Throughout my learning experience since the age of 10, constantly playing cover songs taught me the majority of everything I know. I didn’t have a guitar instructor teaching me. Instead, Metallica, Megadeth, and Pantera taught me (for the most part). After learning the bare basics, I learned to read tablature and then I dedicated most of every day to learning cover songs. Although, at that time, I sucked at playing them to start with, the musical information the songs provided me with was tremendous. It wasn’t long before I started seeing the whole picture of how the fretboard worked, how minor and major chords work, and how harmonies are formed.

The Purpose of Learning Through Cover Songs

Whoever tries to convince you that playing another band’s songs makes you look like a poser is clearly mindless as to what the point and benefits of it are. Those who are afraid they will not be original if they learn through cover songs are missing the fact that you’re not doing it to copy another band’s songs when you make up your own. You are doing it to learn of the existence of all the different chords, scales, and guitar methods possible.

Now, I’m not completely insisting that avoiding cover songs totally isolates you from becoming a good musician, however rare the case is. The facts are, though, learning cover songs increases your versatility and knowledge of playing on a level that strait music theory never will.

Realistically speaking, if you were to decide to learn martial arts fighting, how good could you really be if you tried to make up your own style without first learning a style that already exists? What basis would you have to work off of if you didn’t go through any of the disciplines from any other martial art? You would probably look silly and when you go to explain how you taught yourself, you more than likely wouldn’t sound very smart. So exactly how do cover songs teach the musician?

The Mechanism of Learning Through Cover Songs

First lets consider how the human mind works. While growing up, how exactly do we learn much of the little things we just seem to know? Although a portion of it is genetics, a huge portion of it comes from copying things we see around us.

Many children are known to copy and mock what they see around them when they are very young. For example, my own daughter loves repeating things that I say and faces that I make. Although it usually gives off more of a sense of just acting silly, it’s actually teaching her all the different words, phrases, and noises she can make, and all the different things she can do with her facial muscles. This is a huge part of her learning how to better communicate and express herself. Much the same, musicians can build their knowledge and skill by copying what they hear in songs they listen to by their favorite bands, taking elements from them and using it to improve and create their own sounds and melodies.

These are just some of the benefits of learning cover songs. After a certain point of learning dozens and dozens of songs, you can now pick from a whole gallery of chords, scales, and fragments of melodies to form your own style when making up original material. In this way, you can constantly build an arsenal of ideas for combinations and the more songs you learn through your experience, the more of a developed style you’ll be able to create for yourself.

Mastering your “Mental Tempo System”

When I play a cover song I have learned for people like my family, they seem to awe at how exact it sounds to the actual song. When I play a song of my own, they talk about how tight it sounds in rhythm. I can tell you how to accomplish this.

When you learn a cover song, I wouldn’t suggest simply learning the song from reading the tablature and/or listening to it and then playing it on your own from there on out. Instead, play along with the song from a cd or mp3 on a regular basis. Playing along with the actual song trains what is called your mental tempo system. The more you play along with not only one song, but all the songs that you play and practice with the most, the faster you master not only playing those songs, but the better you are at actually creating tight rhythms with your own songs. Plus, it can be really fun seeing how closely you can match the song every next time you play along with it. So in that way, it also challenges you, and a challenge is exactly what you want to take advantage of to help you master your playing.

Literally speaking, whether you are a guitarist, drummer, bassist, keyboardist, vocalist, or anything else, there is no disadvantage to learning and practicing cover songs. It’s a completely win/win method. It teaches you in a way that no other way can, and it keeps your mental audio system strong and healthy.

Although most of the people I know who play enjoy learning cover songs, the majority of them don’t seem to take enough advantage of playing along with them on a regular basis, and they find that their skills begin to fray in certain areas. My advice – don’t let it happen to you. While you are in a good phase of your learning, one of the best things you can do is start playing along with your cover songs as often as possible. Once you learn a whole cover song, you won’t realize how fun it is playing along with it until you do it, and that is all the more incentive to make it a regular part of your practice.