👨‍🍳 my recipe for magic covers

(these songs get a reaction)

RIFFS

Last week I shared my philosophy of song selection.

There’s another layer here, one that’s criminally overlooked:

There’s magic in choosing songs outside your particular instrumentation.

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My song menu has a reserve list.

These are the songs a singing acoustic guitarist is “supposed” to do.

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How did these songs get this way?

Sure, they’re popular songs. But why are they over-represented in the average singing guitarist’s repertoire?

It’s a format match: singing guitarists cover other singing guitarists.

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But there’s another way.

There are tons of songs that people love that rarely get covered. And usually it’s because they’re not “guitar songs.” They’re outside the instrumentation of a solo show.

There’s a magic combination:

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Here are a few of mine:

• Always Something There To Remind Me

• Rich Girl

• Rocket Man

• Dreams

• Faithfully

• I Wanna Dance With Somebody

• Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic

• Walking In Memphis

• True Colors

• Everybody Wants To Rule The World

• Mr. Brightside

• How Far I’ll Go

(reply or comment if you’d like to hear/learn my arrangements for any of these)

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RECS

Here’s a quick idea you should steal:

Keep a YouTube playlist of other people’s covers. Instead of starting from scratch each time, these give you a jumping-off point to inspire your own arrangements.

Here’s mine:

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CHARTS

Squeeze’s Tempted is one we’ve talked about before.

I’ve been playing it for years, but recently two separate friends told me they were surprised that my arrangement didn’t use my favorite trick, the faux drop-d/partial capo. (More on that in a sec.)

Here’s Tempted, arranged for capo II.

Dropbox folder with PDF, Sibelius, & musicXML files.

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SMARTS

Instead of the usual screen shots & explanations, here’s a 6m video walking you through the arrangement:

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That’s all I got this week.

See you next Wednesday,

Josh

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