{"id":1496,"date":"2016-07-30T08:05:44","date_gmt":"2016-07-30T08:05:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keithlivingston.com\/?p=1496"},"modified":"2016-10-01T23:25:07","modified_gmt":"2016-10-01T23:25:07","slug":"white-brabbitird","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keithlivingston.com\/white-brabbitird\/","title":{"rendered":"The Story Of White Brabbitird"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>The Story Of White Brabbitird<\/h2>\n<p>Take a listen &#8212; it might surprise you \ud83d\ude42<br \/>\n<center><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1QOGBD-dCXM?rel=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/center><br \/>\nI hadn&#8217;t thought of &#8220;White Bird&#8221; in years, until recording &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/keithlivingston.com\/im-white-hot\/\">White Hot<\/a>&#8221; reminded me of it. After I cranked out &#8220;White Hot&#8221;, I decided I&#8217;d tackle &#8220;White Bird&#8221;, by It&#8217;s A Beautiful Day. As I was messing around with the song, learning it, some of the other songs from that era were going through my head.<\/p>\n<p>And it seems a lot of my favorite oldies have &#8216;white&#8217; in the title.<\/p>\n<h2>There&#8217;s A White\u00a0Elephant In The Room<\/h2>\n<p>There&#8217;s &#8220;White Room&#8221;, &#8220;Whiter Shade Of Pale&#8221;, &#8220;Nights In White Satin&#8221;, and of course &#8220;White Hot&#8221;, &#8220;White Rabbit&#8221;, and &#8220;White Bird&#8221;. From a different era, I love, love, love Dido&#8217;s &#8220;White Flag&#8221;. I had the thought that I could record a CD of songs, all that had &#8216;white&#8217; in the titles. I quickly thought of two names for the CD, either &#8220;The White Album&#8221;, or &#8220;White Power&#8221;!<\/p>\n<p>Ok, maybe that&#8217;s not such a good idea. Scratch that one.<\/p>\n<p>As I was learning the arrangement to &#8220;White Bird&#8221;, I began to notice that &#8220;White Rabbit&#8221; and &#8220;White Bird&#8221; had similar tempos, and chords for one would work under the melody of the other, with minor (musical joke) changes.<\/p>\n<p>So, I started to toy with the idea of doing a mashup of the two. There were definitely some challenges.<\/p>\n<h2>Doing Covers<\/h2>\n<p>In my mind, there&#8217;s a couple of different ways to do a cover. You can either stay pretty close to the original version (like I did with &#8220;White Hot&#8221;, and &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/keithlivingston.com\/brandy\/\">Brandy<\/a>&#8220;), or you can go a different direction (like I did with &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/keithlivingston.com\/take-on-me-cover\/\">Take On Me<\/a>&#8221; and &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/keithlivingston.com\/are-you-ready-to-go\/\">Ready To Go<\/a>&#8220;).<\/p>\n<p>The danger of staying close to the original version is that you&#8217;re never going to be a better Looking Glass, than Looking Glass themselves. The danger of doing something different and unique is that people are familiar, and comfortable with the old way. If you&#8217;re going to change it, it better be something special.<\/p>\n<h2>Great Cover Versions<\/h2>\n<p>Now, some songs lend themselves to changing things up. UB40&#8217;s version of Neil Diamond&#8217;s &#8220;Red, Red Wine&#8221; is an example. Neil Diamond&#8217;s version is a presentation that&#8217;s more about the song, and less about the arrangement and orchestration. So, UB40 could radically change the arrangement and feel, and not screw up the song.<\/p>\n<p>Janis Joplin&#8217;s version of Kris Kristopherson&#8217;s &#8220;Me And Bobbie McGee&#8221;, Jimmy Hendrix&#8217;s version of Bob Dylan&#8217;s &#8220;All Along The Watchtower&#8221;, and Joe Cocker&#8217;s version of the Beatles&#8217; &#8220;With a Little Help From My Friends&#8221; are brilliant examples of taking a song and doing something radically different with it.<\/p>\n<h2>Iconic Songs And Arrangements<\/h2>\n<p>But for some songs, the arrangement is a big part of the song. Imagine the Ghostbuster&#8217;s theme without the horn riff in the front. Or, &#8220;I want A New Drug&#8221; without, basically, the same horns (lawsuits flew). Imagine Barracuda without the opening guitar riff!<\/p>\n<p>Imagine &#8220;Bohemian Rhapsody&#8221; without Freddy, &#8220;Stairway To Heaven&#8221; without Robert Plant, &#8220;Hello Dolly&#8221; without Louis Armstrong&#8217;s unmistakable growl. They&#8217;re Iconic.<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s the word I&#8217;m looking for &#8212; iconic.<\/p>\n<h2>The Challenges<\/h2>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-1507\" src=\"https:\/\/keithlivingston.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/White-Brabbitird.png\" alt=\"White Brabbitird\" width=\"325\" height=\"720\" \/>The more iconic a song or performance is, the tougher it is to cover that song. And &#8220;White Rabbit&#8221; has both an iconic intro and one of the most riveting vocals ever in a rock song. And &#8220;White Bird&#8221;, although perhaps not as famous a song, is unusual in its complex arrangement, beautiful harmonies, and distinctive instrumentation.<\/p>\n<p>Plus, that sucker is over 6 minutes long! Jefferson Airplane&#8217;s White Rabbit clocks in at about 2:30, so together, they&#8217;re almost 9 minutes long! So, slicing and dicing had to be done. In the old days, we would have done it with a razor blade (we did a lot with razor blades, back then).<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, it seemed like a massive challenge to me. Especially since I love both the songs, and didn&#8217;t want to screw them up!<\/p>\n<h2>The Process<\/h2>\n<p>So, I spent 3 or 4 weeks working out the arrangement. I ended up mostly going with the instrumentation from &#8220;White Rabbit&#8221;, under the melody of both &#8220;White Rabbit&#8221; and &#8220;White Bird&#8221;. Sometimes both vocal melodies are going. For the &#8220;White Bird&#8221; instrumental sections, the feel was changed and most of one long instrumental section left out. The other instrumental section stayed in (yes, it had two, long instrumentals). I stayed pretty close to the solos from both songs.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll just say the harmonies in &#8220;White Bird&#8221; were challenging. In the original, David LaFlame and Patti Santos wove beautiful harmonies throughout. It&#8217;s the choice of notes, and the way these two beautiful voices blend that makes it so special. I had to stay close enough to those choices to keep it real.<\/p>\n<p>How do you know when you&#8217;ve got it right? You don&#8217;t. But there&#8217;s a point when, after you&#8217;ve tweaked a thousand things, you start to get excited. You realize you&#8217;re really enjoying listening to the song, and there&#8217;s nothing major (another music joke) that bothers you about it.<\/p>\n<h2>White Brabbitird<\/h2>\n<p>I call it &#8220;White Brabbitird&#8221;. I made the cheesy graphic myself \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Keith<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The story behind the mashup that&#8217;s taking my apartment by storm! White Rabbit and White Bird combined.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82],"tags":[93,94,92,91],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Story Of White Brabbitird - Music From Keith Livingston<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/keithlivingston.com\/white-brabbitird\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Story Of White Brabbitird - Music From Keith Livingston\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The story behind the mashup that&#039;s taking my apartment by storm! 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