Which is harder to play - covers or your own songs?

[deeaa]

Starting this thread here that I participated in at alt.guitar, because it's an interesting question.

I claim that playing rock music, most of the time playing your own songs is _harder_ than cover songs.

The reason, in short, being that a cover song is known by all and there is a great model which to follow, and thus it is easy to handle - providing of course that we're not talking like a Steve Vai cover or Dream Theatre etc...but normal rock/pop/heavy songs.

With originals, it's usually very hard to convey what you mean, and I usually do make a demo base with a drum machine for others to follow, but usually even with that, there are always weird chords used, strange timing things like beat turning around etc. despite in the final product you might not even notice them.

Furthermore, when I make songs, I tend to make them so hard to play they really stretch my skills, let alone other band member's, and often have to work for weeks to learn how to play the song I wrote properly. I mean, sure, I can stumble thru what I write the 1st time, but to be able to play it really well is usually quite hard. And then I add vocals, and sometimes doing those simultaneously is even insanely difficult.

So...what say you? Which is harder?

[Katastrophe]

Playing covers is more difficult for me. With my own tunes, I composed the thing on my own, and know where it's going. It seems logical to me.

With covers, I have to play what was logical to someone else, and that may not be so easy.

In my last band, a country outfit, we played covers. Some of the songs drove me absolutely nuts.

[deeaa]

Yeah, I can get it with some country songs, there must be some evil hard pickin' and bass runs etc. now and then.

Indeed, of course there will be covers that are way hard to play...but, usually, with more or less mainstream rock/pop/heavy, that is not the case. There may be harder parts, but usually that is overshadowed by the fact that everyone knows the song or at least can listen to it and learn from a good example.

I just had a good example with another simple song I made, just a couple of parts, and it has been really hard for the band to learn. Two reasons: apparently the rhythm is not straight but sometimes the beat 'turns around' and then it has a couple of chords that are really not real chords but fingerings I've made for notes, like Ab add9 with a pinky stretch that becomes 2,5 steps long and is pretty hard to stretch. Things like that. It's just impossible to get the drummer to start an accent at, say, the 3.5 hit instead of one or four, and so on, unless I record it first with a click or a drum machine.

So those things make it very hard for the others to learn.

But for myself also...I'm working on this acoustic piece that goes basically very simply D..Am...C#11...and so on, BUT I have this bass line for it that is very hard for me to pick while playing the chords at times, plus in the chorus part which has the same chords basically but entirely different sounding formations much lower, I want to have better bass lines but it's nigh impossible to figure out how to play them. And I can't even begin to think how hard it will be to play those and sing at the same time, when I get it done.

Of course...it depends on the cover. But our band plays covers like Black Sabbath, Foo Fighters, Audioslave, Sex Pistols, Neil Young etc. and that kind of stuff is a piece of cake to cover in comparison with working with our own tunes.

[deeaa]

To better illustrate my point,

Here's a video I just made of the acoustic piece I'm working on...laptop camera recording so SUPER bad but, you see it's very hard for me and I still want to make better bass runs for the 2nd part. Just 3 chords throughout the song and bloody hard to play for me, almost impossible...and will be even harder with an electric with much smaller gaps for strings and thus harder fingerpicking.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9J9nRf-ZKA

Here's another song I'm working on, with demo vox-like yelpings. VERY simple a song but you hear how the beat turns around now and then, and there's a few strangish chords in the chorus...this is an example of a song which, for some reason or other, has been seeming nigh impossible for the band to get right.

http://deeaa.pp.fi/spookbox/uusijeeVoxilla.mp3

[Spudman]

I actually think playing my own material is easier than cover tunes. With covers I feel constrained to stick with what is familiar about the song. The artist that originally recorded it had a particular emotion and vision that enabled them to create it and I find it hard to put myself into that frame of mind because I'm not 100% sure where they are coming from. Plus, listeners usually have some expectation, if they recognize the song, that it will be close to what they remember of it. I don't always nail it.

With my own material I've generally lived it either before writing it or while writing it so I know exactly where I'm coming from. I can tap into the emotion, the imagery and the vibe I had when I first created it. Or, I can alter it according to my current mood and still feel attached to the song. I also feel more freedom with my own material to vamp, extend or change up pieces of a song without worrying that a listener is going to be too critical of what I just did.

In short, I love to create and I feel most comfortable in my own material.

[sunvalleylaw]

After my last little band project, I agree that it easier to play originals over covers. We played a mix of covers, and their originals. But they did not need or even want me to necessarily cop their original guitarist's lines. They wanted me to feel the song and come up with my own, so I did not have to "cover" their guitarist. I found that easier, because I just listened to the songs a lot, and came up with my own ideas. In one song, I used a lot of his ideas, because I really liked them, but I changed them to fit me. The covers of known commercial music needed to have certain things in them to let the audience know what song it was. The exception was "Wooden Ships" by CSN. Stills just basically noodles in Em on that one, with no real recognizable riffs or licks, so that one I could make my own too.

[Eric]

I agree with most on here that it's easier to play your own stuff.

First and foremost, it's because you don't generally write stuff that you can't play, so it's in your comfort zone, both technically and style-wise.

Also, you know where you want the song to go, so it's easier to put some feeling in it and leave out certain optional parts.

[NWBasser]

I'll say it's far more difficult for me to play covers.

My own stuff isn't too hard to do. I'm much too lazy to develop something so complicated that it would be difficult for me or a band to play.

Except that sometimes I'll come up with some great (in my mind!) bassline and have a terrible time coming up with a suitable guitar part.

It's really weird that my bass style is so different from my guitar-playing style.

[sunvalleylaw]

I should amend my comment to be clear that my experience was not with "my stuff" but this other bands. But since they let me do with it what I wanted, it felt like mine, and I therefore believe my own lines, melodies etc. would be easier to play than covers.