A
Few Insights on Composition
By
Erik Stewart
There
is a great deal of narrow minded or misleading information about
composition these days. I have many years of classical training
in theory and composition; and I’ll gladly share a few important
concepts about composition.
Almost
all music is built on Motifs. Motifs are musical ideas or gestures,
in the broad sense of the term. It could be a singing melody or
a driving rhythm among many things. Guitar solos naturally tend
to do a composition technique called motivic development; which
is taking the original motive and changing it in any variety of
ways. In fact, if a guitarist simply adds a pinch harmonic to
one note of a motif he has developed it in some way. To the most
extreme complexity of motivic development Wagner wrote entire
operas with subliminal motifs hidden in the music to help his
audience sense the characters thought; meanwhile Haydn wrote monothematic
Sonatas, with really only one motif the entire time. In my opinion
Beethoven is the all time master of motivic development. I have
studied his scores to see how he constantly developes his music
craftily. There is a reason that a symphony can be over an hour
long and not repeat itself boringly. It is important to consider
how your motifs relate to each other and are developed through
the piece.
Just like the the feel of a basketball, music has textures. Solid
palm mutes over power chords create a different texture than sweeping
arpeggios; even to the same exact chord progression. There are
countless textures possible in my mind, coming from sitting in
orchestras for years; that are untouched by the guitar world today.
Some of the virtuosos like George Bellas I’ve discovered
have started to tap into some of them, but, they are mostly unkown
to the popular ear. One slight difference in an orchestration
(the way you assign the parts to the players) can make a striking
difference. The example that comes to mind is how much different
a two voice line (like a melody and harmony) sounds coming from
one guitar as opposed to split between two. I have recorded an
example of the difference between the two Click
to listen I begin this example with one guitar playing the
two upper voices and halfway through I switch to two guitars player
each playing one of the two upper voices. There are huge sonic
differences between the two because of the way Distortion handles
single notes to multiple notes in the same channel. The more you
understand how to create different textures; the more you can
truly express to the most precise detail what you want to say.
I strongly recommend experimenting with textures.
One thing in particular that I stress is careful attention to
how your chords are voiced. This really just means the spacial
relationships between the notes. I recorded an example some of
the different voicings for GM. Click
to Listen In this example I voice GBD, GDB, DGB, BDG, and
back to GBD. This is done in the most simple voicings in 3 voice
texture for demonstration. Each voicing has it’s own sound to
it, even though it is essentially the same chord. To make things
even more diverse; when you add bass guitar keep in mind what
these inversions could do. You should consider the bass guitar
a 4th voice below the guitar. Even with (including bass) a simple
4 voice texture there are many possibillities of sounds just on
voicings alone. If you simply strum open chords with no string
mutes you are guaranteed to have that generic and poorly voicelead
sound so commonly heard. Just like with textures, slight differences
can make huge results. Along with voicing comes voiceleading;
which really means how you handle the voices, or lines, from chord
to chord. The rules of voiceleading when fully laid out are rather
complicated and are quite often intentionally broken in Romantic
and 20th Century Music. The shortcut to smooth voiceleading is
to follow the law of the shortest path, as in choose to move your
voices in the smallest possible invertvals between chords..
Think Outside the Neck! This is the most important thing you can
take away from this article. Too often, and even I do this sometimes,
guitarists will box themselves into the regular way of defaulting
from chord to chord. The best thing to do is to find ways to make
your hands play or else orchestrate what you hear in your mind.
I find myself arming my current project, The Axiom, with 3 guitarists
for this exact reason. Most of my rhythm guitar parts require
somewhat difficult string skips to maintain the voiceleading and
textures I hear. To shock many of you; sometimes there is not
a part for one of us to play during parts of the music! This is
because there is a higher musical goal; more important than ego
or impatience. Music can be the expression of words that can’t
be found or facets that can’t be seen any other way.
©2006
Erik Stewart All Rights Reserved
