Writing a guitar part for need your love

I gave myself the challenge of composing my own guitar part for the song Need Your Love by Ellie Golding. Firstly I decided to work out the chords, I did this by listening very carefully to the individual notes in each chords then I tried to find them all individually on the guitar to build the chords. Finding these chords also helped me figure out the key of the actual song. As a result of this I was able to improvise melodies and runs around this key. For example, during the second verse I found harmonizing notes that went well with the basic chords. To make the notes flow better I added in a few notes in-between.

I felt that the guitar sound was a bit too simple therefore, I decided to add in a phaser effect to help the guitar mix in with the rest of the track as the song is very techno. I also added in a delay effect to go along with the steady 4/4 beat that is continues throughout the piece.

after finishing this piece i found that the parts i had written didn’t sound very good, this was a result of the parts being too complicated. i order to get over this i decided i would use the technique ‘playing it backwards’. i did this by playing the last part first and mastering it then going to the second last and so on. However, this technique didn’t seem to help me play it any better, therefore, i instead change the technique to ‘isolation’ on the hardest parts i did this by playing these parts to a slowed down metronome until i mastered it.

Reflecting on My Love

I feel that my performance of my love by Justin Timberlake with Will, Sam and Elly went exceptionally well. I felt that the best way to improve the piece was to use different dynamics in the song, to do this I kept the verse relatively soft with only finger picking  then going into a more aggressive chorus by strumming the guitar, this gave the guitar more volume and over all more power. I also wanted to add in more of a rhythm element of the guitar part to go along with Will’s beat boxing, I did this by hitting the guitar with my nails on ever beat to add a snare like sound.

 

To finish the song off I felt the best way to do it would be to decrease the dynamics and focus more on the tone of the guitar; I did this by strumming chorus once near the 12^th fret of the guitar, giving this section of the song a slow and warm feeling to the guitar part. To contradict this I strummed the very last chord slowly and near the bridge of the guitar giving the guitar a very harsh tone.

Reflecting on Crystallize

After finishing the song crystallizes I feel that I was a little slow on some of the parts and I failed to hit some on the notes. This impacted the performance negatively as it made the song appear out of time and a little hollow due to the lack of layers when I missed the notes. It also forced Conner, who played drums for my performance, to go out of time with the backing track while he was trying to stay in time with me.

 

Despite saying this I feel that the majority of the performance was a lot better that I felt it went. For example when going into the first chorus I feel that every note I played was on time and sounded clear due to the selection of distortion I used; Modern. I also feel that the use of the neck pickup made a big contribution to the tone of my guitar sound. I chose this pickup as the song is very high end and using the neck pickup countered this as it gave the guitar a thick worm feeling to it.

 

During the song I kept the distortion maxed out on my ME70 Effects pedal as the song is very hollow due to a lack of instruments. This also helped give feedback to the guitar on some of the longer notes. I then used this gain in feedback to end the song, I did this by holing the very last note for as long as I could without dragging the song out, as a result of this the note gradually changed into feedback creating a very high end noise.

Mash Up

When working with my friends on a mixture of songs we came up with the idea of performing and composing a mash up of all of our favorite songs, this included: the Cup Song by Anna Kendrick, Come as You Are by Nirvana, Royals by Lorde, the Only Exception by Paramore and Give It Up by Casey and the Sunshine Band.

The First thing we felt we needed to do was to organize the songs into what order we would play them. This proved to be a challenge as all the songs had their strengths and weaknesses, for example, Give It Up had energy but didn’t capture any emotion from the audience where as the Only Exception had a lot of meaning and emotion yet no energy, preventing the audience from really getting into the song. In the end we decided the best order for the songs would be to put the Cup Song first as this was the simplest of the pieces containing vocals and a percussive effect on a cup, this was so that the mix could have a feel of tension as the pieces gradually gained more instruments and layers. The Cup Song was followed by the Only Exception as we wanted to capture the emotion of the audience early on in the song so we could leave the piece on an up beat happy feeling. Come as You Are was the next song in the mix as this song has a grungy element to it giving it a moody feel. the second too last song we decided would be Royals as we interpreted this song to be very funky by including elements of funk and blues in it, this then gave the song a more up beat feeling. Finally to end the mix we went with give it up as this left the audience / listener feeling happy as it has a very up lifting sound due to the major chords and fast tempo.

as their was so many part to this song we found it very difficult to memorize what song was supposed to be play at what time. therefore, we used the technique ‘repetion’ to get over this. to do this we simply played the whole mash up over and over again rather than each song at a time. the reason we did this was so that we could perfect every part of the song faster as we were playing every part every time we played the whole thing. it also assisted us in memorizing the order of the song meaning that we would not need reminders or need to stop halfway through the song. The reason that i chose this technique was that i found it a lot simpler than playing it to a metronome as i find it easier to get a feel for the music rather than playing to a click.

Tokyo – The Wombats

After performing the song Tokyo with Pippa I found that the song was a little to simple for my liking, this is due to the same four chords that are repeated throughout the piece. As a result of this I felt that it needed a little more interpreting, to do this I decided to increase the length of a few parts of the chord progression leaving room for Pippa to create a melody or improvise. I also decided to change the dynamics of the song, for example, the first verse it very quiet with only a small amount of tapping on the strings to create a simple beat for the piece, this will then lead into a louder chorus and go back into a quieter verse with a little more percussive elements.

Later on in the song Pippa and I became stuck with how we were going to perform the bridge, however, after a little thinking we came to the conclusion that we would have percussive guitar playing a beat with straight open chords. Over this Pippa will sing an original melody.

However, this came with problems as my transition from playing chords to playing a beat was a little slow in order to get around this i began using the technique of ‘tapping my foot while playing’. i did this by beginning to get a feel for the tempo as the bridge came up then tapping my foot as we changed to the bridge. i did this in order to create a most uniform tempo. i also did this so that Pippa was able to stay in time with my tapping and overall be able to stay in time with my playing.

Progress on Lindsey Stirling’s ‘Crystalize’

After a few practices of Lindsey Stirling’s ‘Crystallize’ I found that it sounded a bit to plain without any bass or backing, therefore, I decided to use the technique of ‘playing along to the backing track’ with Conner on drums. i did this by plugging my ipod with the song into an amp and speaker. The reason i did this was to help fill out the sound of the piece and gave it a more powerful effect. it also helped me to stay in time a lot more as i made more to compare my playing to. However, this still has problems in its own, The track is difficult to play along to with the drums as it means Conner will have to listen to me and the track just to play in time and play the right things to fit my guitar part.

I feel that to get over this I feel that we could both use the technique ‘playing to a metronome’ as this will assist us in playing in time with each other. to do this we played to the metronome and slowly turned the volume of it down each run through of the song until we couldn’t hear it anymore. We did this as this will help the tempo of the song stick in our heads so we are able to imagine the tempo as well as listen to each others playing. This also helped us to get used to each others playing styles while we were just getting used to playing in time as we could analyze how the other reacted to what we were playing or if we went out of time.

 

 

Music Performance

Today I preformed three songs to my class; these songs included ‘I got a feeling’ by The Black Eyes Peas, ‘party girl’ By Mcfly and ‘wanted dead or alive’ by Bon Jovi. I didn’t want to make these songs the same as the original; therefore, I had the challenging task of interpreting them to create my own version of each one.

I got a feeling: I decided the best way to interpret this song would be to use an electric guitar and a loop pedal to re-create the song using just this. Firstly I needed to find a way to create a backing track for the melody using the loop pedal, I did this by using a delay effect to create the main tune, I used a reverse pitch bend to create the bass and a simple clean guitar sound to create the triplet beat that is played throughout the piece. I then went on to the melody and learnt this by ear. However, I felt this was still sounded a little hollow; therefore, I began to work out harmonies and octaves for the melody. Finally I needed to decide how to end the song; I decided to improvise a solo over the song using a solo pedal to increase the volume so it was able to be heard over the rest of the track. I also used a volume pedal to slowly fade out the track.

Party girl: I had the idea before of turning a pop song into a rock/metal song; it was just a matter of what song to choose. I chose this song as it has a simple structure and there is not much to the original so playing a guitar over it wouldn’t over power the song. Firstly I decided on what effects to use for the song resulting in me choosing distortion with a lot of gain as this is a bit feature in rock and metal music, I also chose a phaser effect to use in the break after the first chorus as this gave a nice ‘build up’ sound to the beginning of the verse. I thought that using a fast guitar part for the verse would give a good relevance to rock music, and using octaves in the chorus as octaves are used a lot in sub genres of rock.

 

Wanted dead or alive: This song was the easiest to interpret in the set as I played this on an acoustic to give it a different feeling to the other songs. I started by playing the intro riff as it is played in the song going into the main riff of the song. I wanted to use a slapping technique on the acoustic for the main riff in the song, this gave it a more ‘western’ and aggressive feeling. I then went on the play the chords of the song through the verse to the end of the chorus using my thumb to strum the guitar and my fingers to pick certain notes; I did this to give the sound of two guitars, one playing the backing chords and the other playing a melody. After playing this through I felt it was to short and was too similar to the original, therefore, I decided to play the whole thing through again but this time give it some features of funk, for example short staccato notes, and lots of muted notes.

After create all of these i found that each one didn’t sound very good as i didn’t know each song very well. this was because i kept forgetting parts, therefore, i used the technique, ‘playing it backwards’ to help me memorize parts of the song. to do this i took the last parts of each song and learned them again then playing the second last and and so on.

The reason i did this was to assist me in memorizing each part of the song one by one resulting in me learning it a lot faster. as well as this it also helped me to improve the quality of each part meaning i was more comfortable and relaxed about playing each part.

I Gotta Feeling – Black Eyed Peas

I had the idea of using a loop pedal to re-crate a song with no backing track or click, I then did some research on other covers people had done of various songs in this style. This made me realize that if I was going to do this I would need to pick a very well known song with a catchy melody as if I was going to be looping it the audience may get bored or irritated by the repetition of the piece. I then decided to do the song I Gotta Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas as this song can be easily adapted.

 

Firstly I worked out the riff in the intro and looped this. I then wanted to add some bass to it, however I couldn’t change to a bass halfway through the song, therefore I decided to use a pitch bender to lower the notes I was playing down an octave. Next I wanted to add in the funky rhythm, I did this by looping the root notes with a triplet picking rhythm. My next task was to work out the main melody of the verse as this is arguably one of the most memorable parts of the song. However, by this point the song was still sounding a little hollow, as a result of this I then decided to add some harmonies and effects to it; I added delay to the background riff and the higher parts of the melody and decided to play the melody twice more but an octave higher, I did this as it gave the song a nicer and more relaxing feeling. To finish off I decided I would improvise a solo, so I worked out the key of the piece, E, and got to work on finding some nice melodies to play over the top.

 

I then showed everything I had to a friend and got feedback, they said I should practice on the timing or the loops as this can really stand out when trying to play in time. They also said that I should work on the actual loops themselves and to make sure I hit the write notes every time; to archive this I will use the practice technique ‘repetition’. to do this i will practice the song over and over till I get every note dead on every time.

the reason i am doing this is to create an accurate and good sounding piece, for example, i feel that if i create all of the loops and each one is slightly out of time then the overall piece will sound a lot worse than if only one or two are out of time.

Interpretation

29/09/2013

I have come up with the idea of turning a vocal melody of a song into a guitar solo to introduce interpretation into my piece. I have tried this with the song Paradise by Coldplay by using the technique learning by ear while playing along to a karaoke version of the song. i did this in order to enhance my ear for music and help me to be able to hear what sounds write with a song and not just learn what is theoretically right.

However, I felt that this was not enough, therefore, I decided to use a loop pedal to create all the music myself with no backing track. I also had the idea of doing this with the song with or without you by U2, yet I did this making all the music myself with just a guitar and a ME-70 multi-effects pedal. in order to do this i learnt all of the parts and simply played them one by one recording each one at a time. the reason i did this was to create a new and individual sound that will intrigue people  and make them want to hear more as it is something that they may not have heard before.

I decided to workout the melody to the song Shadows by Lindsey Stirling to try as one of my solos; however I couldn’t see how I could interpret this song as it is already pretty individual. I feel that the only way to change this song is to add in my own solo or improvise a different melody. I will also try to add more guitar effects into this song to give it a whole new feel. i will do this by experimenting with my pedal and seeing what works. i will do this as it will give the song a new ‘electronic’ feel that will hopefully create suspense and achieve a whole new sound for the genre.

Playing to a Metronome

24/9/13

I have been playing the song Skyfall by Adele a lot recently on piano; however I felt that I could do with making the chords / melody a little more in time. I did this by turning a metronome to 50 BPM and attempting to play this with no mistakes, as soon as I had mastered it at this speed I decided to add on another 5 BPM to get to 55 BPM. I continued to do this until I reached the original speed of 80 BMP; however I did feel that I could challenge myself more and go faster. I then turned it up to around 90 BMP to try and master the song at this speed.

I did this as it helped me to play the song more in time. It also helped me learn the song a lot faster and with fewer mistakes each time I play it. This was because i was practicing it  as slower speeds and matching every change up with the click on a metronome.