Guitar Composition
This section contains all articles and lessons related to composing music on the guitar. The guitar is one of the best instrument there is for composing music, and it can give you a different point of view on composition compared to the piano. A prudent composer would learn how to write music and songs on as many instruments as they can, but if you don’t have the time to learn all of them, the guitar is one of the first you should start with. Guitar composition can let the composer take advantage of the many musical techniques that cannot be done on other instruments.
This is not an often talked about concept, but guitar sight reading can be a very beneficial thing to not just your playing in general, but also your ability to compose music on the guitar and other instruments. Everyone knows the basic advantages of sight reading as far as enabling you to read music and play with other people who can read music, but it goes much deeper than this. Sight reading can improve your overall understanding of music theory and composition in a number of ways, so if you have been putting off learning how to read music, maybe now is the time to start.
The first way that guitar sight reading can help your composing skills is by exposing you to all sorts of new music. To practice reading you must read through a variety of different exercises and compositions, and this will introduce you to a lot of new musical elements and ideas. Even the boring and simple exercises can highlight simple but important musical concepts that can benefit your understanding of melody.
Some of the stuff you need to go through when learning how to sight read may seem elementary and tedious at first, but you eventually get to the point where you are reading through real pieces of music that are challenging and engaging. This is a great way to learn how music works and what it can accomplish, and it also gives you an understanding of the way pieces need to be put together.
Not only are you introduced to more music when you are going through the process of learning sight reading, but you also open yourself up to the possibility of playing music with other people more often, which will give you even more different musical experiences. Finally, being able to sight read will probably get you more involved in the more complex styles of music that are based more on sight reading, such as classical and jazz, and this can have obviously big impacts on your musical understanding and compositional knowledge.
Besides these points, sight reading can also help you understand elements of music such as rhythm and harmony. Seeing the physical representations of musical ideas, such as a quarter note, or a certain chord, can help you understand them fully in your mind, and this will help you put ideas together later on. Sheet music and notation will help you realize the relationships between different parts of music, and this will benefit any composer.
January 22 2010 | Guitar Composition | No Comments »
With advances in the functionality of the internet and a lowering of music production equipment costs, the possibility of recording your own music and selling it online has never been more real. Guitar players should think about how they could start selling music online in order to make a living from their music, or perhaps more realistically, at least make some extra cash from it. With the proper method and some good online marketing work, it should not be too hard for any guitar player to get their compositions or their band’s music up on a website for sale.
One of the keys to this is to either have your own website to put your music on, or put it on a site like CDBaby. CDBaby is probably one of the best options out there to sell your music through a middle man. They will handle everything for a small fee and even get your music on itunes. But if you have your own site you can keep all of the profits from your sales yourself, and this should appeal to a lot of people.
Although this option will be more work for you, it is getting easier and easier as more ecommerce solutions are developed. Guitar players should be able to sell their compositions online and keep the profits for themselves, as this will help musicians support themselves better and be able to produce more music.
If you have a wordpress blog there are plugin options that should let you set up a digital download store for your music that will run automatically. If everything is set up properly you should not have to do much work to maintain your store, and your files will be sold around the world while you are off doing whatever else. This is a great thing to have set up but it still leaves the problem of marketing and promoting your guitar music.
This is one of the harder parts of trying to sell your music online, and it would require an entirely new article, but for now, just keep in mind that search engines can be used to market your music, and you should look for a related niche to market it too. There is a lot of competition for music on the internet, so you have to narrow the field and concentrate on a specific market that your music will appeal to.
December 27 2009 | Guitar Composition | No Comments »
Video games are an ever increasing musical presence that are even capturing the attention of some of the top film composers these days. There is a long history of memorable video game music so it makes sense that as they become more sophisticated the music will have to match. One of the great things a video game composer can do is use the guitar as an instrument in their scores. For a lot of reasons, the guitar is a perfect instrument for video game music, and in general, all composers should be familiar with techniques and theories of guitar composition.
Where as film music has a long embedded history of piano and orchestral music, video games are starting from the present time pretty much. This means they will be more open to original ideas and more modern styles of music. They do not have the decades of tradition to go against. Add to this the fact that many video games tend to be action oriented and you have the perfect situation for the electric guitar.
Video games should be seen as a promising new area for composers to explore music in new ways. Not only are the nature of games different than movies, in that they can change based on the controllers actions, but they also make use of more unexpected sound effects. This creates a different environment for composers to work in, and it should produce interesting results.
The guitar is a modern instrument capable of a lot of sounds that should go well with many different types of video games. This is one of the reasons that all composers should learn some basic guitar skills, and not just focus on piano. Piano has no doubt the best overall composing ability but the guitar can let you view music in a different way, and more importantly, the guitar is an in demand sound that cannot be accurately replicated by keyboards. String instruments in general are hard to get very realistic on software instruments, so it benefits the composer to actually be able to write and play music on the guitar.
In the modern age, composers need to be able to produce all types of sounds on their own. Video game companies usually hire freelance composers who should be able to produce all the music themselves. Rarely do companies want to pay high recording costs that come with studio musicians, so you must achieve the best quality you can on your own.
December 24 2009 | Guitar Composition | No Comments »
Something that guitar players and composers may be interested in is medieval lute music. You can learn a lot about guitar composition and old guitar styles by hearing the work of great lute composers, an instrument closely related to the guitar. This site on video comics has a comic listed that features and new piece of lute music each episode, and it is all recorded on classical guitar. It is always a benefit for composers and players to know about past historical styles and this may be a great chance to experience highly crafted music from a distinct period.
This lute music is full on interesting rhythms, melodies, and harmonies. Some of the pieces exhibit different poly rhythms between the guitars and there is also a lot of counterpoint that can provide some good lessons for composers. It is really great that this video comic has brought this music to more peoples attention because it can be a great value to everyone, not just those studying guitar or composition.
In a lot of ways modern guitar music does not match the complexity and craftsmanship of this type of lute music. So the modern composer can be exposed to something completely different by studying this music. However, there are ways that modern music has improved as well, so it is important to take advantage of all of the resources you have compared to composers of past ages.
People playing guitar now have been exposed to all sorts of different types of music that these medievel lute composers never heard of or could ever imagine, and this is an advantage that every composer should try to use. Adding this lute music to your repertoire could help you take what they established and improve it with elements of more modern styles. This is something to think about for your next guitar composition.
December 07 2009 | Guitar Composition | No Comments »
Most well known composers are piano players, and there is good reason for this. The piano lets you play ten notes at once, where as the guitar can only play six. Some American composers have been known to play well more than ten notes on the piano. The fact that each hand can play something different on the piano also helps give it more ability to play simultaneous parts. This advantage gives players a much better chance to create full musical pieces on the instrument, and because of this, most composers focus on piano. In fact, most music students are taught piano for its compositional and theory advantages even if they play a different instrument.
This does not mean that the guitar is not usable for composition though. To the contrary, the guitar can give you a different compositional perspective, and this can help you to write music that you would never have come up with on piano, something that would benefit any freelance composer.
The piano functions in a different way than the guitar. Chords must be voiced differently in many cases and melody notes have to be played above chords in a much different fashion. Although one could argue that all of this is easier to do on piano, it is still valuable to know how to compose on and play the guitar. Since notes and chords can be moved around on the guitar in different ways, you will come up with different progressions and melodies. There are many things that easily fall into place on guitar that are difficult on piano, such as sliding around chord shapes, and this means that people writing music on guitar will be more likely to use these more guitar-centric structures.
Of course, the same is true for the piano. You will write things on the piano that you may not ever play with a guitar. All this means is that the more instruments you can compose on, the better. Each one will give you a different perspective to write music from, and that means more variation in the music that you write.
Both the guitar and piano can play chords, and to compose music, you usually want an instrument that can play chords and other harmonic devices. As long as you have this, the instrument is fine for composition. Try exploring what the guitar can do that other instruments cannot, both in your playing and composing. Every instrument is just that, an instrument, something used to make music.
December 06 2009 | Guitar Composition | No Comments »