Paul sang the lead with a certain “affectation” — a little playful soulfulness, perhaps? — that is tough to mimic. While not ranking among my better vocal performances, after about a zillion attempts, I was finally able to cobble together sections from my 5 best takes into one track that I could live with.

In the end, what you hear is Brian’s awesome bass guitar, and my piano, drums, guitars, keyboards (for the sax parts), hand claps, and backing and lead vocals.


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