Yours...Or Someone Else's???

99.9% originals. Make that 99.99%,

My own 100% recently....I've been on a composing binge or is that a purge?

Usually 75% covers 25% mine

Here's a different take on the question that completely blows my little mind. I actually have people playing covers of my songs. It wasn't a big deal until I just thought of it. Seriously I need to start writing some better stuff if people are gonna play it.

I don't even remember how to play most of the stuff I wrote. :oops:

TRGuitar! Ain't THAT the truth!

Cat

Here's a different take on the question that completely blows my little mind. I actually have people playing covers of my songs. It wasn't a big deal until I just thought of it. Seriously I need to start writing some better stuff if people are gonna play it.

Not to worry -- we're making them better for you. :wink:

Here's a different take on the question that completely blows my little mind. I actually have people playing covers of my songs. It wasn't a big deal until I just thought of it. Seriously I need to start writing some better stuff if people are gonna play it.

We ALL stand on someone's shoulders!

Cat

To me, and this may sound silly, there's no difference between originals and covers. Every cover is an original by someone and while I may not have written it, I'm taking part in rewriting the arrangement whenever I play. Most guitar players are not songwriters, so they play other people's material. That's how most of us learn. Then the fun part comes when you start tinkering around with it and making it your own.

+1

I don't think that I've EVER played a piece of music the way the composer wrote it. In the early days I was attempting easy arrangements and exercises from beginner books, but making it all unrecognisable to the original author, through sheer incompetence... :shock: . Then somewhere along the way I realised that I wasn't really interested in learning other people's things note by note anyway. I'm possibly the only guitar player that never got around to learning 'smoke on the water' or 'stairway' or any other well known riffs, licks, etc...

So if I do play "somebody else's music", either with the guys or on my own, it always gets re-arranged anyway, just as David says. But most of my time is spent noodling around, improvising and making my own things up. It just seems to be what I prefer, and as I'm not in any hurry to do anything other than enjoy the journey it doesn't seem to matter how I travel... :wink:

There's an interesting parallel here with the folks I see over at the piano forum that I sometimes post at. It's much more common there to see members who have slavishly spent years ploughing through set scores, literally note by note. As they often play Classical stuff, the scores get treated more like 'sacred texts' than as themes, melodies, harmonies, etc that can be fiddled around with as you please. A perfectly respectable way to go about it, but it does seem to cause many of them a whole heap of stress when they can't play a 200 year old piece in exactly the same way that some virtuoso, or their teacher can. Weird stuff. Why beat your brains out? Keep climbing upwards, for sure, but enjoy the view all the way along I say. There are a few players there who see it more as being all 'music' that you can play in all manner of ways - and interestingly enough some of the less restrictive about it all are also guitar players. We do rule... :mrgreen:

Cheers,

Chris

....I'm about 50/50 now. Some days I only play other's and some days I only play my own stuff.
You took the words right out of my mouth....Thats me two! about 50/50 some days more some less!

Not someone else's. I play Green Day, Ramones and Beatles. Also sometimes, John Denver. And other misc. nice songs.

But, I don't think any of them is mine.

I find that playing OPCs is helping me to become a better musician. Today, I'd have to say I'm at 70% OPC and the balance is my own. Now the interesting thing is that my songs are FAR better than any OPC. :lol: My evil plan to take over the world of music is slowly coming together. :twisted: It wil be mine. Oh yes, it wil be mine. :lol:

I find that playing OPCs is helping me to become a better musician. Today, I'd have to say I'm at 70% OPC and the balance is my own. Now the interesting thing is that my songs are FAR better than any OPC. :lol: My evil plan to take over the world of music is slowly coming together. :twisted: It wil be mine. Oh yes, it wil be mine. :lol:

You'll be the first act I sign when I win the lottery and build the movie studio/music studio/record label company company that me and my 2 best friends have planned. The biggest flaw in my plan is that I never buy lottery tickets :?

I play my own stuff.
Because to call it other people's stuff . . . does them a disservice.

I play my own stuff.
Because to call it other people's stuff . . . does them a disservice.

True originals eh??? :wink: :P Yeah, I do the same thing. We should start a band!

I'm wondering how a poll would show how many play "other people's compositions" as opposed to their own stuff?

I'm of a mind that it's 90-plus percent "other people's stuff!

Cat

What's your own breakdown Cat?

Have you mostly played covers in the past, or a mixture? And is the balance now shifting in one direction or another?

Also, how do you draw the line? I mostly play rhythm guitar so, if I'm playing with the guys, I start off with the general aim of following "somebody else's" chord progression. But the same underlying progressions turn up again and again all over the place, and I usually alter them anyway. Sometimes that's because I lack the skills to make a change as written - or else it's because I just prefer a substitution anyway. And the strumming or picking pattern is whatever I feel like on the day, so "cover" doesn't seem to quite...um.. cover it... :roll: Maybe "Shadow", "Ghost" or "Distant Cousin" would be closer to the mark. :wink:

Cheers,

Chris

Wow! My 100th post!!!

Now...the comps are 100% mine.

Between '68 and about '78 I did covers...then two years in a Doors ripoff band...me doing guitar and vocals (Boy, THOSE were the days!). Then got into my jingles...still trying to flog my own comps along the way to The Labels, however unsuccessfully. Did some REAL covers with the bands that actually did 'em on sick fills/my wife's having a baby/I'm off to rehab absences. Went to Japan with Cheap Trick...a month with Maria Muldaur...couple of days with The Cars...Grassroots...quite a few "one hit wonders". Oh, yeah. Alice Cooper, too. In Japan came up with a contract with King Records...did heaps of jingles for them...and put together a Japanese tour of my own called "Desert Hits". (Got arrested in a geisha house and haven't had hot saki since!)

Out of the obvious necessity...did my own stuff in the jingles. Love/hate scene with that. But the hours and ease in my own studio were really comfortable...the remuneration even more comfortable...put together an ad agency...sold out to Westwood One and "decided to do something else" at 35...so I moved to Oz.

NOW (mind you, there's 20 years of me being a jackass in between)...we're putting together a state-of-the-art studio here just in from Coolangatta. (Nice place!) Started doing stuff for my old company (in Brussels) off and on these past five years. (Going back there in a few weeks for a ING Direct commercial which I JUST did and they quite like.)

Wife's into a law degree in Entertainment Mgmt...and I'm doing all I can to get my sons good enough to pull off what I've written for them. Same session people I always use in the USA...known them since late 70's. Oldest son is in uni into a Bach w/honors in Digital Engineering (He's published his own stuff already in Germany..."Viktim".)

So...yeah...I'm doing my own comps. Got four cover hits and six good fillers. The hooks in them I've had for donkey's years and was reticent to ever use them seeing as I might be killing Ye Golden Goose. So now I get my real (and most likely LAST) shot at it. I watched a new Aussie friend "get his kids out there" to GREAT success: Silverchair. Wow!

One too many maudlin days really missing "the muso crowd"...so I stumbled on this site. Hadn't been playing much...but went to a few Jam Clubs to get closer to the fire...hearing going in one ear...arthritis in my fingers. It's pretty good medicine for me to see what's been happening via GN while I've been out here in La La Land with the wallabies and taipans...watching my liver spots grow!

So, Chris...yeah. I do my own stuff! It's be just GREAT if I could turn my own kin into The New Partridge Family (kidding!)...

But...on a less-winded and serious note...if utter dedication prevails and you can come up with commercial music...more than a few folks I've met on GN could quit their day jobs.

Cat