The One I Love

First and foremost the drums are stolen from the original backing track. I found the drum track on YouTube posted by a company who has the impressive ability to isolate particular instruments from songs without access to the mixing decks!

It was this find that inspired me to cover this song at all as I wouldn't have dared to touch such a legend of song with just my shitty electronic drums. But the problem with having Bill Berry's original drum part as a basis for my cover is that it set the bar very high in terms of all the other instrumental parts.

I also discovered a web site in which certain R.E.M. songs have been stripped of certain instruments, The One I Love had been stripped of it's lead guitar part leaving the chorus bare and revealing some subtle parts that I was able to bring in to help fill out the sound. There is actually an electric guitar part playing a more jangly version of the verse riff behind the chorus but you can't hear it in the final mix. There is also an electric guitar echoing the bass notes in the chorus giving it a 12 string sound, again this can't be heard in the final mix. It felt like I'd finally been given the recipe book and only now did I know all the ingredients to be able to piece the song back together to sound something like the original.

Only in the overall tone of the electric guitar during the chorus and the solo do I fail miserably, but I put this down to equipment issues rather than lack of trying!