Arranging for One Voice and Guitar 2
Wednesday, September 26, 2007 at 08:00AM I was practicing guitar for this upcoming Pacific Northwest tour and I suddenly noticed some things that I was doing on the guitar that I might not have shared with you about arrangement and technique.
I started out using fingerpicks, but now just use them for a particular percussive effect. If I am doing a kind of muted thing on the guitar, the thumb pick gives it more bite and resonance than just my fingers. I place the meat of my hand just at the bridge and then maintain it there all throughout the percussive, but muted verse of the song (in this instance, Three Monkeys) wherein I am playing an ostinato motif. 
When I get to the chorus, I lift the meat of my hand off the bridge and let the strings ring. Sunddenly, we have all these jangly guitar strings and the effect is wonderful. It is as if there were suddenly more instruments. It’s louder and brighter and the song lifts because of this simple change. Then, when I go back to the muted effect for the second verse, it is all the more dramatic. So this interchange of muted and ringing strings is one simple arrangement technique you can use to make a performance more interesting to the listener and to you.
Another simple technique to create tonal difference is the use of inversions. We all know what an E chord is, for example. If you go to the fourth fret and bar the first thru the fifth strings and with the remaining three fingers play a C position, you have an inversion of E. Same chord, but the arrangement of the notes has changed. And if at that point you also include the open E string that you aren’t fretting, you get a wider sounding E chord than the one you get at the standard E position.
A good exercise for us all to do periodically is to try and find every inversion of a chord that we can on the neck of the guitar or on the keyboard. Start with E and try to find every single place on the neck you can play an E. I don’t mean to start making complex chords yet, just E’s in every fingering configuration you can find. Then do it with every chord. Pretty soon the whole neck opens up to you and the sonic choices become myriad.
Once you have mastered that knowledge of the neck, you can add an interesting change by simple leaving one of the strings open. People always ask what tunings I use for certain songs and it delights me to tell them that I use standard tuning. I believe that standard tuning is the most versatile of all the tunings. I certainly enjoy experimenting with different tunings. Laurence Juber (www.laurencejuber.com) does a brilliant job of ringing the most music out of alternative tunings of anyone I know. But for me, keeping it in standard forces me to come up with something new. For me the downside of tunings is that you do the same fingering and get different things. I guess I’m looking for new fingering. In any event, I stay with standard.
There’s one other technique that I want to discuss. And that’s strumming. The first thing that you will notice when you strum a guitar is the different tones you get based upon where on the guitar you strum the strings; bright and brassy by the bridge, soft and mellow where the neck meets the hole and bell like and ethereal up on the neck.
And all the places in between will also give subtle differences. Take note that these differences are not so apparent when you strum really hard. It’s when you are gentle that these nuances appear.
I use the tips of my fingers most of the time, but when I want to get something momentarily different, I will use the nail on my little finger to brush the strings and get almost a cymbal sound to the strings.
Experiment yourself. Eddie VanHalen taps on the fretboard and gets these incredible runs. The whole instrument is available to you for making sounds. Tap the bridge, anything you can think of, it all goes to make you the individual musician that you are.
That’s one of the most wonderful things about the guitar. It is the only instrument where the player is involved in both ends of the sound production. Think about it. A piano has a keyboard and a hammer in between you and the string. A brass instrument has a mouthpiece into which your vibrating lips create a sound that is then altered by the fingering (and the lips, I know). The violin has a bow between the strings and the player.
But the guitar has you holding the string at one end to create the length you want for that string and it has you attacking the string at the other end. Consequently, it is the instrument on which your individual playing technique shows up the most readily. No one plays the guitar the same way. Actually no one plays any instrument the same way, but to me, literally all guitar players sound different from each other. Obsession? Could be.
Reader Comments (6)
James---Thanks for the tips. The guitar is the most wonderful instrument on the planet for reasons you mentioned. It’s certainly the most versatile, if one takes the time to experiment. As far as inversions, John and Mark capitalized wonderfully with that knowledge. Using a capo and a high strung guitar (Nashville tuning) is another wonderful trick.The blend of the high stringed guitar with a standard tuned guitar is simply wonderful. I believe that’s what John used on “Back Street Girl”.
What I find interesting is that some guitarists get on a “who’s better kick”. I believe it’s a matter of uniqueness, as opposed to “better”. As you mentioned, no one plays the instrument the same way. There’s a cornucopia of guitar styles and possibilities and that is what I believe makes the instrument such a pleasure to play and creates the obsession/addiction.
Max
max, you are only right, and yes we did use high string nashville guitar on many of the cuts, just to give it some sparkle.
but i work mostly with one guitar, so i'm always trying to make an orchestration that will seem like more than one guitar. that's the challenge i currently enjoy the most.
and thanks for your insight and input.
james
Great article! Thanks for the tips. Using the illustration of finding alternate fingerings for chords, a guitarist showed me the CAGED method. Meaning using open tuning, there are 5 different chord shapes. C A G E and D. So if you start with a C (open) you can move up the neck by spelling the word caged. Start with the fret furthest up the neck where your fingers are (in this case the C on the 3rd fret and 5th string). If you bar that fret and then make an A shape with the remaining fingers on the normal strings (just up a few frets) you get the same chord, different finger. Again, move up to the furthest fret, and bar, then make a G shape chord, then move up make an E shape then up and make a D shape. This works in any chord. If you start with an open E then next one up is D shape, then the next one starts over with C shape.
The only time this changes is moving from the D to the C. The note that is furthest up the fret, becomes the "root" of that chord shape. So you actually bar the fret below. example: if you take a D chord open and then want to move that same chord up, you would use a C shape next. For the D chord, your ring finger is on the D note (2nd string 3rd fret). That same note needs to be where your C shape starts. So you would bar the 2nd fret, then middle finger on that string, and ring finger on 4th fret 4th string and pinky on 5th fret 5th string.
I hope this makes sense. If it doesn't, I'll try to record it and put it up on YouTube or something. It was an awesome thing someone showed me and it opened everything up for me. It also allowed me to make movements quicker, just using a chord up the neck in stead of jumping back down.
Hope it helps.
Andrew
andrew, a great comment. it was what i was trying to say in an earlier post about learning the neck. there really are only so many basic chords and then simple variations of those. after that comes the really fun stuff. you post makes perfect sense to me, but if you put it up on youtube, let us know and we'll put a link to it.
all the best from amsterdam,
james lee
Great post, loved the pic of the lightning guitar!
Excerpt:
Like the Fender Stratocaster, the Gibson Les Paul has become a music icon, favored by guitarists in such differing styles as rock, metal, blues, jazz, and country. From Slash to Jimmy Page, the lovers of the Les Paul are everywhere.
Wow this is not just a great article, it is also informative. Thank you so much!
Andrew, you made things simplier for me! Thanks a lot!
les paul standard