Musician’s Notebook

I recently had a lengthy discussion with someone about converting original studio songs for acoustic sets, especially songs that are designed for rock and metal bands and those using lead lines on an electric guitar. The person I was talking with is particularly religious and plays in his church band, and he’s often quite disappointed with the way the wall-of-sound arrangements of the megachurches are converted for his church’s smaller band.

Bottom line is, they take the chords and strum ‘em.

Of course, as he said, this makes for a really boring sound and any interest the melodies of lead instruments provided is lost in translation.

What makes a great original-to-acoustic conversion?

Straight conversions don’t work, it’s as simple as that. If you boil a song down just to the chords that can be played on an acoustic guitar, the end result is a sound that could be the basis of hundreds of popular songs, seeing as there are only so many chords and chord combinations.

These “straight conversions” are boring, lifeless and unimaginative. They are clones of an original song, except everything that made it unique and interesting is stripped away. And from what I know, churches are the biggest offender of the dull “straight conversion” (of course).

The key is to remember that an acoustic song and a rock song, despite having the same basis, are by their nature completely different and that means striving to replicate a sound is not only impossible, but stupid.

You need to be creating a new sound. It’s got to sound similar to the original, but you have creative license and can stretch in new directions. Have you heard Korn’s Freak on a Leash plugged-in and then unplugged? On the weekend I visited my parents and showed my dad, also a musician and the man who got me started down this path, listened to the unplugged version first, and then the studio version. He said that he was actually disappointed when it came to the original song.

Why?

Because Korn did not set out to replicate Freak on a Leash like they did with a few other songs on that album (Twisted Transistor, Coming Undone, for the interested). They took old material and used it to explore fresh new ground, building up the excitement in a sound that still boggles my mind.

The Original Freak on a Leash Recording

The Unplugged Freak on a Leash Recording

You must adapt a song to the medium, and fully embrace what that medium means. When you play a song exactly as you wrote it for electric guitars on an acoustic guitar, it doesn’t sound like an acoustic song; it just sounds odd. When you’ve done a good conversion it should embrace and suit the acoustic genre and sound like it was always a part of it.

Don’t neglect the important of a good acoustic conversion, because once you have a solid repertoire, acoustic sets are a great way to get to know old songs more intimately.