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Playing note for note.

#61
DWBass said:
A band is a band! It's a team of folks working together to make good music!
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You are correct. But if the band decides together that they don't care about playing things exactly like the record, what gives someone else the right to come along and say they are wrong?

We aren't performing math here where 2+2 ALWAYS equals 4. We play music to achieve our goals. If you need to play exactly like the record to achieve your goal, then it's nobody's right to say you are wrong. If I CAN'T achieve my goals by playing exactly like the record, then it's also nobody's right to say I'm wrong.

When you say, "Some songs NEED to be played the way it is! That's just the way it is." you are trying to push your musical vision on me. If you can find musical creativity in playing someone else's music exactly like the record, more power to you, but that's not where I'm at and I won't be limited by someone else's vision.
 
#62
I am in a trio consisting of a female vocalist, a guitar/vocalist, myself on bass/vocals and a drum machine. This girl can sing any country song ever recorded. Many of the songs she selected are simply piano and vocals; diva songs. Do we do the song verbatim? No. Can we? No! The guitar does the piano right hand part and I do the piano left hand part; the flavor of the song is kept while the instrumentation varies; otherwise we could only do songs that use the exact instruments we have available to us. I agree in challenging one's self by trying to perfectly duplicate a part but even the guys who did the song originally change it up playing live to maintain their sanity. How would you like to be America and have to play "Horse with No Name" exactly the same way every day since 1972?

EDIT: I know that a good bit of recorded music is performed by studio musicians who use fully or partially charted scores; then that part is memorized by the guys in the traveling band who back up the "star". Then local bands memorize those same parts to play in the clubs. Question is, who is covering who?
 
#63
guy n. cognito said:
Somebody call every orchestra in the world and let them know that their lives are worthless.......

:rolleyes:
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an orchestral musician's bread and butter is playing songs exactly how they are written. it is a completely different animal from 3-4 piece contemporary musical acts who are playing top 40 hits from other bands who aren't around anymore in venues that serve cheap booze (if you're lucky!).
 
#64
I don't like cover bands that half-@ss it and just "get through it" in their own way. It's amateurish and it most always shines through in the performance. It's also lazy. Nothing you're covering hasn't been done properly before.

For originals it's different. However, when I joined my band they had a pretty good idea of how they wanted stuff to go and sound. Only w/ the brand new stuff I helped write or arrange did I feel comfortable doing it "my way".
 
#69
punkinfantry said:
an orchestral musician's bread and butter is playing songs exactly how they are written. it is a completely different animal from 3-4 piece contemporary musical acts who are playing top 40 hits from other bands who aren't around anymore in venues that serve cheap booze (if you're lucky!).
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I don't think for the purpose of this debate there is any difference.
 
#70
punkinfantry said:
an orchestral musician's bread and butter is playing songs exactly how they are written. it is a completely different animal from 3-4 piece contemporary musical acts who are playing top 40 hits from other bands who aren't around anymore in venues that serve cheap booze (if you're lucky!).
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Not really all that different. People want to be entertained. Whether you put your "spin" on Mustang Sally or not really doesn't matter...... ;)
 
#71
ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I love the "jam band" guys who think that their lines are better than the original. ha, ha, ha, ha. 99% of the time their improvements SUCK.

I can understand how a band leader might get to the point where he/she would want it "note for note". I mean there are exceptions I suppose, but none I have discovered yet.
 
#72
rockstarbassist said:
I don't like cover bands that half-@ss it and just "get through it" in their own way. It's amateurish and it most always shines through in the performance. It's also lazy. Nothing you're covering hasn't been done properly before.
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I'm open to interpretation, but most folks who hate the note-for-note are usually half-assing it.

As bassists, we have a decent amount of leash on this topic because most people don't pay attention to us, anyway. As others have noted, there are some lines we'd be expected to do note for note or very close to it.

I've noticed this to mostly be a problem with guitarists and sometimes drummers. I was once briefly in a band and the drummer did NOT do fills, but insisted on playing Metallica. I wouldn't have gone on stage with that band, but it was kind of funny to see that we were all thinking the drum fills that weren't being played.
 
#74
There's a place for note-for-note, and a place for creative interpretation. Any artist has the right to interpret their own work, and come up with alternate versions. In cover bands, the good ones can and do get the overall essence of the song in their performance, even if it's not precisely note-for-note. In my band, we play "Money" by Pink Floyd. it's not precisely note-for-note, but it's close. The guitar player takes some liberties, but stays within Gilmour's style of playing. The bass line is so important to the song that I essentially play it note-for-note (probably at a level of 97-99%). There just isn't much room to alter it without losing the vibe. Our keyboard player plays the sax part on the keys, and it's close but not exact. The drummer is in the ballpark, but not exact in his part in the song. But the overall effect is "Wow! You guys nailed it exactly!" The overall is sometimes greater than the sum of its parts.

Years ago, in my learning mode, I learned Jack Bruce's part in "Crossroads" note-for-note, mostly for learning his style and to understand why the part worked so well in the song. i discovered a lot of it had to do with how Eric played his part. the two go together. have I ever played that part out? No, because of two things: No one I've played with has ever played Eric's part note-for-note along with a drummer playing Ginger Baker's part note-for-note (or beat-for-beat). If they were, I could and would jump in with Jack's part note-for-note. Why? Because I could. As it is, I've played the song, and played to what others were playing in it. It's not the same, but that's OK.

I play in a cover band, who does write a few originals. What we do, we do well. it's not note-for-note, but no one is complaining or dissing us for that. So I think we're doing something right....

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#78
Here's an interesting cover of Rush's Tom Sawyer done in the style of Django:

The Lost Fingers - Tom Sawyer - YouTube

I usually prefer note for note after having it drilled into me during my musical education. Two years of violin lessons, six years of concert band and jazz stage band in school and playing in a Rush/Led Zeppelin cover band. In school they put the chart in front of you and you play it exactly as written (with the exception of some jazz solos which are improvised), those who can't are weeded out.

Alot of songs have parts that have to coordinate with other parts so if you change the guitar, drums or bass part, sometimes it won't work unless the others also change their parts. This can get messy and frought with conflict. More often people don't ask the others to also change their parts and they don't fit and the song sounds bad.
 
#79
Winterpegbass said:
Alot of songs have parts that have to coordinate with other parts so if you change the guitar, drums or bass part, sometimes it won't work unless the others also change their parts.
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True dat.

I remember playing Wonderful Tonight with a drummer who could not do the "t.t.t....t.t.t....t.t.t...." on the high hat, a signature sound in the song. Totally ruined a beautiful piece.

Winterpegbass said:
More often people don't ask the others to also change their parts and they don't fit and the song sounds bad.
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...or the one guy who knows his part (the bassist?) just changes to match the other dumb-downed parts, and the song sounds bad.

Yeah, been there. :(
 
#80
i led a band and I required that everyone learn the song note for note. the reason was that the drummer and lead and acoustic guitars were not very mature musically. so when they played what they felt like playing it didn't work. the grooves didn't fit together, the chords didn't work together, the leads played had wrong notes, too many musicians playing fills in the same spots, etc... And no one could tell what was wrong...

The easiest way I found to correct this was to hand out CDs and make everyone learn almost note for note. this made rehearsals much easier and made us sound better immediately. and also forced them to learn their instruments and their roles in a song and in an ensemble.

NOW 6 years later I've been able to relax that because everyone has grown musically and so the decisions they make work. their ears and taste level have increased.

Most of the time the players who complained about learning the CD parts were the the ones who needed it the most. They were just being lazy and half-hearted - didn't want to put in the time/discipline/effort. Though one guitarist that played his own stuff was a monster and wonderfully creative. He could make up his own thing on the spot and most of the time it was just incredible. So of course he was given free-reign. But he was the ONLY exception I've ever encountered.

Bottom line - if your band mates are getting on your case about you making up your own parts rather than the CD parts, perhaps your parts are not so good? It's a possibility that should be humbly considered.
 

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