ideas for a cover song

what bands do all of you like ? what style of music do you play?

Without knowing anything about you or your band its impossible to recommend songs.

What I would suggest, however, is a compromise. If you are going to have a band work it is important that you all learn how to agree, even if that means compromising.

So my best suggestion, is each take a song you want to cover, and each learn them all. That way, each member of the band gets the song they want, AND you have three or four new songs to play in total.

Pete

What are your favorite songs to listen to? Might be a starting point.

The other thing you're going to have to thrash out between yourselves, once you've decided which song(s) to cover is how are you going to do it?

What will band dynamics allow? Do you have two guitarists? What parts are they going to play? That's a tricky one if there is only one guitar part on the recording....

Are you going to do a note-for-note copy or put your own stamp on it? Look at what Hendrix did with "All Along The Watchtower" or Joe Cocker did to "Little Help From My Friends" - those songs became classics because of the way they were so different from the originals.

It's a lot of fun doing a song your own way - in the pub, I used to play an acoustic version of "Paranoid" - I'd play rhythm, my friend played lead. I messed around with the chords a lot....eventually I put "my" chords to a totally different song, an original!

But yeah, more information would help.....

:D :D :D

Vic

Start with TRGuitar's advice and work from there. Don't argue, just do what ever whoever wants. If it doesn't work, skip it. If it clicks, work on it.

Personal experience: one band did a really wierd assortment of covers (Black Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf", Bill Wither's "Aint No Sunshine", Leslie Gore's "It's My Party and I'll Cry If I Want To", Concrete Blond's "Bloodletting") and we did hard rock versions of them all.
Another band did stuf I never heard of, all like straight ahead rock'n'roll.
Another band did stuff that someone in the band (not me) thought would be "real crowd pleasers". We were terrible, and didn't last long. The most ridiculous thing about that situation, was that I knew everyone in the band. We were picking songs from albums that no one in the band had.

You've got to like what you do.

If you want put your own spin on the songs I would suggest not only looking at bands that you are fans of but going outside of your usual style. I've heard awesome covers of everything from Temptations to Justin Timberlakes "Cry me a River". Its fun to be creative with covers and do something unexpected. Don't be afraid to branch way out.

Paul

Thanks for all the great ideas. We are thinking about playing Red Hot Chili Peppers's "by the way" or "fortune faded". We've also thought about some Tool or Soundgarden songs.

I guess it all depends on your current guitar ability! Only the chorus of Red hot chili peppers "by the way" it is quite easy, the verse is all muffled sixteen notes with some strange funky accents so it is not that easy to play..

If you've started from a year or so and you're into rock/grunge you could try some Nirvana like "About a girl" or "polly"

anyway good luck

Matteo

Burning Love by the big E. This may sound dumb but I would love to hear Metallica's version of that tune.

I've been in lots of cover bands over the years. The songs you want are going to depend on the band's goals. Here are some of the approaches you can take for different goals...

Goal: Gig a lot
Approach: You get a lot of gigs by playing music a lot of people want to hear. So hit the clubs you want to play, and hit them on busy nights. Write down the songs other bands are playing. If 3 or 4 bands are playing the same tune to the crowd, they're doing it because it's A) a favorite of the crowd, or B) a favorite of the bar owner. You want to play those.

Goal: Make money
Approach: You make money by playing music people want to pay for. There's a catch - it's not your listeners who pay for it, it's the music buyer (the local park director, the mother of the bride, etc) that has the final say. Here you have three choices.

A) Kind of what you'd do for the gig a lot goal - you should be going to outdoor festivals and wedding receptions, which are the gigs that pay well. Remember that you may not like some of the songs you MUST play to get top-dollar gigs (Hava Nagila, Chicken Dance, etc). Learn 'em anyway and play them well.

B) Take the club approach above, but pay attention to which artists the bands are covering. If they do 20-30 different tunes by a single band - Beatles, Stones, Milli Vanilli, whoever - consider a tribute band. Before you learn 4 albums worth of stuff note-for-note (and it'll have to be note-for-note for a tribute band), make sure there isn't already an existing tribute band in your market - most towns don't need two KISS clones.

C) Hit the outside festivals and look for the genre bands. Find one that interests you, then start looking up "Top 10" lists for that genre. 50s bands, 60s-70s Motown bands, and Surf bands... if you're good at a single (and narrow) genre, you can probably find work.

Goal: Have a good time
Approach: Each member takes a turn adding a tune to the list. If you're just doing it for fun, those are the tunes - you'll get your share. Besides, learning songs you don't like is essential if you eventually want to play in a money band, so get used to it (I've played "Tie a Yellow Ribbon" a lot more than it deserves)

Now if you want to have fun AND gig once in a while, you need to tweak that approach a bit. That's because you need sets... about 40-60% must be up-tempo tunes that get people's attention, and get them dancing - people dancing get thirsty, thirsty patrons buy drinks, and bands that sell drinks get gigs. So after you have your list of everyone's suggestions, arrange them in blocks of 9-12 tunes, making sure that the first and last 3 in each set (2 if they're 5 min+ tunes) are fast ones. If all your tunes are slow ballads, you'll never get out of the basement. Band members who have slow tunes cut from the list should get first crack at naming up-tempo replacements.

And if you want to have fun AND make money, adjust your attitude. If music is your income, then it's your job... every job has aspects you won't like, but must do anyway. Take satisfaction from your musicianship and stage presentation when you have to play the ones you'd rather not.

The Candyman can---Sammie Davis Jr

make a metal version of it :D