Displaying items by tag: Play music
For the Guitarist Volume 7: Songwriting
I started playing guitar at age eleven, but I started my first band at fifteen playing drums. The reason why I stuck with guitar is songwriting. I wanted to write songs. The guitar is a good, self-contained unit, a perfect vehicle for writing.
Singer/songwriters tend to either be piano players or guitar players. Think about this a minute. How many instruments are there that you can play and sing at the same time? How many instruments are polyphonic? You can create anything from a simple song to relatively complex arrangements on the guitar.
The form of the song is a good place to start. There are forms like the Blues that are essentially loops. It is a twelve-bar form. The same harmonic structure is repeated throughout the song. The song also usually does no form of key modulation.
The standard song form for years was thirty-two bars. This is usually an AABA form. That means an eight-bar section (A), followed by a very similar section (A again), a contrasting section (B) and returns to where it started (A once more). A lot of standards are in the AABA form. The whole form is often repeated.
There are also strophic songs which are like poems which can have several repeated verses. You can also have verse, chorus, repeat. These can also have a bridge which may be referred to as B.
None of this means that you have to stick with a basic form to write a song, there are no rules. This just gives you a jumping off point. Once bands started writing their own material more often, things started to change. A lot of those players were not educated in the same manner as songwriters of old. They wrote by feel in many ways.
Another thing to consider is a song can be sectional or in movements. That can almost be like a series of different forms. For example, you could have three different AABA sections in a row and that can be your song. In Classical music there are forms that essentially assemble smaller forms like that. ABACA is called rondo form. Each section is a small composition itself. A lot of musicians don’t pay enough attention to form.
So, break out your guitar and some paper and try writing a song. You can make it anything from a Pop song to a work involving many movements. The choice is yours. You can keep the song in your head, but writing it down makes it easier to communicate your ideas to other musicians. This can be in standard notation or simple maps to show the form. Have fun and get creative!
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Written by Wesley DavidSomething extraordinary happens on a street in Huntsville, Alabama. Mr. Woods (Keith Randolph Smith), a hard-working Black man in the community, is involved in a traffic stop with two cops (Mark Bedard and Jorge Luna) - a scene witnessed far… -
THE DEN THEATRE ANNOUNCES JUNE COMEDY SHOWS
Written by Buzz Center StageThe Den Theatre today announced upcoming June 2025 shows at the theatre's Wicker Park stages at 1331 N. Milwaukee Ave., including "Anatomy of Murder" Podcast on June 4; Beth Stelling on June 6–7; IMHO: The Show on June 8; Gabby Bryan on June 12; Grace Helbig: "Let Me Get This… -
Full Casting Announced for Hell in a Handbag's QUEEN FOR A DAY - July 9 – August 3, 2025 at Bramble Arts Loft - World Premiere!
Written by Buzz Center StageHell in a Handbag Productions is pleased to conclude its 2024/25 Season with the world premiere of QUEEN FOR A DAY written by ensemble member Tyler Anthony Smith* and directed by Stephanie Shaw. This gay fantasia on national themes... wait, wrong play. This one-act comedy/drama/cry for help…
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Redtwist Theatre's GARY: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus: Who mops up after the royals' butchery?
Written by Sarz MaxwellI reviewed TITUS ANDRONICUS in mid-February, so I was eager to see the sequel! In TITUS, Shakespeare tells the story from the viewpoint of the regnant major characters: Empress Tamora and her sons Chiron, Demetrius and Bassianus; Lucius and the…
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