Sing With Chord
Mar. 8, 2023
In the previous article I wrote that I got to be able to compose on the guitar before I knew it, and the best way is to spend a long time for composing on the guitar.
Then what have I learnt as the result? I’m not sure, but I’ll write down what I think it might be.
The most popular way to enjoy guitar is to sing with it. Guitar plays chord and rhythm. Voice plays melody and lyrics. For the guitar, chords and strokes are written, and the chords are usually played all the strings at once. But this way is not suitable for playing melody.
Classical guitar, on the other hand, can play melody, harmony, bass and rhythm all in one. So the problem is, can I make the all the factors at once? I’ll consider each factor in below.
First, the melody. The basis of melody is rhythm and scale. Regardless of what it expresses, riding on a rhythm and going up and down the scale, will produce a kind of melody. Let’s look at the case of Lunch at Café.
Lunch at Café Melody Only.
‘Melody Only’ is pretty boring, isn’t it? As I wrote in ‘Start With Melody‘, I used to make a song by adding harmony and base to the melody in sequence. Now the problem is, can I make the whole song from the beginning all at once on my guitar like below?
Melody, harmony and bass.
Of course, I don’t need to make in such a neat form. I can shape it well later. But to get the feeling of the song, melody alone is not enough, as you know from the above two plays.
But anyway, to talk about melody only, the feature is that it goes up and down the scale. It also means that my left hand has to go up and down the fretboard.
In contrast, I almost only use open strings for the bass. In the above case I only used the 5th string open (A) and the 6th string open (E). So I can easily play the bass no matter which position my left hand moves to. For me, the bass is compatible with the melody.
The remaining factor to consider is the harmony. It’s enough to play the chord according to the bass. But the chords on the chord-books are for lower position playing. When the left hand moves to the higher position to play the melody, these chords cannot be played. So I had played the notes three degrees lower of the melody so that I could create harmony in the same position as the melody – as I wrote in “Start with Melody“.
However, day by day I played the 3 degrees lower notes and looking for good sounds on my guitar, I found the chords playable in several positions by using the 1,2,3 strings only.
I often create A major songs, and in the case, the chords mainly used are A and E7. Below is the chord A and E7 played in several positions.
Memorizing these fingerings allows me to play the chords while I play the melody. And the 4,5,6 strings can be reserved for the bass. For example…
In this part, I use the chord A and E7. While I leave the 2nd and 3rd strings for the resonance of the chords, move the position of the 1st string to play the melody.
The chord D and E are also used in A major songs.
Looking at these, you can see that I often use the 1st to 3rd string sejas (barre). The chords in brackets don’t have to be played by seja, but I usually play them by seja. When I change the chord in the same position, I only need to move my fingers a little. Even when I have to change the position, I only move my index finger in the slide.
In this way I was able to make the chords compatible with the melody. Besides, these chords are useful for arpeggios, which is the very charming play of the guitar.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t work very well in keys other than A major. In E major song, the chords E, B7, and A are used. And D major song uses D, A7, G. The bass B and G cannot be played on open string. There’s no good way for them, so I do my best to stretch my finger or do a whole seja.
Then, what have I learnt? First, I have memorized the fingerings of these chords. For the second, I have been able to play the chords according to the bass without thinking about it. And my left hand has learnt to play the chords even when the position changes. These enabled me to play the chords automatically while playing the melody.
I feel that this way is a little different from the way ‘3 degrees lower from melody’ which I wrote in “Start With Melody“. Playing the 3 degrees lower notes is for enriching the melody, and the notes are the accessory to the melody. So when I play the melody with vibrato, I play the 3 degrees lower notes with vibrato together. On the other hand, when I play ‘any position chord’ written above, it is just the chord, not part of the melody. This means that I have learned a new way of composing.
In this way, I got to be able to compose the whole song without separating melody, chord and bass.
But in the above, I could only talk about how I could ‘play’ the whole song which I wanted to create. Then how did the songs come out easier? The reason is much more ambiguous. But I’ll write about it one day.
At the end, I put the whole play of Lunch at Café. It’s my favourate song.
⇒Lunch at Café : Stuff Notation ↗️
← Sing On Guitar / Start From Rhythm →
Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pixabay