Did You Ever Play A Song Wrong?

[tonebender]

I was talking with a fellow musician the other night at his gig during the break when a chick walked up and requested "It Ain't Easy Being Me" by Chris Knight. He said he would play it and she left. I told him I loved that song and had covered it for many years. He said he recently saw Chris and discovered he had not been playing it right. I told him that I doubted I was playing it right either and we laughed.

When I got home I looked for videos of Chris playing the song so I could see how he plays it. Sure enough, I have been playing that song, since it came out in the late 90's, all wrong. Now I know the correct way and the song does sound better. I wonder how many other songs I play wrong, PROBABLY MOST OF THEM!!! I tell you something else all the sites with the chords are wrong too.

[jhull54]

It's funny. When our band was just starting out--and I mean literally barely able to play--we had to transpose everything that had 7ths or barred minors to major chords whenever possible. Our guitar player knew the cowboy chords, and the barre A chords here and there, but that was it. So it was pretty interesting the way the tunes sounded. Luckily, we were in tune and in time, and we only played stuff that was within our limitations musically.

Curious--over the years you played "Easy", did anyone ever came up and tell you it was played wrong?

[toomanycats]

I perform Led Zeppelin's Heartbreaker with my band and I know I play the middle solo break wrong. By "wrong" I mean not sloppy enough.

Seriously, to correctly capture the feel of that song the solo has to be flubbed to a certain degree, with slurred notes, sloppy open strings, and muted tones. That's really hard to do, like an actor trying to act badly on purpose.

The upside is that as I'm getting a bit older, and some slight arthritis is starting to set in, my Jimmy Page chops are becoming more authentic. As a matter of fact, one of my bandmates the other night at practice commented on my "sloppy Page" style. I took it as a compliment and pretended it was something I was doing on purpose and which took much study and practice.

[BatUtilityBelt]

Typically, I only learn other peoples' music so I can steal, er, borrow characteristics of their creations. Otherwise I'd probably play them wrong most of the time... When trying to figure out what makes their stuff tick, I've found its not typically style or progressions or anything really big, rather it's nuances in how they perform or little unusual choices they made that really dictates the character we perceive. And yes, @toomanycats I thoroughly agree, sometimes it's about where and how we get sloppy. I have one piece that doesn't work at all unless the guitar's timing is unusually bad, then suddenly it works to convey what the song is all about. If I recall right, I thought to chase that after studying some of Tom Waits' music.

[tonebender]

......Curious--over the years you played "Easy", did anyone ever came up and tell you it was played wrong?

There has hardly ever been anyone over the years that has even heard of Chris Knight so they had no clue. I have been asked several times if I wrote it from those that know some of our set list are my songs and since they have never heard of it they wondered if it was an original. The first time I heard the song it was on 88.5 in Tampa during the afternoon drive window. They played a lot of Americana genre and actually played one of my songs one day but I did not hear it.

One of the places we play and I play as a solo artist is very cool and the patrons really like Americana music and the stuff that does not get on mainstream radio. Streaming services have helped a lot because when they do hear a song they like and pull it up on Pandora, Spotify, etc., the service will create songs in the genre for you so you get to hear what you had no idea existed. Play some Steve Earle, Chris Knight, John Hyatt, Todd Snider. etc. and the service will turn you on to some great tunes.

[glasshand]

Undoubtedly I've played a ton of stuff wrong! It's hard to hear everything in a recording, there's a lot of misinformation on the internet, and even some "professional" transcriptions are wrong.

What I've learned, though, is two things.

Firstly, that people mostly don't care if you're playing the song "wrong" from a technical perspective. They care that it sounds good and is reasonably close to what they remember. Not too many people are going to be coming up and saying, "But you left out the lick that he did on the 17th repetition of the riff on the original recording..."

Which leads me to the second point, which is even discussing "right" and "wrong" may be missing the point. We tend to think of a particular version as being "right", but that's largely an artifact of "album culture": you heard this one version, and you heard it a million times, and that was "how the song went". But if you listen to a lot of deluxe versions of albums, or seek out trivia, you start to realize that a lot of songs had a lot of versions even according to their original creators. So if you don't play it exactly like the album version, is that "wrong"?

[Partscaster]

Many times have I found corrections to songs I've played for years. Its often slight. Sometimes glaring.
I'm often suggesting to jam buddies songs I learned decades ago, before internet, and when it gets down to nitty gritty its easy to be off, especially with arrangement. How many verses before chorus, ...when is the bigger lead break, etc. ....oh its an F#m7 not an A.
I did find out yesterday that I was correct in playing Clapton's "The Core" main riff the way I have since the 80's, and that 4 different yutub's I just watched recently had varying differences. When I watched a Clapton live version vid, I saw I was right and those vids were playing 4 different versions of not like Claptons. I also watched a vid of 4 known young-ish modern guitarists talking about Castles Made of Sand and they all did their brief versions. I gotta say for them being so popular, they were only so-so in their versions. Apparently, sitting down with an album, hour after hour, night after night, picking up and resetting the needle, over and over, is an okay way to learn. I was steeped in album culture. I understand what you mean, by that. For many it was before internet by a few decades

[tlarson58]

Guilty.

The first thing we do is dumb the song down to cowboy and barre chords. Then we usually change the key to make it easier to sing (sometimes that doesn't work either).

[mickey]

If you could play a song wrong, jazz couldn't exit!
After all, jazz is nothing but intentionally playing a song wrong!

[andrewsrea]

In audio design and recording, you learn to identify frequencies by ear and how to achieve them via component or knob-twist.

IMHO, the guitar equivalent is learning every note, timbre, squeak, squawk, sympathetic, thump, etc. sound that can be made on a guitar and where / how to make it happen. Then throw in ergonomics (positioning which makes a sequence of notes flow), string guages, number of strings and alternate tunings into the equation.

Some examples I have figured out over the years:
- Black Sabbath, 'Paranoid": D standard tuning, played above the 12th fret.
- Anything AC/DC: rarely more than dyad chords (two notes, typically root-5th)
- Led Zeppelin, 'Whole Lota Love': in the main riff, the 'D' is played with a bend on the 6th string, while also letting the 'D' string ring which creates dissonance.
- Anything Dire Straits: inversions, inversions, inversions (chord inversions, that is) and right-hand finger picking that typically plucks the low string and high string simultaneously.
Deep Purple, 'Smoke on The Water': dyads plucked simultaneously, starting no the 10th fret 5th and 6th string. Bonus: 'Highway Star" uses a lot of 5-string chord pull-offs playing only the middle three strings.
- Led Zeppelin, 'Heartbreaker' (as mentioned by @toomanycats ): the out of control bends in the middle break solo are played by pushing the strings behind the nut (between the nut and tuners).
- Rolling Stones: lots of 5 string, open G tunings.

[Partscaster]

andrew, I like that whole lotta love bend D and open D. Thanks.

[mozz]

"- Led Zeppelin, 'Heartbreaker' (as mentioned by @toomanycats ): the out of control bends in the middle break solo are played by pushing the strings behind the nut (between the nut and tuners)."

And "The lemon song", both require a tele and a tonebender mk2.

[Rollin Hand]

I am sure that I play stuff wrong all the time. In fact I know I do.

Why? Because I am lazy. I get it close enough that it sounds right to my memory and go with it. It's an artifact of growing up in the casette era, where you couldn't easily slow stuff down like you can with records.

Case in point: Yankee Rose by David Lee Roth. I play WAY more during the chorus than Vai does. If you ever watch him play it, he's just laying down a bed for Dave to sing over. I add chords to it and follow the "I'm talkin' 'bout a..." part down with a lick. But, I am not playing for Dave, or for anyone but me. So, I do my thing and have fun.

[andrewsrea]

I am sure that I play stuff wrong all the time. In fact I know I do.

Why? Because I am lazy. I get it close enough that it sounds right to my memory and go with it. It's an artifact of growing up in the casette era, where you couldn't easily slow stuff down like you can with records.

I learned on cassettes and dropping the needle on the vinyl and turning the record by hand, as well! And it is amazing how lasting that muscle memory is. There are some songs that I learned wrong, practices like the dickens to play it right, not play the song in ages and then when i do - play it wrong again!

[tonebender]

I play Harvest Moon in both standard tuning, drop D tuning and double drop D tuning. I confuse the shit out of myself sometimes. I am sure I play it wrong in some way in all three tunings.

[glasshand]

Something that came up just in the last day or so: My band is covering "Rockin' in the Free World". A pretty simple song, right? Did you realize that the bass does not follow the chord changes in the intro/theme, but does in the verse?* That's the kind of thing that's easy to overlook, and the audience is hardly going to riot if you do it "wrong", but once you hear it, you can't unhear it.

* unless I am, of course, wrong.

[Tonray's Ghost]

If you could play a song wrong, jazz couldn't exit!
After all, jazz is nothing but intentionally playing a song wrong!

I believe Miles Davis said if you're playing live and you hit a wrong note, just make sure you play that same wrong note again and it becomes your interpretation rather than your mistake

[tonebender]

The bass plays a different note over the power chord in the intro for "Surrender" too.

[Partscaster]

If you could play a song wrong, jazz couldn't exit!
After all, jazz is nothing but intentionally playing a song wrong!

I believe Miles Davis said if you're playing live and you hit a wrong note, just make sure you play that same wrong note again and it becomes your interpretation rather than your mistake

I heard that the Allman Bros. were watching a band cover their Mountain Jam song (a live Donovan inspired melody), and the band covering ABB's version tried to play it so closely, they included a series of a glaringly repeated "wrong note" cover-up attempts. You hear Dickey work the awful note in for 3-4 repeats, about 3:10 into the song on Eat A Peach album. Supposedly ABB guys got a good kick out that.

[tonebender]

LOL, one could make a case that if that is the way it got recorded then that is the correct version.

[nomadh]

If you could play a song wrong, jazz couldn't exit!
After all, jazz is nothing but intentionally playing a song wrong!

I believe Miles Davis said if you're playing live and you hit a wrong note, just make sure you play that same wrong note again and it becomes your interpretation rather than your mistake

I totally do this. It goes from wrong to "jazz interpretation"

[nomadh]

I'm hearing learning by lp compared to the learn by casette. I think my tools set my style for my entire life. I learned most everything for years starting out off of 8 track tape. If you mis a note Orr phrase it's 10 min until you hear it again. So I never got good at exact copy or even hearing what that is. I got good at finding a compatable line or harmony chords that could work. Overall it slowed me down but early on I was one of the few guys who could get a song up and running fast and start jamming it close enough people liked it.

[Tonray's Ghost]

I'm hearing learning by lp compared to the learn by casette. I think my tools set my style for my entire life. I learned most everything for years starting out off of 8 track tape. If you mis a note Orr phrase it's 10 min until you hear it again. So I never got good at exact copy or even hearing what that is. I got good at finding a compatable line or harmony chords that could work. Overall it slowed me down but early on I was one of the few guys who could get a song up and running fast and start jamming it close enough people liked it.

I think in a lot of cases, we praise various versions of classic songs as great interpretations or "fabulous phrasing...so unique", when in reality it may simply be the original was too hard to master for the artist and he/she personalized it out of necessity. I do this all the time playing in Open G, many chrod progressions, riffs are too different on the fret board, so I do the main idea and the rest is mine. You can definitely make out the song and also definitely know it's a bit different.

[glasshand]

Revisiting this thread because today I ran across something very apropos! From a 2003 Guitar Player interview with Angus and Malcolm Young:

Let’s talk about some riffs. Who wrote the three-chord theme to “Back in Black”?

Angus: Mal had that all sketched out on tape with just an acoustic guitar. He even had that little descending lick between the chords. To this day, I still don’t know if I’ve got it right, because it sounded so huge on his demo.

And if Angus Young didn't know if he was playing "Back In Black" correctly, it makes me feel a lot better about what I'm trying to do!

[tonebender]

There are a few songs that I play wrong on purpose because I like my way better. LOL