Drum Cover – Paramore, “That’s What You Get”

by Omar on February 4, 2011

in drum cover

Welcome to another drum cover edition of The Paradiddler.  This time we’re covering “That’s What You Get” from Paramore, the unplugged version.

This is a little different from previous covers (well, significantly different, as you’ll see).  But first, a brief on how I came to choose this song.

A few short years ago, the Twilight saga took the world by storm.  Not only the movies, but the music was pretty good as well.  On the original Twilight soundtrack, I heard a soaring, beautiful voice that I had never heard before.  It was Paramore’s Hayley Williams, and the song was “Decode”.  The song rocks; a nice, fresh deviation from the typical stuff I listen to.  I thought maybe I’d cover the song someday, but in the meantime, I’d just listen.  🙂

Fast-forward to a few months ago, and I catch Paramore performing an ‘unplugged’ show on the Palladia channel.  It actually originally aired on MTV back in the Fall of 2009.  It was a great performance.  Of particular note to me was Zac Farro’s drum kit – just a two piece!  He was only using the bass and snare drum, with hi-hats and one cymbal.  He also was using brushes instead of sticks.  He made it all work with this simple setup – I was impressed.

One of my wife and I’s favorite songs from the show was “That’s What You Get”, so much so that I decided to cover the song.  I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to cover a song from a more modern group, that was currently hip.  Anyway, one thing I like to do is hit up YouTube and see others covering the same song.  Wow, what I found was a boat-load of covers for this song!  Popular indeed!  Of course, this song came out on Paramore’s Riot! back in 2007, so there has been plenty of time for people to cover it.  I had to think of a way to make my cover a little different.

I went back and viewed the unplugged performance, and it hit me that I could just set up my kit the same way Zac Farro did, and cover the acoustic version of the song.  I didn’t find anyone on YouTube covering it that way, so I decided that that was the course I would take.  I thought it would be a nice challenge to play with such a small setup, since I’m used to having several shells in front of me.

Even though Farro used brushes for his performance, I wasn’t going that route.  I have the Ultra-Tone quiet sticks from Lidwish Soulutions, which purport to lower the volume of your drumming by about 40% without using any kind of silencing on the kit itself.  I’m also using the Ultra-Tone bass drum beater as well.  As you see in the video, I am able to forgo the bulky Vic Firth isolation headphones and use regular, almost invisible stereo earphones to hear the song because the Ultra-Tones reduce the noise of the drums enough for me to comfortably hear the music.  An aesthetic benefit!

As I was practicing the song, I was wondering how else I could make the video different.  The unplugged show was more of an intimate setting, not as loud, so I wanted to imitate that in some way.  It occurred to me then that I could just move my kit in front of the fireplace in the living room and play with the fire going.  That did present another challenge, though.  Since I wanted the fire to be part of the video, I knew I was going to run into the problem of lighting.  I didn’t want there to be too much light in the room to drown out the fire’s light.  But if I used too little light, the camcorder may not be able to compensate and record a clean video, and the result may end up too grainy.  So I experimented with different lighting ideas and camera settings.

I was determined to use as little light as I could get away with that the camcorder could handle.  I set the camera to record at its highest resolution (which I always do anyway).  I also set it to its ‘night’ setting, so it would be more sensitive to light.  The living room light had to be off, but I turned on lights from surrounding rooms.  I also used the LCD TV by pausing a Blu-Ray movie on a bright scene (the movie was Avatar, by the way).  The ending result was a video that displays a somewhat intimate, quiet setting, like, well, an unplugged performance!  Just the effect I wanted.

I did record several other angles to mimic a multi-camera view of the performance.  There were certain parts of the song where I wanted to switch views to emphasize some pattern, but in all of those shots those particular views did not come out like I wanted them to.  So I ended up using only one view, and enhancing the video with a few special effects.  Sometimes the effects give the impression of multiple cameras, so that’s another way of getting your ‘multiple views’, as it were.  Sometimes in editing you have to make sacrifices for the benefit of the final product!

And on a more personal note, this song was requested by my wife, so I was very happy to oblige!  This performance is dedicated to her.

So I hope you enjoy the video!  Of course, please leave your comments, questions, and the like below.  Some big-time favorites will be coming soon (hopefully), with a few more experiments that I’ll incorporate.  Until then, happy viewing, and happy drumming!

{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }

John October 2, 2011 at 1:34 am

Hi,

I’m very interested in the Lidwish sticks and bass beater. The beater you were using, was it the one with one pad or 2 pads? And how did it feel?

Many Thanks.

Reply

Omar October 2, 2011 at 8:25 am

Hi John.

The beater I’m using had one pad. The beater feels different than the typical beater because it is very light, so you may have to adjust your pedal for it to feel right to you. 🙂

Reply

Kyle Colgan February 26, 2011 at 3:09 pm

Great performance and article! I sent this e-mail to my instructor and I’m going to learn this song. I read up on the band, Paramore, they are pretty good. Keep up the good work!!!

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Mike @ FastDrumSkills.Com February 13, 2011 at 6:58 pm

Excellent job Omar! I’m gonna do an article about you.

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