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ShaolinLambKiller wrote:
*cough cough*



Yea I've never been one for covers either. When I've looked at tabs for other people's songs, it's literally up on the computer and I run through the song on guitar looking at the tabs and that's it. Nothing to commit to memory. Basically just like Oh so that's how X was done or Y. I did that with some Cannibal Corpse songs when I was younger and Dillinger Escape Plan later on. I was always in the boat of I rather devote that time into writing my own songs.

Yeah I look up songs to get inspiration and see the different chords and progressions other bands use but I don't get any satisfaction covering songs.

if I remember a camera I need to take a picture of the set up at the space now.

90% of the time when I'm playing I'm just playing pentatonic licks and trying to come up with different riffs. I like to learn a riff or song every now and then but not to the level of the bedroom virtuosos on youtube. However, I never get myself to record or write down my riffs, so I never really get anywhere with original material either. Oh well.

I have so many riffs recorded on my phone it's a bit crazy. It's nice to bring them to band practice and lately we've been recording all of those as well, putting them on Soundcloud so each of us can go through them in during the week and add comments of what we like and dislike. It's especially since we've been writing by improvising around a few core ideas...record a handful of those and you start to get a good idea of what works and what doesn't and what might be missing.

depending on what I'm doing is if I write down tabs or not. Sometimes I do sometimes I don't. But I don't even keep a back catalogue of riffs to be used for anything. I utilize them immediately and start fresh each time I attack something. Maybe that's how I can write so much material for my projects. I'm thinking and mulling over things for months. If it's not coming together pretty quickly I scrap it and start on something else. I write based on gut feeling, if it feels right I play it and just naturally play something that could follow, if it works I roll with it and so on and so forth. then I'll play everything all the way through and decide on separate guitar lines, breaks and all that as I play it through to make sure I can. And that sometimes changes up while I'm recording if I get a great idea while recording I just go on and utilize it and continue on. Not a fan of playing material forever and trying to sculpt it into some perfection that honestly will only sound perfect to you and possibly something you threw together as filler for a set gets more requests and interest.

Covers can be really rad. They can also be boring and uninspired. The same is true for originals.

There's a local band around here that sound exactly like The Mars Volta, and that's almost as lame as being a TMV cover band, you know? (even though they're ferocious musicians and pretty nice dudes).

I'm okay with bands sounding just like certain bands that inspired me. There are never enough Bolt Thrower wannabes.

We covered a Cure song for a split 7" with Portland's superlative Rabbits.

I like it.

ShaolinLambKiller wrote:I'm okay with bands sounding just like certain bands that inspired me. There are never enough Bolt Thrower wannabes.

I dunno man, I just feel like if you're putting music out there you have a certain responsibility to make it sound, you know, different enough that it's worth someone's time.

Of course, I've made some seriously shitty music that doesn't sound like a lot of other people's stuff, so.

I think it's ok to wear your influences on your sleeve as long as you have more than one haha. I think it's more important to make music that is good, rather than than unique, technical, progressive, etc. those are all good things but people loose sight of just making good old fashioned quality tunes. See- about every prog band ever.

I remember seeing some little cartoon that someone posted online about the different types of covers out there. I think it covered all the bases pretty well in that it showed a lot of covers are pretty uninspired because they either just played the song as is or just do a weird genre change in a failed attempt to make it different. The "best" type of cover is one where you basically make the song your own and thus trot out all along the watch tower as the example.

I have no problem with bands doing covers live as it is fun to hear the song but when recording that is when you should be doing something extra otherwise it gets pretty dull.

The same goes for playing like your influences. If you are just going to play exactly like another band, then why don't I just listen to that other band. I think there are two major versions of this, old and new. New is when the new genre comes out and you have the wave of bands trying to copy the sound, see djent or deathcore. Old is when a band is trying to relive a genre thats been around for a while like stoner rock or psychedelic rock where a lot of the time there is a checklist that the band follows when buying gear and song structure. Some of the bands that fall under these descriptions can still be fun to listen to but I find they often become boring.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBsfuN7kefE[/youtube]

Not sure where this one falls..... somewhere between sounding just like the original and making it your own.

Its way better than the original. I saw them play it as an encore -- magical.

AxAxSxS wrote:I think it's ok to wear your influences on your sleeve as long as you have more than one haha. I think it's more important to make music that is good, rather than than unique, technical, progressive, etc. those are all good things but people loose sight of just making good old fashioned quality tunes. See- about every prog band ever.

I'm all about this. One of the main reasons I've become disinterested in death metal is all the new bands just sound like blasterbation to me. I need some tune or groove to come back for another listen...

Like this:
http://gravecrusher.bandcamp.com/

That's pretty tasty. I'm so far removed from death metal at this point that it's really nice to listen to the straightforward stuff once in a while.

I guess the same goes true for hardcore and, uh, pretty much any 'normal' genre music that isn't 70's worship, to think about it.