Do You try to replicate songs you learn exactly or put your own interpretation?

[lowrider]

I mostly don't have the chops to replicate the original.

And beside that, I usually do rock and roll songs that were done by a band

And beside that, I want to do it the way I want to do it. I change key, change chords, change lyrics, change order of verses, and I've even stuck in a verse from a diferent song.

I don't think it makes any diference, I'm just playing for fun.

[mike o]

I never try to replicate a song. If anything, we’ll mix it up a bit. Can be tempo, style, intros, outs, etc. My advice is to learn a song and present it in your style. We have taken a bunch of 80’s new wave synth songs and made them work acoustically. Bring a new twist on a well known song. People love it!

https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/...54538004855330
Sara smile. :55
Straight up. 5:05
True Spandau ballet. 11:40
The chain/Gold dust woman. 17:00
Landslide. 25:00

[Joe Beamish]

If it’s a guitar player that I want to learn from specifically, I try to replicate the arrangement or the solo. Usually, I can’t quite do it, or if I do, over time I will start to play it a bit differently without meaning to.

I find that learning exactly how a player does something gives me new things to consider in playing my own stuff. Bert Jansch is a perfect example of someone whose arrangements are great to learn, although I myself would not generally perform them as he created them. But I might use those voicings or ideas in other places.

[slimey]

I think there's certain songs where you have to get a recognizable hook or riff down. "Here come the Sun " by George Harrison would be a good example.
But I dislike a cover bands or musicians that play songs note for note identical to the original. It shows none of their personality or musical ideas.
I've heard covers that I prefer to the original because of individual interpretations for a great original .

[Joe Beamish]

Originally Posted by slimey

I think there's certain songs where you have to get a recognizable hook or riff down. "Here come the Sun " by George Harrison would be a good example.
But I dislike a cover bands or musicians that play songs note for note identical to the original. It shows none of their personality or musical ideas.
I've heard covers that I prefer to the original because of individual interpretations for a great original .

The Richie Havens cover of Here Comes the Sun is one of the two or three best covers of Beatle songs I can think of. He totally changes it, abandons the trademark D shape arrangement. I prefer it to the Beatles version.

[Charlie Bernstein]

Not that you need another answer, but there you are, and here I am:

I do like parroting a riff or two, but I'm a songwriter first.* Singing and playing are secondary, not by choice but by wiring. So when I play a cover, I rewrite it to fit my singing and playing styles, which aren't very advanced but are distinctive. And I try to keep the song's spirit.

The hardest part for me is memorizing, so I only learn a cover if I really love it.** When I want to cover a tune, the first thing I do is go to Wiki to find out who wrote it and the earliest recorded version.

I find that version, often on YouTube, and listen a few times. For instance, lots of us love how Taj Mahal, Jesse Ed Davis, and Duane Allman did "Statesboro Blues." But how many of us bother to listen to Blind Willie McTell? Though I might end up stealing more from Taj, Jesse, and Duane than from Willie, at least I have some grounding to work from.

Anyhow, the next step is to start working on it, sometimes one line and one bar at at time. Sometimes they're unrecognizable by the time I'm done. For instance, if it weren't for the opening line "I was broke in Aberdeen," no one would know I was playing Bukka White's "Aberdeen Mississippi Blues." Again, the song's spirit, my style.

Once I have a first draft, I dig into practicing it, making changes as I go. I have to practice songs hundreds of times before I'm ready to perform them. So you can see why I'm selective.

---------------

* You can hear a few examples here: Dreadnot

** And you can see me do covers of "Viola Lee Blues" and "Mercury Blues" here: Yazoo's Blues

[Charlie Bernstein]

Originally Posted by Joe Beamish

If it’s a guitar player that I want to learn from specifically, I try to replicate the arrangement or the solo. Usually, I can’t quite do it, or if I do, over time I will start to play it a bit differently without meaning to. . . .

In the early seventies I bought Stephan Grossman's how-to-play-ragtime book. I never made sense of it, but he said something in it that's always stuck with me: Don't worry about sounding too much like the artist you're copying. You won't.

[Charlie Bernstein]

Originally Posted by Joe Beamish

The Richie Havens cover of Here Comes the Sun is one of the two or three best covers of Beatle songs I can think of. He totally changes it, abandons the trademark D shape arrangement. I prefer it to the Beatles version.

And Nina Simone, who covered lots of Beatles songs, did a magical piano arrangement: Nina

She throws out the guitars but holds tight both her own style and the spirit of the song.

[Joe Beamish]

I like Nina Simone‘s music, but that particular version feels almost like a single note going for the whole song. Needs a break or something. But the mood is nice.

[Charlie Bernstein]

Originally Posted by Joe Beamish

I like Nina Simone‘s music, but that particular version feels almost like a single note going for the whole song. Needs a break or something. But the mood is nice.

Yeah, that's what I meant about holding to her own style. Stretching things out was a big part of her schtick, like Bettye LaVette. As an old Deadhead, I get a kick out of it, but I know it can wear thin. There's something to be said for getting to the point.

[Glennwillow]

Not to belabor a point, but there is no "exact" in music unless a computer is making the music. It's not possible for the original group or band to make an identical copy of a recording of a song they've already recorded in the past. Nobody has to worry about parroting the original recording and looking or sounding like a copycat because in my experience it's not possible.

Most audiences, however, appreciate a band or act that can come reasonably close to the sound of the original recording. You don't have to mimic the original singer's voice and I don't think that's advisable. But a good representation of the instrumentation matters to many people. Again, in my experience you have to very good to get away with putting your own significant deviation and spin on a well known song and have very many in the audience appreciate it or even recognize it.

On the other hand it's fun to mess around with songs and see what you can do with them in the privacy of your own home. You can be your own judge.

- Glenn

[cdkrugjr]

Is it Blackbird? Fire and Rain? Wish You Were Here? Little Martha? I’m going to give it a go at replicating the original bits, at least the ones that are audible in the recording.

For example, in Helplessly Hoping, the Travis picking pattern is flubbed. In Steve and Dave’s Big Book of Weird Tunings (Best of CSN, Guitar Recorded Versions) the transcription faithfully includes the flub. I omit the flub…

Wreck of the Ed Fitz, I want the feel of Punch Brothers, rather than of GL, so doing some things that are more inspired by Thiele’s Mando playing than anything Lightfoot ever came up with.

Arthur McBride? Not even close. Paul Brady is a HIGH tenor, even into his ‘70s, so while I COULD play his guitar bits, there’s about zero chance of my hitting his notes. . . . Being a guitar player, this means naturally I want a Baritone so I can play his arrangement down a fifth . . .

Is it by the Eagles? Yeah, I’m just strumming Cowboy Chords here . . .

[KevWind]

Let me start with I can see value in both approaches trying to "replicate" as best you can for learnings sake as well as "make it your own" for performance sake ........ I also do not see it as having to be only one or the other.

Myself I never learned to read music and have always struggled with music theory and it's relationship to guitar .. Now I have a fairly decent ear but I would say that I do not play by ear so much as play by feel And so what I am best at is playing a cover to replicate how the original makes me feel, if not a replication of all the specific notes of the original

If I am performing I try to make any cover I do at least recognizable of the original, (in other words I do not intentionally try to "make it my own" - (such that it becomes unrecognizable) and so I try to replicate the chord progression and more or less the timing/cadence etc., but admittedly I do not replicate the entire guitar notes being played simply because it do not have the skill set to do so ..
I have in the last decade or so tried to incorporate some of the same or very similar specific melodic note riffs .
But as I said what I always try to do, is try to make my cover authentic to how the original made made/makes me feel . Now if that is a cop out from learning to replicate the song, so be it. But it works for me , and my audience has never complained ....

[Robin, Wales]

I definitely arrange my own versions of songs (and tunes). I don't have the fingers (literally!) or skills to "replicate", So I "steal" ideas and kicks etc instead. I will often listen to lots of versions of a song, not just the original, to see what I can get from them.

Also I am usually singing in a different key and using different phrasing.

I like tribute bands - but that's just not me.

[leew3]

I typically shoot for 'close enough' so any audience can recognize the song I'm covering. I've learning over many years that most anything I play is going to sound like me. At a winery gig last year a young woman came up after our last set to tell us that she'd seen the Eagles 'four times and you guys sound just like them' She'd had a LOT of wine that night if Rokdog and I on acoustic instruments sounded 'just like them' but we all had a good time!