Making songs my own way

[BluesBelly]

If you tune to any popular radio station you will hear songs that have been going around for years, some written in the 1930's or so, and have been covered in some fashion by many different artists doing their renditions. Blues music comes to mind and two artitists that were at the top of the "I'm dong it my way" heap are Johny Rivers and Eric Claption whose songs sometimes sounded very little like the originals but were good on their own merits.

I enjoy making my own music. It awakens the artist in me. Anyone can do a cover but originality only comes once.

Blues

[mchalebk]

Here's where the OP lost me: "I won't have to find exact chords played in original"

As others have mentioned, it is fine to change chords to a song. However, this excerpt from the original post makes it seem like you want to change it to chords that get the job done, instead of taking the time and trouble to learn the actual chords. It's one thing to make a song your own because you're genuinely inspired to rearrange it. It's quite another to claim you're making it your own when, in reality, you don't want to invest the time and energy into learning the original arrangement (not saying that's what you're doing, but your original post makes it seem that way).

I agree strongly with those who would suggest that you learn to play the song the way it was originally performed first. Then, if you are still moved to re-arrange it, go for it. At least it won't be because you can't play it or can't be bothered to play it like it was originally performed.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by mchalebk

Here's where the OP lost me: "I won't have to find exact chords played in original"

As others have mentioned, it is fine to change chords to a song. However, this excerpt from the original post makes it seem like you want to change it to chords that get the job done, instead of taking the time and trouble to learn the actual chords. It's one thing to make a song your own because you're genuinely inspired to rearrange it. It's quite another to claim you're making it your own when, in reality, you don't want to invest the time and energy into learning the original arrangement (not saying that's what you're doing, but your original post makes it seem that way).

I agree strongly with those who would suggest that you learn to play the song the way it was originally performed first. Then, if you are still moved to re-arrange it, go for it. At least it won't be because you can't play it or can't be bothered to play it like it was originally performed.

I fully agree with this post.

In one way I like the OP's attitude, that he's keen to experiment and thinks he can trust his ear to find good-sounding chords. At the same time it's suspicious that - if his ear is that good - he's reluctant to work out the original chords; which would certainly save a lot of time in putting a cover together. (Why try to improve on what was clearly a successful recipe - successful both artistically and commercially? Unless you honestly believe you have a better idea?)

BTW, in my band, we cover a few Dylan songs, and the singer (long ago) changed one chord in each song, because he thought his ideas were better than Mr Zimmerman's. I know Dylan is always re-arranging his own songs, so no quarrel with the principle. But I grit my teeth every time I have to play those wrong chords (even though they work in their own way). And that's just one new chord in each song.
I guess my view is: if you like a song so much you want to learn it - why do you then want to change it? If you don't like it as it is - why not find a song you do like 100%? Or why not just write your own song in the first place?

[justadam]

It's not that I'm lazy to learn exact chords - I've done it for past three years learning note for note. John Mayer stuff as an example.
I was just inspired by this cover : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPU8V-nvUEk
and I won't judge whether it is better than original or if original as well as cover are bad. It is that I just felt inspired by such attitude to remaking music but of course I can rely on campfire chords all the time.
I don't think he used same exact chords in his cover...
I think that original source of my question is that sometimes I just take guitar on my lap and from memory I try to play some song and fit chords that suit my voice (very often it is lower than original). Still when I check what I did with ultimate-guitar.com chords - they vary. Although I think that mine sounds good anyway... ehh Im confused

[mchalebk]

"Still when I check what I did with ultimate-guitar.com chords - they vary."

Important point to note: the vast majority of tab/chord sites (ultimate-guitar.com included) are rarely close to the correct chords. As far as I can tell, most of them are done by fairly inexperienced guitarists who want to share their inexperience with the world. Seriously. (Okay, maybe that's not their goal, but it's what they're doing.) Even simple songs tend to have horrendous inaccuracies. So, don't judge your arrangements by online websites.

[ek_jeep0]

The first couple of seasons of "Weeds" had a lot of versions of this song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_2lGkEU4Xs

in there intro in a lot of different stlyes and Languages.

In my opinion I thought it was cool. So go for it

[Hotspur]

Originally Posted by justadam

It's not that I'm lazy to learn exact chords - I've done it for past three years learning note for note. John Mayer stuff as an example.
I was just inspired by this cover : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPU8V-nvUEk
and I won't judge whether it is better than original or if original as well as cover are bad. It is that I just felt inspired by such attitude to remaking music but of course I can rely on campfire chords all the time.

I think there's a bit of language hiccup going on, because I'm having a hard time understanding some of what you mean.

Because your post makes it sound like you think that this cover is more complex than the original, harmonically. It's not. It's much simpler. He's cut the number of chords in half.

It's not a question of "cowboy chords" or not.

Without commenting on the quality of that cover or the original song, I will say a couple of things:

That cover is a gimmick. It has almost nothing except for the lyrics and a few parts of the melody in common with the original song. Nothing wrong with that but it gets to the point a couple people have raised: what are you goals?

I suspect his goal was to put something out that would get more hits and drive people towards his original music. To that extent, perhaps this is successful, I can't comment. Because there are interesting things about him on display here, although I tend to think they get washed over by the gag.

Generally, I think the results would likely have been much more interesting if he had taken the energy he put into this song and created an original song. I mean, heck, he's three quarters of the way there already. (In fact, a lot of songwriters end up writing songs by just changing and changing and changing an existing song that gets stuck in their head until it's not recognizable anymore. Feels like he started that process and stopped before finishing).

But, again, there's a little joke here. And maybe he really likes that joke. I dunno.

So when you're doing this sort of thing, what are you goals?

[Bern]

Originally Posted by mchalebk

I agree strongly with those who would suggest that you learn to play the song the way it was originally performed first. Then, if you are still moved to re-arrange it, go for it. At least it won't be because you can't play it or can't be bothered to play it like it was originally performed.

I strongly agree...