Tag Archives: Guitar

Adding the middle part

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After yesterday’s work on my song, I have a melodic line for the soprano, and most of the bass line for the piano (which I’m thinking might be played by a contrabass instead), and I’m filling in the right hand of the piano, which might be played by a guitar.

I’m finding that the line is kind of just flowing today. I finish the right hand of the piano part, and I think a guitar will play it very nicely, but it can work on the piano too.

I go to work on the rest of the bass line, and it feels like it’s almost writing itself. I save, and I guess it’s time to make a new score for the new instrumentation.

I’ve printed a score, and I’m ready to try it out with some musician friends.

Adjustments, more lyrics discovered

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Today ends up being a lot of different things. I start working on the hymn arrangement for Thanksgiving, go on to the wind symphony project, and finish on the Return of the King song project.

At choir practice yesterday, one of my earlier suggestions was revisited, and therefore there were some adjustments to make today. I’m writing in a verse of a different hymn in the middle of the song, and a small instrumental intro to that right after the first verse.

I’m taking a couple of risks here. I don’t know if the guitarist and/or cellist will struggle with the high notes, because I haven’t given them notes this high before, and I figure it could be a challenge – it is on many instruments. The violinist says she can do either octave from the part I sent her, so I will have us test it out on Sunday to hear how well it sounds at the high register.

The middle hymn is more subdued, and it’s in SSA instead of SATB format. So I don’t have all the instruments accompanying that verse, only coming in at times, and counting rests part of the time. I’ll want to have the choir test part of it a cappella, and have the piano optional for the entire song.

No key changes within the piece because I don’t want it this time. Some transposing had to happen to have both hymns in the same key, but it’s totally doable for the sopranos to go up to an F, so I don’t worry about that.

Because it’s fun to work on a big piece, I look in my folder for “Wind symphony,” and discover that I had started a score for the second movement months ago. I listen through the first movement, just over 3 minutes long, and I still like it. That’s good. I think it could go a little bit faster, but I like the themes, and the ideas and the development. It’s obviously needing the next movements though! So I guess I’ll get to that in the next little while.

Well, that song I worked on last week? I look at it, and it seems I’m missing something. I go back to the scriptures, and decide to include some more lyrics. Maybe I won’t need to repeat the lyrics, just melodic material, to make a more catchy song. It sure is superior to work with lyrics that are poetic (and these are definitely poetic). I add in what kind of amounts to a second verse of the “aria” if you can talk about this piece that way. I’m pretty excited. I think I’d like to sing this song some time.

Before quitting for the day, I add in the rest of the song (melody/vocal line). Its running time is five minutes now. Time to deliver the parts for the Thanksgiving song and maybe get dinner on the table.

Create something each day

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I give out two parts this morning from yesterday’s work. I have never actually written for guitar before, and I’m uncertain how it’s going to go over with the guitarist.

It turns out he’s been reading TAB notation, but that is something I am completely unfamiliar with. I’ve written it on a normal staff, and he reassures me that he can translate into the format he knows better.

I get to my computer, and I’m kind of dragging my feet today. That song I started working on earlier this week is itching at me, but I don’t know what I’m doing with it. I decide to just do something. I write in the right hand of the piano to accompany the melody line I wrote a couple of days ago. I find that adding in one more voice actually does a lot to inform the way the song will go – harmonic changes, interplay between voices, and in turn, the bass line, if that isn’t one of the first two.

Yesterday I did a scripture hunt for the word “Perfect.” I don’t know who will be wanting to play it, but I have this idea for a three-movement piece for wind symphony. I wrote the first movement some time ago, but I never got it performed, and I kind of lost heart and didn’t write the second and third movements yet. But I had found my notebook with my ideas for the second movement, and yesterday I worked on the ideas for the third.

It’s easy to just go on being busy without creating something. But I made a goal to create something each day, even if it’s small. One thing it has done for me is appreciate the Sabbath more. I’m kind of spent after trying to create something for six days straight, and it gives me a better rest.

Last year, I was practicing my viola so much all the time, that I started to feel an inflammation develop in my arms. After starting to observe a Sabbath rest one day a week from practicing, my inflammation went away, and I don’t have that problem anymore.

Another thing I notice is that when I play music, I am happier. So when I feel heaviness lowering down on me, it’s usually a good cue to go play some music.

I write some more of the piano accompaniment. Last night, I also listened to Arnold Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht. It is not quite as esoteric as his later works, and I felt it was very moving. Somehow, as I’m writing today, I find that his harmonies are still ringing in my head.

And I fill in the rest of the accompaniment to how far I’ve written. I’ve long looked up to Franz Schubert, who cranked out hundreds of Lieder in his short life. Or Charles Ives, who wrote lots of cool songs, which I was first exposed to from a piano teacher at Södra Latin. Maybe that is how it is: once you find the harmonic/melodic language you favor, it’s much easier to put out a lot of music quickly, if you just show up and keep doing it, a little each day.

After getting in a good practice on my viola, I feel very happy. I’m back working on writing the song, and I find the melody flowing to me easily. Suddenly I’m out of lyrics. Is this the end?

Unlikely. It feels like it needs some repetition. So I’ll figure that out, sometime soon, but not today. I add in the right hand of the piano accompaniment for the next 41 measures, and I’m starting to feel tired. I’ll leave it for tonight, and get back another day to this song.

Thanksgiving song arrangement

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I got a call from our assistant choir director yesterday who requested a simple arrangement of a song for Thanksgiving: Come, Ye Thankful People. So I guess I’ll make a score for this. The instrumentation is still not completely settled, so I’m wondering how this is going to turn out. But part of the decision making process obviously will be to write in all the melody and harmony that is already there, so it may be ok to just get going anyway.

I’m looking at the notes. I accidentally chose the wrong key, and when thinking about whether that could work, I saw that the setting was pretty low already in F, so going down to D was not going to happen this time. I am considering a key change to A flat major though, which I think would sound beautiful.

After talking again to the assistant choir director, she makes it clear that she does not want any key changes, so I scrap that idea. We settle on the instrumentation guitar, violin, viola, cello.

I write in a cello bass line and then a guitar part. The guitar sounds an octave lower than notated, and will be easy to drown out as it’s pretty soft. I’m thinking maybe to let the violin and viola pluck so they don’t get too loud. I’m listening through it now, and thinking that a piano actually isn’t necessary… I guess we’ll see what they think once we start practicing.

I start on the second verse, letting the guitar take the bass line. I want the violin to play an octave higher than the sopranos, but I am not sure how comfortable our violinist is with the high register, so I write it lower and the octave doubling, and ask the violinist to pick one octave. I add in some more phrase markings for the instruments. It can be hard to guess sometimes as an instrumentalist, unlike for the singers. It’s usually pretty obvious as a singer, because of the lyrics and punctuation.

I’m printing off parts and sending them off.