Catching Up With Online Business

In this article we’re going to review another very popular
benefit concert, the one they call Live Aid.

Most people probably had very little clue that The Concert For
Bangladesh would start a trend that would continue for many
years. Live Aid is another example of some of the world’s
greatest musical acts coming together in a common cause to help
people in need.

What made Live Aid different from Bangladesh and many other
concerts was that this concert was not held in just one place.
The concert, held on July 13, 1985 was broadcast live from a
number of places, including Wembley Stadium in London, JFK
Stadium in Philadelphia, and a few acts performing from Sydney,
Australia and Moscow, Russia.

The concert itself was put on in order to try to help raise
funds for famine relief in Ethiopia. The concert was billed as
sort of a “global jukebox.” The number of people in attendance
at just two of the sites totalled over 150,000 people. Live Aid
was the largest scale satellite link-up and TV broadcast of all
time. It was estimated that about 1.5 billion people saw the
broadcast live.

The concert was conceived by master mind Bob Geldorf who had
previously put together another gala called “Do They Know It’s
Christmas” which was known as Band Aid. That concert went off
the previous winter featuring a number of British and Irish acts
also for the purpose of raising funds for famine relief in
Ethiopia. This is the first time that two concerts had been put
on so close together to raise money for the same relief effort.

The initial goals of this concert was to raise about $1.5
million. But as the concert grew in scope and the number of acts
increased the final number was estimated at a staggering $254
million earned. Nobody could have ever seen this coming. Because
of Geldorf’s efforts and the success of Live Aid, he received an
honorary knighthood.

Because there were so many venues and so many performing artists
it would be impossible to list every artist who performed and
every song done. But there were a few memorable highlights that
deserve to be mentioned.

One of the most memorable moments at JFK Stadium was when Bob
Dylan was playing and broke a guitar string. Ron Wood then took
off his guitar and gave it to Dylan. Wood was then left standing
on stage without a guitar. What does he do? He shrugs to the
audience and proceeds to play air guitar even imitating Pete
Townsend’s windmill motion until a stagehand brought Wood a new
guitar.

Over at Wembley Stadium the highlight of the concert there was
when Freddie Mercury and Queen got the entire audience in
attendance to clap and sing to “Radio Ga-Ga,” “We Will Rock
You,” and “We Are The Champions.” It was reported that the sound
at that point was almost deafening with over 70,000 people
singing and clapping.

Live Aid was an amazing event. It raised millions of dollars and
helped feed starving people. No, this wasn’t just a concert.

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Wait! Before you get all upset and threaten to call the cops, this article is not about copyright violations. That’s not cool, not at all. What is cool, though, is finding a song you like, drawing inspiration from it, and using that inspiration to create your own original song. That’s what Pablo Picasso meant when he said, “Bad artists copy, great artists steal.” Steal the inspiration, but use it to make something you can truly call your own — something that someone else might find to be worth stealing.

Crime Analysis: How It All Goes Down

1. First, find a song you like. Generally speaking, it’s easier to draw inspiration from a simple song than a complex one, so pick a song that is relatively simple and straightforward.
2. Then, learn to play it. The easiest way to do that is to type into a search engine the name of the song you are looking to play plus the word “tab.” So if you wanted to learn to play “Don’t Look Back in Anger” by Oasis, you’d go to a search engine and type in “Don’t Look Back in Anger Tab”. You can then find the tablature that will show you how to play the song. Alternatively, you can use tablature archive sites like Ultimate-Guitar to find your tabs.
3. Once you know the song, you can start getting creative with it. Is it an electric song? Play it acoustic. Is it acoustic? Play it electric. (If you only have one guitar, then pick a song that is performed on the type of guitar that is NOT yours; for instance if you only have an acoustic guitar, try stealing a song written on an electric).
4. Change the tempo of the song. Is it fast? Play it slow. Is it slow? Play it fast. Doing this, combined with changing it from electric to acoustic (or vice-versa), should give you something that is starting to sound a little different.
5. Next, transpose the song to a different key and/or scale (click here for an article on transposing a musical piece that goes into more detail on how to do that). The easiest way to do that is to use a capo, although I’d recommend switching scales in addition to switching keys to make sure your new piece sounds wholly original.
6. Once you’ve done that, switch up the rhythm a bit. One of my favorite strategies is to take a song where the chords are strummed and use arpeggios instead (click here for an article on arpeggios). I also like to add rests.
7. Now’s the killer ingredient: new lyrics. New lyrics will give the song a new meaning, and are another opportunity for you to switch up the rhythm of the song a bit, as different words require a different rhythm.
8. One last but very important step: tweak the melody. By now the song should sound pretty different than the original you drew inspiration from — in fact, if it’s done properly, it should sound completely different — but you want your song to be truly original, not just some lame rip-off. To do that, look for places where the melody still sounds a bit identical, and tweak accordingly.

And there you have it! You’ve stolen a song — but you’ve reinvented it into something truly original at the same time. As the saying goes, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”

Still don’t believe me? Check out how this formula was applied to reinvent Aimee Mann’s song “That’s Just What You Are” into an original song. Click here to visit.

Kid Mercury is a VIP member of the New York City Singer/Songwriter Sessions. He is also the founder and director of ActoGuitar, an online guitar education community.

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