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Guitar Voicing Guidance Needed

Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2018 12:29 pm
by leigh
I'm starting a project that includes guitar and I know almost nothing about writing for it. The only thing I do remember is that drop-2 generally works well.

Can anyone recommend a book that covers writing for guitar?

**Leigh

Re: Guitar Voicing Guidance Needed

Posted: Thu Jan 11, 2018 2:22 pm
by Rick Cornish
I don’t have a book for you, but—if you want to notate specific voicings—you can safely use drop-2, drop-3, and drop-2&4 formulas for 4-note chords. Any triad should work. Remember, guitar is written an octave above where it sounds. And no 7-note chords. :lol:

Of course, if you are writing pop, rock, country, or another style that uses standard chords, you might just notate with chord symbols and slash notation and let the player come up with what’s appropriate for the style and sound s/he’d be using.

Re: Guitar Voicing Guidance Needed

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 9:17 am
by leigh
Thanks, Rick. That's enough to get me started.

**Leigh

Re: Guitar Voicing Guidance Needed

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 12:39 pm
by leigh
How do these look? I'm particularly wondering about the first one.

This one is a slow ballad tempo:
Image

For this one, quarter note = 100:
Image

**Leigh

Re: Guitar Voicing Guidance Needed

Posted: Thu Feb 15, 2018 1:39 pm
by Rick Cornish
(Revised… see below)

Re: Guitar Voicing Guidance Needed

Posted: Fri Feb 16, 2018 11:41 am
by Rick Cornish
leigh wrote:How do these look? I'm particularly wondering about the first one.

This one is a slow ballad tempo:
Image

For this one, quarter note = 100:
Image

**Leigh
OK—I read through these.

Cue 1: ravensgtr
• Do you really mean for the cue to be played an octave up from where written? It's probably not playable that way as an octave up from high C would be the very highest note (or nearly so) on most guitars
• Assuming you want it played as written (without the 8va indication—which will sound an octave lower as compared to a piano)…
--Not sure what the slur or tie from the low E to the middle D at the end of the first bar means. What do you want there? Just a legato E?
--The first 6 bars are not characteristic (i.e. not chord structures a guitarist would be familiar with), but they are playable.
--The chord at the beginning of bar 7 is not playable as written, though it would be if you left off either the top or bottom note

Cut 2: maxinegtr
• The individual chords are all playable
• That said, I don't know anyone who could play through this very smoothly at 100bpm as written (and I know some really good guitar players)
• If someone handed me this part on a studio call, I would just play the top 2-3 notes of every chord. You might consider writing it that way to make it more playable.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

Re: Guitar Voicing Guidance Needed

Posted: Fri Feb 16, 2018 1:32 pm
by leigh
Thank you so much for taking the time to play through them, Rick! I really appreciate it. Your feedback is very helpful and I know the guitarist will be very grateful, too.

**Leigh

Re: Guitar Voicing Guidance Needed

Posted: Sun Feb 25, 2018 11:29 pm
by mhschmieder
If you own one of several guitar libraries, they might be capable of serving as a sanity check for playability, if that's your main concern. I can't remember exactly which libraries show the fret and string, and you might have to slow the tempo to follow things in the score and in the GUI for the guitar library to verify no notes are being dropped or are impossible finger stretches.

Sometimes, when I am doubtful about a part being playable and my own skills aren't up to the task, I'll split it in two, verify that I am happy with the voicings and articulations, get some sense of playing positions and frets/strings/fingers, and only at that point see if it is realistic to recombine. A few notes might be dropped here and there at that point, after careful analysis. But that is indeed a time-consuming approach, and not for everyone.

One thing to be aware of with guitar, is that you can get away with a lot more than you can with piano, in terms of switching octaves for different notes here and there, both due to the timbral difference at different playing positions and the harmonic richness of plucked strings.