I’m a musician?

I play bass because I have to, because I love doing it, because I want share it with people, because if I do it right, then I make people feel, make them dance. I’m a musician.
When it comes to “rock bands”, there are two camps, “original bands” and “cover bands”, the latter can also include “tribute bands”. There are “original bands” who feel they are above playing cover tunes because there is no “creativity” in it, on the other hand there are cover bands who get full of themselves because they are making $$ and 900 people “like” them on face book.

Now I play in both an original band, image of io and a cover band, The Wisenheimers, so I am in the unique position to shed some light on the subject. For the “original artists”, original music can suck and not be creative, you aren’t above playing someone else’s music. To the conceited/egoitistical “cover band”, the people don’t really like you, they like the Killers, Tom Petty, U2, and so on, they love you until you play a song they don’t like and say..”I’m not having a good time.”

This is a Wisenheimer blog so I am going to blog about how playing covers can make you a better player and a better musician. The best “cover” I ever saw in my life was Yo Yo Ma, playing a Stradivarius cello, performing The Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello by Johann Sebastian Bach. In classical music the art is the ability to interpret, perform, and resurrect a composition that was written centuries ago.

The art in playing cover songs is pretty much the same concept. As a bass player I always want to serve the song, keep the rest of the band together, be tasteful, but also imitate the bass line as close as possible. What is fun and a musical challenge is playing all the different styles of Bass at a gig. I might play motown, Flea, John Paul Jones, Sting, cover a keyboard part bass and so one. So Flea has a “slappy bright sound” that I wouldn’t use that same sound on a 70’s smooth rock song. If you have any questions hit me up here or on facebook. All hits kids, All the time!

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