SOS | ABBA | Full Band Cover

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Half a century after their heyday, the sound of @OfficialABBA has never been replicated by anyone else and the band remains a genre unto itself. Thanks to vocal harmonies by Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad's, along with densely layered instrumentation by Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, ABBA are among the original pioneers of infusing complex studio production techniques with clever songwriting.

Having studied and covered songs by studio grandmasters like Brian Wilson, Steven Wilson, and Trent Reznor, I was eager to deconstruct one of my favorite ABBA songs, SOS, study their method, and produce a Gothik Serpent version of it. Unfortunately, most if not all the guitar/piano tabs and video tutorials I found online were wrong, as they didn't sound quite right. Thanks to @AureyoBoss, who provided isolated tracks on their channel, I was able to transcribe every note from every instrument from scratch. Ironically, this painstaking process took up the bulk of my time spent on this cover.

Some learnings I gained from this experience were from using small tempo changes to reinforce certain moods in parts of the song. I noticed from listening to the isolated tracks that the tempo speeds up by as much as 10 bpm during the chorus, for example. I also learned how a flanger effect, which ABBA used quite heavily, can thicken vocal harmonies when used subtly.

Overall, our rendition of this classic seeks to leverage modern software capabilities with more layers, denser instrumentation, and punchier drums and bass.

Check out the Gothik Serpent discography: gothikserpent.bandcamp.com

Kerwin Tsang - Guitars, bass, vocals, keys, mixing, video
Tau Bowyer - Drums, mastering, camera
Olivia Jean Kong - Vocals