once again, Notes, I agree wholeheartedly with everything you say. But this quote especially caught my attention:

Quote:
Jackson Pollock is considered to be a fine artist, but to me his work looks like a house painter's drop cloth, and for my way of thinking, there is too much left to chance to be fine art - others have the right to disagree.


this observation is the basis for my own subjective definition of art. To me, an endeavor approaches art in direct proportion to how difficult it is to reproduce.

Splatter paint on canvas? I can do that too, so to me that fails the reproducibility test.

But when I look at an Andrew Wyeth painting.. I can't do that.
When I watch olympic gymnasts... I can't do that
when I watch Tommy Emmanuel.. I can't do that
etc etc etc

In my opinion, reproducing songs from the past and nailing the tones, notes, inflections etc is something that most people can't do too. It may not be the same art as the original work, but it definitely requires skill and dedication to task in order to do it.

In some ways, it is harder than the original, because they played in their own natural style, whereas the cover song performer has to duplicate many artists styles, often on multiple intruments. And it takes a lot of work getting the same tone in the instruments and a similar mix

If I get up in front of an audience and sing and solo I'm already doing what another performer without trax is doing... but the trax fills in the white space and becomes the time machine that takes the audience back to the first time they heard the song.

In short, it challenges me as much to make the trax as it does to learn my performance parts. These are the first reasons why I choose this route.

The second reason is that I want to earn money and playing covers seems to be the best way to do that.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ey71h8ep047758h/AAC12jNM0Hz9Q8zsh5iDeqNHa?dl=0