#1
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Is it just me?
I find I enjoy playing my own music rather than trying to play an existing song.
If I can master the existing song that is great but it just seems I enjoy my own and find it much easier to learn and play. Anyone else think that? I will say I study others songs and try to pick up techniques that can be incorporated into my music but don't necessarily want or try to learn the entire song, try very hard to make my music sound like my music and very hard to point to another song and say gee that sounds very similar to what I am playing. I think when a person plays something well known often times others will try to compare the two and I find that very distracting to both artist especially if the original artist does not do as good a job, it could cause hives for both.
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#2
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The last several years I have mainly composed and played my own music. I find that most satisfying at this time, but you need to spend the time composing some good tunes or you don't end up with much.
In the past I mostly played music from the classical guitar repertoire. That was very satisfying also since I just concentrated on learning the music compositions I liked the most.
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#3
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Quote:
I like both. I seldom knock off songs-of-others without significant personal arranging. And I deliberately arrange them to be fun to play and to listen to (and way more difficult than they started life). In fact they are so much fun to play/hear, we'll even repeat songs by request a couple sets later when asked. When I play solo or duo gigs, doing recognized songs is the price-tag I/we pay to get others to listen to my/our originals. My gigging partner and I do about a 3:1 or 4:1 covers to original ratio. |
#4
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I like to write my own stuff also, but when I do, technique wise, I'm always playing within my skill set. I need to play others music to "push the envelope" to develop my playing technique - which is a never ending experience.
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#5
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I am not much of a writer but have composed a few pieces that I like very much. I love playing others' music, but when I play one of my pieces, I feel so much more free.
Its as if I am not worried and tell myself "ehhh, who cares if I mess up. No one will know it was wrong".
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#6
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I do both, I write a lot but also play a large number of covers. I play open mics once or twice a week so I like to mix it up.
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#7
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I find that I'm almost exclusively playing and composing my own songs and I enjoy that a lot. there are instrumental covers which are "on the list" and if there's a gap in my own stuff, I turn every so often to work toward those.
What Barry said is valuable, sometimes those covers bring you along technically as you seek to master or closely replicate other's music. Healthy!
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#8
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I get enjoyment out of ALL of it.
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#9
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I have certainly found it a challenge to write fresh melodies that I like, or certainly I'm challenged to write complete songs, at any rate, though I work on them all the time, and in a variety of tunings.
I also enjoy taking an existing melody in order to come up with an interesting finger style arrangement I find the chords just come now. I wrote a beautiful arrangement for on my honour...that girl scout song, so very simple, but it moves wonderfully around the neck of the guitar. It's so much fun to play. I do find that songs in certain keys are easier for me to arrange in. I don't understand why, but I just go with it. Stuart |
#10
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Nope, it's not just you. I feel the same way too. I do learn some songs but it's not long before I crave doing my own creative thing for a while. When I learn songs, I usually put my own spin on it too.
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#11
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I agree with the others, it's both.
Think about why you wanted to play guitar in the first place. Almost certainly, you heard music you liked, that meant something. Probably there were guitars in it. Guitars sound cool and look cool. You want to do that! Obviously, the first thing you when you get your own guitar is try to sound like that. You have to copy when you learn, that's where it all comes from. It's outside of you first before it goes inside. At the same time, that music you heard DID mean something, somehow - before you ever knew it was about guitar, maybe. Something resonated with you. It's that meaning, that connection you want to get back to. So of course, you'll be messing around, experimenting, finding sounds you like that didn't (as far as you remember) come from someone else. Of course, it did all come from someone else. You can't learn any language without getting it from others. (We're all born with a capacity to learn language, but the one we actually learn comes from the environment. Music is the same, IMO.) But by the time you become a player, a whole lot of that language has been absorbed (just from listening your whole life), so you feel like it's your own. There are things you want to "say", you just have to practice the techniques to let you do it. There are some who find the compositions of others say all they want to say. Classical performers. You can't beat Bach, eg. But you get what he meant by playing his music. (You might apply your own sense of expression and interpretation, but no other alterations are permitted.) Guitar, however, belongs to a folk tradition, to "music of the people" (which covers everything from folk to blues to rock to jazz), where every performer puts their own individual stamp on what they play; that's expected. It doesn't have to mean totally original compositions, but it does mean copying songs your way - not slaving over some note-for-note reproduction of a famous recording. (What the hell is the point of that?)
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