A guitar tuner is a straightforward tool that can take on a lot of different shapes and

sizes depending on who's using it and what they need it to do.

You can have a tuning pedal, a standalone tuner, a headstock tuner, or my favorite, a human

guitar tech that tunes your guitar so you don't have to.

Welcome to Strong Songs, a podcast about music.

I'm your host, Kirk Hamilton, and I'm so glad that you're joining me to talk about

guitarist tune with pedals, guitarist tune with clip-ons, and sometimes guitarist fancy

enough to be tuned by a guitar tech off stage.

The episode you're about to listen to is entirely listener supported.

You won't make this thing possible, and that is a wonderful thing.

I've put out more than 70 entirely free episodes of Strong Songs, and if you've enjoyed

those episodes enough to think, you know, I'd actually pay for this.

I'll go to patreon.com slash Strong Songs to find out how.

On this episode, it's time for a widely requested and appropriately far-reaching topic,

what makes a cover song great, and why does some cover recordings eclipse the original?

Well, it's time to take an existing artistic statement and restate it in our own voice.

It's time for Strong Songs to talk strong covers.

The cover song occupies an interesting creative space in the modern musical landscape.

A cover can be seen as bold and transformative.

Wow, I'd never expect this artist to cover that artist.

It can also be seen as derivative, and I'm not interested in the point where cover bands

are sometimes unfairly seen as somehow less than bands that play original music.

...