Guitar Lesson (re: 829, 831)

1998-08-22 04:00 am

I think I figured out the difficulty Joe is having. He sent me a midi file of a lovely little piece he sequenced, and some of the problems became immediately obvious.

Guitar is a challenging instrument to sequence. So I'll write a little mini-tutorial, hopefully without getting too verbose. First off, to sequence for guitar, you have to think like a guitarist... or get a lobotomy ;-) [I can say things like that, I'm one myself...] Joking aside, you have to treat the guitar as six separate instruments - one for each string.

One of the first lessons in classical guitar is "Don't move a finger of the fretting hand unless you have to." A corollary is "Don't right-hand-mute the strings unless you have to."

The way guitar pieces are written are *not* how they're played, in terms of note duration. I'm attaching a little file that illustrates this. It's an attachment on this identical message on the newsgroup. (If you can't get onto the newsgroup, e-mail me and I'll send it to you.)

The first staff is how you would more-or-less enter it in from a piece of sheet music (within the limitations of NWC). Go ahead and play the file. The other six staves are muted as supplied. Sound pretty awful and chunky, doesn't it?

The other thing people forget is that guitar music is sounded *an octave lower* than written. Guitarists, being simple-minded creatures, would find it tough to cope with a grand staff. So, to allow squeezing everything on one staff, the music is written an octave higher. Some sequencers have an option of putting little 8's (or even 15's) above or below the clef to indicate such octavizations. NWC doesn't, but there's a way around it.

First select all notes of a staff, and use shift-ctl-down seven times to move the notes down an octave. Then use Tools - Transpose staff to transpose +12 semitones. The score is back to looking as it should, but the sound will be an octave lower, again as it should.

Back to the other point. Thinking like a guitarist means actually figuring out which string each note is played on, and writing a staff for each string to allow the notes to ring for their full length until a "virtual finger" changes position. See staves 2-7 of the sample NWC file, which represent strings 1-6 of the guitar.

Finally, adding dynamics can make a world of difference.

So let's hear what this is all about. Select the first staff, and click Staff - Mute staff. Now go down the line and unmute each of the other six staves. Press home, then F5 to replay the file. Sounds like a guitar now, eh Joe?

Re: Guitar Lesson (re: 829, 831)

Reply #1 – 1998-08-22 04:00 am

<putting little 8's (or even 15's) above or below the clef. . . NWC doesn't>

Actually it does - when inserting or editing a clef symbol there is an option
to shift up or down by an octave. Just thought I'd mention it ...

Re: Guitar Lesson (re: 829, 831)

Reply #2 – 1998-08-22 04:00 am

Oops... you're absolutely right. Thanks for pointing that out, it will make things a lot easier for future guitar (and double bass) projects.