Tips for Learning to Play Your Favorite Songs—and Making Them Your Own
by Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers
I’m a songwriter by trade, but lately I’ve been having a blast revisiting songs by other artists I’ve loved since I was a teenager—in particular the Grateful Dead. A few years back, I started including my version of the Dead’s “New Speedway Boogie” in sets alongside my own songs, and posted a homemade video on YouTube. The positive response eventually led to a major project: I recorded my solo acoustic arrangements of the band’s songs for an album titled Dead to the Core and also made a companion DVD, Learn Seven Grateful Dead Classics for Acoustic Guitar, for Homespun Tapes.
There’s great satisfaction in learning how to play a classic song just the way it sounds on the record, and with the Dead, I’ve been lucky enough to interview both Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir and get an inside scoop into how they made the music. But for me, an even greater thrill than making a good copy is creating an arrangement that is true to the spirit of the original, yet feels like my own. Follow these tips for learning to play your favorite songs below and you’ll be surprised with what you can accomplish.
Check out multiple versions. A song that you want to learn may have one definitive recording, but alternative performances can often be found, and there may be covers by other artists as well. In coming up with your own arrangement, a great first step is listening to several versions—that’ll help crack open your idea of what the song can be. YouTube is an invaluable resource for this kind of research.
With the Grateful Dead, there are vast numbers of live recordings spanning three decades, and they are often radically different than the studio tracks. Take the case of “Friend of the Devil”: you could play it (as I did on the Homespun video) with the bluegrassy feel on American Beauty or go with the song’s more rocking live electric incarnation, or even try out the dramatically slowed down, reggae-tinged version the band sometimes played.
Another case in point is “New Speedway Boogie.” I started playing it after hearing Catherine Russell’s fantastic cover, with her swingy vocals over mandolin, bass, and tambourine. My guitar-and-voice arrangement sounds nothing like hers, but her interpretation helped me see that song in a new light than what I knew so well from Workingman’s Dead.
Stop listening. After you’ve spent a good chunk of time listening, it’s important to put away your source recordings and let the song evolve in your own hands and voice. No matter how much you love the sound of the original, it may be difficult or impossible to reproduce note for note—and it’s far better to play it your way than do a weak imitation. Don’t shackle yourself by continuing to compare your version to the original. The path to becoming a better musician is all about figuring out your own special strengths and making the most of them.
Get started with online charts. It’s easy to find chord charts and guitar tab online for practically any popular song, and they can be a great shortcut for learning. But don’t assume an Internet posting is correct or the only way to play it. For instance, I wanted to do a new arrangement of Bob Weir’s “Cassidy” and love the live version on the Dead’s Reckoning, performed on acoustic guitars in standard tuning. But Weir himself told me that the original recording (on Ace) was in a now-forgotten alternate tuning, and no Internet chart I found shows it this way. In the end I made my own arrangement in an alternate tuning (D A D G A D) that used riffs from Reckoning and other live performances.
Try changing the key. You may well need to shift the key of your song to accommodate the range of your voice or just to create a different instrumental feel. On guitar, you can accomplish this easily by moving a capo around (higher on the neck raises the key). Better yet, with a pinch of theory, you can learn to transpose the chords—so that you understand, for instance, that the progression A–D–E is the same as G–C–D, just moved up a whole step. (Both are I–IV–V progressions, where I is the root chord, IV is the chord built on the fourth note of the major scale, and V is the chord built on the fifth note of the major scale.) This kind of knowledge is invaluable.
In several of my Dead arrangements (e.g., “Stella Blue” and “New Speedway Boogie”), I lowered the key to a more comfortable register for singing. The most drastic example was “Fire on the Mountain”; the song is originally in the key of B, but I spontaneously started playing it way lower, in the key of F#. This proved to be a sweet spot for my voice and also on the guitar, allowing me to play a satisfying bass line and groove.
Rhythm rules. The first order of business for your accompaniment is establishing a good groove. Without it, the fancy stuff and the frills mean nothing. So, if necessary, strip down your accompaniment part to the most basic beat, and focus on making it strong and steady. Remember, too, that in a band performance, the groove comes from the entire rhythm section. So if you’re playing the song solo on guitar or piano, you are also in some respect playing bass and drums. Experiment with rhythmic feels; if your head starts bobbing, you’re on the right track.
Steal from other instruments. In checking out the original version, you should listen to the whole ensemble sound—not just to the instrument that you are playing. “Fire on the Mountain” is driven by bass and drums, for instance, so those were my primary sources for the guitar part. Similarly, for my solo arrangement of “Stella Blue” I nabbed ideas from the bass, lead guitar, and even pedal steel, in addition to the rhythm guitar.
Leave space. Finally, be sure to let your arrangement breathe. Instead of playing thick chords at full volume the whole time, try focusing more on the bass line in one section or more on the treble in another, or paring back to just a percussive backbeat. Play the last verse softly before building to a big final chorus. In general, work on establishing dynamic contrasts between sections, so the verse and chorus and bridge don’t blend together too much.
Song arrangements get their character as much from what you leave out as what you put in. Even though I have six strings on my guitar, I rarely play all of them simultaneously—I’m constantly shifting between registers or focusing on just two or three strings. The beauty of not playing every note you can at a given time is that you have options. If you’re playing as hard and loud as you can, you have nowhere to go but down, whereas if you leave some headroom, you can add notes or intensity and you can also subtract. These contrasts will keep it fresh for listeners.
Happy playing!
Jeffrey Pepper Rodgers, grand prize winner in the John Lennon Songwriting Contest, is author of Rock Troubadours (which includes his interview with Jerry Garcia), The Complete Singer-Songwriter, and Teach Yourself Guitar Basics. Listen to songs from his Grateful Dead acoustic album and instructional video at deadtothecore.com.
