Forming a tribute band - looking for input

brittislove · 02 Nov 2017, 03:56

Hello, I've been forming a tribute band and working alongside a friend to make the experience be as true to the album as possible. I bought a 12 string electric guitar like That Guitarist, I've studied the other tribute bands overseas (none here in the states!), found the BPM's all the songs and have them playing exactly at the same speed, I've hired a sax player, I've learned a lot of the vocals and learned a bunch of the songs, spent nearly two years actively on all this stuff... it's come an amazing way, but it could go further. Sorry for the long rant but I'm giving this my all.

The burning questions I have is:

1.How do I get that lovely guitar tone?
--- I am not planning on switching amps or heads to make this happen. I will check out pedals and buy them. I have a krankenstein pedal which is amazing but not suitable for this gig, I have a carbon copy delay pedal which I feel works, and I use a Decimator II noisegate pedal. I feel like the noisegate and delay pedals are fine, but the distortion is too metal. Does anyone know what That Guitarist was using or what a good equivalent would be?

2. What makes his voice so unique?
--- I've been trying to figure out his voice. I can have a strong baritone voice too but I'm not a singer and kinda tone deaf and when I've sung along with the tracks I'm STILL too high pitched for certain songs. Is it possible for me to keep practicing and lower my range or am I always stuck with whatever range I have? I know practice helps but I'm curious about human vocal limitations. That said, I've watched some videos of him in his heyday singing Marian and when he sings it live he does it an octave higher than the studio recording but he still keeps that fullness in his voice. How tf is he doing and how can I do that? I bought a boss ve-20 vocal effects pedal to add reverb and it sounds great, it comes with the ability to lower me 3 semitones which has helped me be in the same range (marian is still an actual pain) but I am not a fan of the compression that it does to the voice so I'd rather hit it naturally giggity.

Here's This Corrosion - one of our backing tracks for shows. This mix was made to showcase how great the female singer we got for this is. The male vocals are quiet in there just to help us sound more full live. We won't have a female singer so we had her in the mix.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngzZAXU ... e=youtu.be

Anyway, just wanted to share some info on myself, what I need, and why I need it. Thanks in advance, looking forward to learning how we can improve ourselves

Also, if you know anyone in the Houston area who might be interested in singing give me your info or pm me on here

02 Nov 2017, 08:40

Hello & welcome to the forum

& good luck with the band

Norman Hunter · 02 Nov 2017, 16:34

You need to chat to Mr Syberberg here on this forum.

And good luck!

brittislove · 04 Nov 2017, 01:45

Norman Hunter wrote:You need to chat to Mr Syberberg here on this forum.

And good luck!

How do I summon Mr. Syberberg?

eastmidswhizzkid · 10 Nov 2017, 20:57

the hardest thing to do when trying to sound exactly like the sisters is deciding which aspect of the sisters you are trying to sound exactly like. if it's the recorded sisters then good luck with that live cuz the sisters never managed it; or more accurately the sisters live was sonically a different beast.

then theres the various live incarnations to take into account. for arguments sake i'll assume we are only talking about live line-ups up before adam pearson. there are major differences to the "trained" ear between the "first" live outfit, the "golden years" outfit, and the vision thing era outfit (none of whom sounded exactly like the records of the songs they were playing live.)

the best advice i can give is to follow the smurphs (the sisters of murphy) example: they acheived the feel of the sisters much more accurately than they acheived the sound of the sisters; which is why they are the best sisters tribute band in my opinion (no offence to my "marching men" friends intended).

good luck with it all though and welcome to Heartland.

brittislove · 11 Nov 2017, 00:29

Well, the goal was to sound like their album live, which you're correct the Sisters never did. I've seen performances with Andy E where during marian he just sings an octave higher but I feel like I might actually have the best live tracks in the world for the Sisters trying to sound like the cd. The Sisters had somewhat minimal backing tracks, obviously not the same stuff from the album. The hits and everything were there but the hits they used were different. I think I watched a video of him singing 1959 from 2016 where he even had a snare in the song. He seems to deviate when he feels like it but keeps all of the pieces there.

If you haven't checked out the link I provided in the original comment I recommend doing so.

Trying to match all 3 phases of the sisters is rough - I'm sticking with the That Guitarist era and sticking to a electric 12 string

Norman Hunter · 13 Nov 2017, 07:15

brittislove wrote:
Norman Hunter wrote:You need to chat to Mr Syberberg here on this forum.

And good luck!
How do I summon Mr. Syberberg?

Look him up in the Memberlist