Good Evening, Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself

[Darrell Wallace]

I am a curious person that will read and assimilate,as musicians and song writers intrigue me. I write and record most of my own music and feel silly standing on stage performing someone else's rendition of a cover. If you don't play your own music, how will an audience ever know that it is what they want to hear. If the world had only heard Chopin, Tchaikovsky would have been a musician playing Chopin sonatas. That was a quote from a friend that sticks in my mind. Look forward to hearing some of your creations.

[john]

Sorry, you lost me. I am trying to make some sort of sense of what you just said and failing dismally. I'm going to break it up and hopefully you can help me to understand the point you are trying to make. I am assuming you are saying more than only songwriters convey genuine emotion and / or meaning when they perform.

You feel silly playing someone else's version of someone else's song?

"If you don't play your own music, how will an audience ever know that it is what they want to hear?" Surely in exactly the same way when they hear a songwriter performing their own material? When a listener hears something they can relate to it or not, like it or not. Those two things are not directly related, but even assuming they were, it isn't the listener's song, it is just a song they relate to, it is a song that holds meaning for them. Performers, at least the good ones, relate to the music they perform. In "making it their own" they interpret the song and perform their version of that song. They take the music and words and they present how they relate to the song. The listener then relates to that version or they don't.

Writing a song is only one component of communicating with the listener. Arranging and performing are two other major components that alter meaning of words and music. The listener does not experience any of these in isolation. They experience the combination of these components.

While I can understand that to perform a song you both wrote and arranged holds a certain appeal, to some listeners more than others, it isn't the only one that can be genuine or have integrity. Taking what you are saying at face value, then even musicians standing on stage, playing alongside you in your own would not be the genuine article, after all it is not their song.

Songwriting is part of the communication with the listener. It is an expression of creativity. But so is how the song is arranged, or how it is performed. They all require creativity. They all require imagination. Sure, a performer or arranger can be lazy, can go through the motions, but so can writers.

What about the very real scenario when a writer writes about something they themselves did not directly experience? What about things they merely witness? Or scenarios they imagine happening to themselves, or happening to others? Are the only "real" songs those that are first party experiential? Because if the writer can employ creativity and imagination, to create the song, and that song is considered worthwhile, why on earth would arrangers or performers using their imagination and creativity to create the complete song package be any less valid or worthwhile?

Granted, a performer or arranger does not need to personalise the song in this way, but the good ones do, even if only because people simply do not tend to like songs where they are carbon copies. Is this what you meant by "someone else's rendition of a cover"?

Without arrangement, without performance, there is no song to hear. Both are as vital as the melody and words. Okay, truth be told, a song could be simply a performance of words and melody, but in the overwhelming number of cases other components are brought in, even if that is a simple one instrument accompaniment and at that point it is an arrangement.

Just my two cents. Welcome to Songstuff