Get lucky
Playing cover songs is a superb approach to learn your instrument and help you improve your own kind of playing. As there is no replacement for writing, playing, and recording your own songs, hearing and picking out how many other musicians wrote is rewarding in their own way.
random access memories
The challenge of determining just what the guitar guitar, bassist, drummer, etc. do allows you to explore means of playing your instrument that you might never have considered. Or it allows you to learn a different means of approaching rhythm, structure or phrasing that may never have occurred to you personally. And then once you write your own music, that knowledge will enhance your own creativity and elegance, without necessarily stealing one other songwriter's ideas.
random access memories
I've a friend who's a really competent songwriter. He admits that he's never played cover songs-that all he's ever played is original music. He's an excellent musician but I can't help feel he would be considerably better if he had to stretch his abilities and learn songs by other artists. I think it would open his eyes to new ways to approach his guitar and songwriting he never dreamed of.
After all, I like playing my very own stuff too but learning covers has helped me with my very own writing and playing enormously. And it can be fun and rewarding to find out and play an audio lesson you love. It may be enlightening to find out an audio lesson you don't like. For example, I had to learn "Walk on By" by Burt Bacharach. I had been never partial to the song. It had not been until I had to learn it and play it with a band which i really appreciated the structure and brilliance of Bacharach's craftmanship. Now i understand why other songwriters are in such awe of Burt Bacharach's abilities in creating pop songs.
Over the 2009 weekend I watched "Some Sort of Monster," the movie about Metallica. It shows their way of creating music, which, although much like other bands approaches, still afflicted me with a new attitude of methods to write songs. Everything from their riffing on guitars to start and turning the riff right into a song, to the technicality of reading the pc readout of the snare drum and discovering that it absolutely was out of in time one part of the song.
My current band, psychotronics, is incorporated in the type of a totally free form jazz band (think Miles Davis, coltrane) but rocks and it is essentially a rockband. My writing for psychotronics involves creating riffs and we jam to them. Not structured songs, by incorporating exceptions, but improvisational playing in the jazz style. Not really as structured as most of the jam bands I've heard. But I'm also starting a cover band to play weddings and anwhere else we could gig. I am aware that my playing is improving and my writing is increasing since i need to learn a wide selection of songs I never would have known.
So listen closely and learn what other musicians are doing in their songs. What approach do they take to playing their instruments? You will discover your skill to play and create will grow rapidly through the exercise of learning covers.
random access memories
The challenge of determining just what the guitar guitar, bassist, drummer, etc. do allows you to explore means of playing your instrument that you might never have considered. Or it allows you to learn a different means of approaching rhythm, structure or phrasing that may never have occurred to you personally. And then once you write your own music, that knowledge will enhance your own creativity and elegance, without necessarily stealing one other songwriter's ideas.
random access memories
I've a friend who's a really competent songwriter. He admits that he's never played cover songs-that all he's ever played is original music. He's an excellent musician but I can't help feel he would be considerably better if he had to stretch his abilities and learn songs by other artists. I think it would open his eyes to new ways to approach his guitar and songwriting he never dreamed of.
After all, I like playing my very own stuff too but learning covers has helped me with my very own writing and playing enormously. And it can be fun and rewarding to find out and play an audio lesson you love. It may be enlightening to find out an audio lesson you don't like. For example, I had to learn "Walk on By" by Burt Bacharach. I had been never partial to the song. It had not been until I had to learn it and play it with a band which i really appreciated the structure and brilliance of Bacharach's craftmanship. Now i understand why other songwriters are in such awe of Burt Bacharach's abilities in creating pop songs.
Over the 2009 weekend I watched "Some Sort of Monster," the movie about Metallica. It shows their way of creating music, which, although much like other bands approaches, still afflicted me with a new attitude of methods to write songs. Everything from their riffing on guitars to start and turning the riff right into a song, to the technicality of reading the pc readout of the snare drum and discovering that it absolutely was out of in time one part of the song.
My current band, psychotronics, is incorporated in the type of a totally free form jazz band (think Miles Davis, coltrane) but rocks and it is essentially a rockband. My writing for psychotronics involves creating riffs and we jam to them. Not structured songs, by incorporating exceptions, but improvisational playing in the jazz style. Not really as structured as most of the jam bands I've heard. But I'm also starting a cover band to play weddings and anwhere else we could gig. I am aware that my playing is improving and my writing is increasing since i need to learn a wide selection of songs I never would have known.
So listen closely and learn what other musicians are doing in their songs. What approach do they take to playing their instruments? You will discover your skill to play and create will grow rapidly through the exercise of learning covers.