![]() That's my personal taste, and my taste has a knack of being off the beaten path, so just ignore my post. It's novel and exciting for a while, but it's a new era. They listen to the song as a whole and judge it on how the song moves them.Īs an average listener, I think Joe's formula worked for a time - it's simple to understand at face value, but I think that type of instrumental burned out listeners kindof like Yngvie burned out musician listeners. The non-musician isn't picking apart the song like we are. We know when something that was just played was amazing technical ability on display, versus just a standard run. We hear most of the notes and can identify the arpeggios when we hear them. We (musicians) listen to complicated pieces regularly in order to pick them apart, so we really get down to the nitty gritty of someone like Jason Becker, Malmsteen and are impressed. I don't mean it wasn't great playing, I just mean he wasn't so technical that the non-musician wouldn't understand what was just played. I'd also want to make a distinction between the average listener and a musician listener.įor the average listener, an instrument like Joe Satriani's SWTA was consumable by the public because (again, I think) his playing showcased a dumbed down musicianship. Lyrics enable you change the texture of repeated verses and choruses freeing you up from the sense of repetition, which is why (I think) the Verse, verse, chorus, verse verse chorus pattern works - the words and how they are sung make the pattern not so repetitious. I would want to start at point A, move to B, keep moving to C, and then either end on A or end on D. Drums, bass lines, bascially the entire mood would need to keep changing. I think to keep my interest, I would not want an instrumental piece to keep revisiting the same verse and chorus. It just feels like I'm subjected to the same thing over and over again, which bores me. The droning bass and drums never change, and his epic solo is repeated 2x, with some blues and tapping licks. For instance, when I listen to Joe Satriani, I get tired real quick, mostly because he sticks to a vocal format. I find it challenging mostly because if you approach it like a song with lyrics, your gonna be repetitive (overly, IMO). Instrumental music is somewhat foreign to me in practice. I'm just getting us started on the subject of writing instrumental music and I know there will be much more advice from the other guys here at GMC so please do feel free to offer any other suggestions and ideas that can help people write better instrumentals. Having a different melody at the end of a verse serves to prepare us to move to somewhere else, be it a bridge or a chorus. So it would look something like this:īy taking the 2nd rep of Melody 2 and altering it, we create a melody that hasn't been heard until that point. Now, to take a leaf out of Satch's book, let's create more variation by altering the end of the very last melody. This is one of the most common ways of doing it. You can then use the structure of melody 1, melody 2, melody 1, melody 2 to cover your 4 riff repetitions. Ok, now you might want to have 2 contrasting melody lines to work with. ![]() Or shift the melody note before the chord change. Sometimes it can be the same time but sometimes you might want to let a note hang as the chords change. If you have a repeating chord progression then one thing you can do to provide interest is to have a contrast with when your melody changes notes and when the chords change. If it were me I'd probably avoid just following the root notes of the chords and avoid changing only when the chords change. Remember that this is taking the place of a vocal hook so the simpler the better. So if you start off with a riff that repeats 4 times, for example, you would then want to come up with a melody line. I think this is perhaps the best way to write instrumentals that are lead guitar orientated. ![]() Why do you think that is ? Why do we expect riff based instrumentals from bands but different kinds of instrumentals from players like Satch, Vai etc ?Īs Joe Satriani has said plenty of times, his approach was to treat writing guitar melodies like they were vocal lines themselves. For some reason, we don't expect these tracks to have lead guitar melodies in place of the vocals, we just accept them for being riff based extravaganzas. Of course, you can write riff based instrumentals if you're a full band. Once you've come up with some riffs and an arrangement you know that vocals are going to be going over the top of those riffs. How does one go about writing instrumental guitar music ? It is, in my opinion, much harder than writing songs with lyrics.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |