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I've been thinking... I almost never learn my favorite songs and generally dislike covers of them as well... Anyone else...? I mean It's not like I am against covers, I've done plenty of cover gigs... but I've never played songs I really LOVE to listen to in any of them.. I mean sure there are the times when you are playing and the song comes to you and you start playing it but that isn't actually learning the song... it's more of a passing thought...

And sure there are songs I think would be fun to record/play out with that would be covers but those are more in a songs I like to play vs listen to.. or am I just crazy?

Yes? I love playing my favourite songs more than anything.

Yes! But I do the same thing, as does my bass teacher. I'll play songs that I like, not love. My bass teacher says it's to 'preserve' the song, for lack of a better word.

For covers, it's fun to take a song that I think is flawed, in that there are tiny bits I would've done differently, then fixing it.

in my past bands that played covers i've rather erred in the other direction, insisting on playing the music i loved despite its relative lack of appeal to typical audiences; e.g. in the late 70s, when everybody wanted KISS, disco, or punk i obdurately insisted on playing 15-minute Neil Young and Grateful Dead jams. if there's something i really love, i'll at least TRY to play it...i've split the keyboard on my Casio synth so i can play the Hammond bass and the piano ostinato on "Samskeyti" by Sigur Ros at once. in future stuff i don't know what i'm going to do with covers...my main intent is to do original material, so covers would have to fit with the originals. i might do one or more genre projects as well, a blues thing or a gypsy jazz thing, and in that case the material would have to fit the concept. but of course i'm going to try to figure out how to play my favorite songs...i want to know what makes me like them so much. i transcribed the whole horn arrangement to "Self-Portrait in Three Colors" by Mingus because i had to know how he made it feel like that.

I stumble upon parts of songs here and there but covers do not interest me in the least.
I have never learned any song, start to finish, other than my own.

Haki wrote:For covers, it's fun to take a song that I think is flawed, in that there are tiny bits I would've done differently, then fixing it.

Yeah, I like covering songs that give me something to work with. Not necessarily flawed, but just material that could be interpreted differently. With my favorite songs, I like to play them, almost as a more involved way of listening to them. I don't want to cover them our play them in any sort of official way though.

I don't necessarily play my absolute favorite songs either because I would feel like a fool in doing so. Like I couldn't even touch the original.

kaboom wrote: With my favorite songs, I like to play them, almost as a more involved way of listening to them.

this. even if you don't play it for anyone else, you'll usually get a lot out of learning it.


on a similar topic, anyone notice a surprising amount of acoustic covers of gazey tracks on youtube? i just don't understand.

Learning how to play a favourite song destroys it for me, and the song is never the same again. I stopped after I ruined so many amazing songs. Every time I would hear it I go "Oh... there's that insanely beautiful guitar line, and I know it. Now it doersn't seem as beautiful"

i think if i learned to play/sing all the songs i like i couldn't make it through due to the sheer tears of joy from thinking about them.



folk-punk rly hits me hard, guys.

wsas3 wrote:Learning how to play a favourite song destroys it for me, and the song is never the same again. I stopped after I ruined so many amazing songs. Every time I would hear it I go "Oh... there's that insanely beautiful guitar line, and I know it. Now it doersn't seem as beautiful"

For me it makes it more beautiful. Being able to play it and mess around with it only makes a good song better for me. The songs that make me cry when I listen to them are the ones I can jam for half an hour by myself and love every second.

I always learn the intros and solos from my favourite songs, and then nothing else.

Literally the only song I know all the way through that I haven't written is Neil Young's "Ohio".

No real reasoning behind that. Always got distracted by the other music I could be playing.

I can play a fair bit of "The Past Recedes" by John Frusciante as well. And I'm sure I could probably play any Mark Lanegan song if you gave me 10 minutes.

well, i reckon that part of my passion for learning songs that i like had something to do with my inability to write a song that was worth a shit until i'd been playing for close to fifteen years. scales would have gotten boring by then.

Learning songs is a good practice. It teaches you the "vocabulary" of a style or artist.

I wish I learned more complete songs instead of just the bits and pieces that I like most.