"Cover" version performed over original recording

What’s the right way to add a standalone recording for a (sort of) cover version of a song that features a musician playing along with the original artist’s recording?

I’d like to add Megadeth Tornado of Souls --- HS Talent show 2013 - YouTube. It features Kenny Olsen - MusicBrainz playing guitar over what I think is Recording “Tornado of Souls” by Megadeth - MusicBrainz (and absolutely nailing the solo, wow – a bit more at https://societyofrock.com/megadeth-fan-destroys-tornado-of-souls-solo-at-school-talent-show/).

If the original recording weren’t included at all, this would be straightforward: I’d credit Olsen with the recording and use Relationship Type / Performance - MusicBrainz with the “cover” attribute to link it to Song “Tornado of Souls” - MusicBrainz.

If this should be treated as a remix, then I’d credit Megadeth with the recording and probably give it a title like Tornado of Souls (Kenny Olsen talent show cover). I guess that I’d use Relationship Type / Instrument - MusicBrainz to credit Olsen. That doesn’t really seem right to me, though.

I think my preference is to use the first approach that I described (crediting it to Olsen since his performance feels like it’s at the center of the recording), maybe with the name “Tornado of Souls” and a “2013 talent show” disambiguation (or ETI?), and then add another relationship (perhaps Relationship Type / Samples material - MusicBrainz) to link it to the Megadeth recording.

Does that seem reasonable, or is there a better way of handling this? If there are existing examples of similar recordings, I’d like to be consistent with them.

(I have no interest in complicating this further by adding it as a release, fortunately.)

1 Like

I don’t have an answer, but I do have some other examples. this one I just added as it was credited on Bandcamp.

for clarity, Tarby is the artist being covered, and it’s a cover of the linked release

edit: I also just added the works


another artist I’ve been wanting to document properly is The8BitDrummer; he livestreams himself playing drums along with user-submitted YouTube videos, usually without knowing what he’s playing ahead of time. for example, Through the Tables and Memes. I don’t believe any of these videos are in MusicBrainz yet tho…


calling it a remix almost feels right to me… I almost wonder if these should be credited like covers while also relating it to the original recording with a remix relationship…

2 Likes