What’s my secret in learning cover songs and making them sound good? Well, the secret is just listening is pretty much key. There’s no other way around it really. The secrets to mastering a cover song, listening to the song as many times as possible. Figure the song out by ear instead of looking at guitar tab. Learning songs by ear isn’t really all that hard at all. It may be frustrating to start the song over and over again, figuring out all the guitar parts but it’s worth it if you want to get the song right.

Before the age of guitar tab, all guitarists would do is sit there in front of their stereo systems with their guitars and try to figure out the songs by ear. All day, for hours. That’s how they learned to play is by figuring songs by ear. You should try the same.

As for the vocal parts of the cover song, it’s pretty much the same way… listening. Listen to the melody and sing along.

The secret to making a cover song sound good is that you don’t want to make your version exactly the same way as the artist. Don’t play the song note for note. Just make it your own version. Make it sound like that you wrote it. That’s pretty much key to getting people to enjoy your cover songs is making them sound like your own.

If you make the song sound exactly like the recording on CD then people won’t care at all. Always make it your own version.

Still thinking about what my next cover tune is gonna be but I’ll come up with something. One thing I like to do with my cover songs is surprise people with them. Perform songs that they never expect me to do. That’s how you do cover songs. When you do cover songs people expect to hear stuff like “Mustang Sally” or “Sweet Home Alabama” but not me. Once again, I just choose the songs that I like and the songs that inspired me over the years.

I would like to cover some classic rock too and I’ll make my way to it. I would like to do some songs by the Who, David Bowie, the Doors, some Zeppelin, early Springsteen, Peter Gabriel and things like that.

Kev