The art of making someone else’s idea your own

There are a lot of ways to play someone else’s song.

At one end of the spectrum, you can make the song your own while staying close enough to the original that everyone immediately recognizes it. Van Halen’s version of “You Really Got Me” is a perfect example. The Kinks’ original is still clearly there — the riff, structure, and attitude remain — but within seconds, there’s no mistaking it for anything other than Van Halen. They didn’t reinvent the song so much as run it through their own musical personality.

That’s the first approach: learn the language, then speak it in your own voice.

The second approach is almost the opposite. Instead of interpreting the original, the goal is to recreate it as faithfully as possible. This is the world of great tribute bands and album-in-its-entirety performances. Every guitar part, harmony, sound, transition, and sometimes even the little mistakes and studio moments become part of the composition.

If you’re recreating a Beatles record, for example, even something as seemingly insignificant as Ringo shouting, “I’ve got blisters on my fingers!” can matter. The audience knows those moments. They’re part of the experience.

This approach requires discipline. You have to put your ego aside and ask, “What actually happened on this record?” rather than, “What would I have played?”

Then there’s the third approach: tear the thing apart and rebuild it.

Jazz musicians have been doing this with standards forever, but rock musicians have done it too. DEVO’s version of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” is an obvious example. The Rolling Stones song is still buried inside it, but DEVO essentially dismantled it and rebuilt it according to their own rules.

Cream’s “Crossroads,” adapted from Robert Johnson’s blues, offers another version of the same idea. The source material becomes a foundation rather than a blueprint.

None of these approaches is inherently better than the others. They simply require different mindsets.

And that’s where this becomes about more than music.

Almost anything worth learning can be approached in these same three ways.

You can study someone who is good at a craft, understand the fundamentals, and then adapt what they do to your own personality. You can reproduce a proven method exactly, learning why every piece works before changing anything. Or you can study the underlying principles, tear the existing model apart, and build something entirely new from them.

The same applies to starting a business. Sometimes originality is overrated. There’s enormous value in finding something that works and executing it extremely well. Other times, the opportunity comes from taking an established idea and putting your own recognizable stamp on it. And occasionally, the breakthrough comes from questioning every assumption and rebuilding the entire thing differently.

Some people are naturally better suited to one approach. The meticulous player may love recreating a record note-for-note. The instinctive musician may immediately start changing things. The experimenter may want to destroy the arrangement before the first rehearsal is over.

But the best musicians — and perhaps the best craftspeople and entrepreneurs — learn something from all three.

Because before you can decide how much of the original to keep, you first have to understand why it worked in the first place.