Half A World Away

It wasn’t until I took this song on that I realised just how experimental it is. Musically it’s not that adventurous, just a series of minor chords, but they took a mediocre song and coloured it with instruments that were oustide of their comfort zone, like a harpsichord, violin and, to a lesser extent, the mandolin. 
It was also another obvious choice now that I’ve started playing mandolin. It’s a fairly basic mandolin part, no riffs just strumming along doing the same chords as the acoustic guitar. The bass part is basic too. But it’s the organs, harpsichord and, of course, Stipe’s vocals that make this song what it is.

And no, I don’t own a harpischord, violin or an organ! Sadly, these parts are software-generated, still created by me, just with my mouse not my bare hands...

Losing My Religion

I was never going to tackle this song as it is far too mainstream and well known but getting the mandolin meant it would be crazy to pass this up. At first I was going to just do a stripped down version of the song, even more stripped down than their unplugged version – literally just guitar and mandolin but in the end I decided to just go for it.
Though I wouldn’t say the mandolin part to Losing My Religion is particularly complex, it is certainly a lot more advanced and distinctive than some previous songs, Peter Buck’s mandolin skills have come a long way since You Are The Everything, for example. But it’s not just the mandolin that is firing on all cylinders in this song, Mike Mills’s bass part is also very distinctive and really fun to play.

This was never going to be one of my best covers as it’s a song that is universally known and so mine will always fall short. But you can’t expect me to get a mandolin and then not cover this song!

Mandolin Strum

This is actually one of my favourite unreleased instrumentals in that it is just so R.E.M! It must be something about the chord changes, the tempo or the use of mandolin and organ combined. 
I suppose the band considered it to be too R.E.M. and discarded it as they moved forward towards Automatic For The People. Or maybe Stipe just had trouble finding a vocal melody for it.
Instrumentally it’s all about the mandolin and acoustic guitar. There is no percussion, very limited use of bass guitar. I believe there are two mandolins playing in the verse although I just play the one part, plus I wanted to keep the verse shorter and the second mandolin was just an attempt at adding variation to the verse.
It took me quite some time to figure out the mandolin part to this song, it’s on par with Losing My Religion in terms of complexity and actually shares the first two notes with that song. The verse is basically just a riff around the A minor chord.

I think it’s become a bit of a stigma that R.E.M. write sad songs consisting of minor-chord changes. I think I recall Peter Buck saying the same thing at some point. On that basis this song has to be the pinacle of that observation as it’s full of them!

You Are The Everything

An obvious choice now that I have a mandolin. Aside from the riff at the end of the chorus (which is a little tricky for a beginner) this is a really easy song to play on mandolin, just four chords.
Not meaning to speak badly of Mr Buck but in the process of covering this song I’ve come to the opinion that this is a real “Ive just bought a mandolin and this is the first song I’ve written on it” type of song. It really is so sparse, but really quite beautiful. It has a lively bass part that doesn’t really follow the chords of the song at all, the mandolin and of course the accordian. The middle 8 features the only percussion in the entire song and some one finger piano work.