Do you play songs exactly the same every time?

[Gravedigger Dav]

And I thought I was alone ! started to hapen to me in my late 40s and it just kept happening more often as time roles on, now that I'm getting closer to the big 60 it happens every gig we play, and to be honest with you, when I cook something up right out of nowhere and end up on the punch with the other 2, it sometimes makes me laugh out loud, and I feel that its even more fun to play, the guitarist says we are all dropping the ball more often the older we get, but we are getting it down to a fine art picking it up again.
I played in a band before that wanted to play it exactly like the album, after a few years of that it became less interesting and very very repetetive !

Who the hell are you and what are you doing on my lawn???

 

[Gravedigger Dav]

I try to learn the exact bass line as an ear-training exercise. After that, I go with whatever works with what my bandmates are doing, and sometimes I'll adjust it to my own preference.

I have one bandleader who says "those songs sold millions of copies for a reason" to justify replicating the songs as closely as possible. For that band I try not to deviate too much.

In his defense, some musicians deviate out of laziness: they skip complicated parts, they insert their own frequently-played licks rather than something that would better fit the song. That said I think a bigger factor is that he's a bit of a control freak.

I have the most fun when deviating in a planned, creative way. Just one example: a BL I worked with put a funky New Orleans beat to the well-worn standard "Honky Tonk Women" and made it a lot more fun to play.

Oh, you would love my band's hard rock version of Mustang Sally. We do a break in the middle switching to the intro to Mississippi Queen, then back for one more chorus of Mustang Sally.

 

[capnsandwich]

It depends really. When I'm first learning a song, probably not. I like to pay around with different ways and different approaches to playing songs up until we record it. Once it's recorded, however, I try to pretty much nail the song down note for note. Now, mind you, some songs will have an album version and some will have a live version. On the live versions of songs I have a little more freedom to play around, but if we're doing a gig at, say a morning show or a radio spot, I'll try to nail the live version note for note.

 

[don21480]

Not note for note - but the general feel and groove- yes