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Guitar in Music

The guitar can be considered one of the most versatile instruments in terms of the roles it can play. Sometimes guitar will play a purely rhythmic role, sometimes purely harmonic, sometimes purely melodic, and other times it will be any combination of the three. When writing a guitar part it is vital that you decide what role the guitar will be playing.

There are also three basic types of guitar:

• nylon string acoustic guitar (classical)
• steel string acoustic guitar
• electric guitar.

Each type has its pros and cons. Stereotypically, nylon string acoustics are used for classical guitar, steel acoustics are used for strumming chords, and electrics are used for solos, power chords and grunge, and in jazz.

If you are writing a purely melodic guitar part then it is fairly simple:

• just write out the notation,
• keep in mind that the lowest note on a guitar is E1 (almost 3 octaves below middle C) and
• the highest note is approximately C6 (depending on the guitar and skill of the musician...2 octaves above middle C).

Interesting Techniques

Some techniques you might consider in order to make the part more interesting are:

• tremelo,
• slurs,
• glissandos (slides),
• pizzacato (muted),
• portamento (bends),
• vibrato,
• use of plectrum (pick).

If you are composing a purely harmonic guitar part then it is also not too hard. Writing for a guitarist to play, unless you want some specific sound, it is better to just compose the harmonic structure of the piece and let them decide how best to play it.

If you are writing a purely rhythmic guitar part, then you need to consider the fact that a guitar has up strokes and down strokes, where down strokes will generally be the stronger ones which land on the strong beats of a bar. If there is anything interesting going on in the piece in terms of rhythm, you may want the guitar to mimic the rhythm using stroke direction.

If writing for a guitarist, write out the rhythm and which chord should be played, and tell them to figure out a strumming pattern using that rhythm.

NOTE: When writing for a guitar you need to keep in mind the tuning of a guitar - it has six strings (low | E A D G B E | high), which means is that it is more difficult for a guitar to play minor seconds within chords than any other interval.

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