Playing cover songs is a great way to learn your instrument and help you grow your
own style of play. While there is no substitute for writing, playing, and recording your own songs, listening to and choosing what other musicians have written is rewarding in its own way.
The challenge of finding out what exactly is the musical instrument guitar, bassist, drummer, etc. you’re doing makes you explore ways of playing your instrument that you may never have thought of. Or it allows you to learn a different way of approaching rhythm, structure, or phrasing that you may never have thought of. And then every time you write your own music, that knowledge will enhance your own creativity and
style, without necessarily stealing the other composer’s ideas.
I have a friend who is a very competent songwriter. He says that he has never played a cover
songs-that all he has played is original music. He’s a good musician, but I can’t help it.
feels that it would be much better if he ever had to stretch his skills and learn songs for
other bands. I think it would open his eyes to new ways of approaching his guitar and songwriting that he
i never dreamed
I mean, I prefer to play my own stuff too, but learning covers has helped me with my own.
write and play tremendously. And it can be fun and rewarding to learn and play a song
You love. It can even be enlightening to learn a song you don’t like. For example, I had to
learn “Walk on By” by Burt Bacharach. I never liked the song. It wasn’t until I had
learning it and playing it with a band I really appreciated the structure and brilliance
of Bacharach craftsmanship. Now I understand why other composers are in
such admiration for Burt Bacharach’s abilities to create pop songs.
Last weekend I saw “Some Kind of Monster”, the movie about Metallica. It’s
shows his approach to creating music, which, while similar to most other bands
approaches, it still gave me a new way of thinking about how to write songs. All of
his guitar riffs to get started and turn the riff into a song, to the technicality of reading the computer’s readout of the drum and discovering it was out of time on one part of the song.
My current band, Psychotronics, is in the style of a freeform jazz band (think Miles Davis,
coltrane) but it rocks and is essentially a rock band. My writing for psychotronics involves
creating riffs and we improvise them. Unstructured songs, with some exceptions, but
improvised performance in the style of jazz. Not even as structured as most jam bands.
I have heard. But I’m also putting together a cover band to play at weddings and anywhere else we can.
I work. I know that my game is improving and my writing is growing because I have to learn
a wide variety of songs that I would never have known.
So listen carefully and learn what other musicians are doing in their songs. what approach to do
take to play their instruments? You will find your ability to play and create will.
grow quickly by exercising the learning decks.