Ols subject, I'm sure. Sheet music and many backing arrangements use the Piano. How do you convert that into a workable backing using a single guitar? As a fingerstylist there is no problem playing bass and treble lines at the same time but how do you transpose those Piano notes into something that can be played on guitar?
BTW, I play mostly fingerstyle, acoustic blues from around the WWII years and into the Chicago years.
In the absence of a real experience at this, my gut reaction would be to try and find some piano sheet music for a few songs you already know, then compare your guitar part against what the piano is doing.
I wrapped a newspaper ’round my head
So I looked like I was deep
Hiya,
My method.
Take the bass line, and write it down
Then, take the melody line and write it down
That leaves you with the harmony lines. Remove all duplicates (how many Bs do you really need in a chord of G, for example). Write down what's left.
Transpose it into a guitar friendly key and it should be "playable"
At this point, you need to work out exactly which harmonies you can lose without losing the flavour of the piece; that's a listening function. Then finger it so anybody could play it, and go for your life.
If you're transcribing from piano score to Tab, it's probably easier to go via a standard notation version for solo guitar rather than trying to go direct to Tab.
Best,
A :-)
"Be good at what you can do" - Fingerbanger"
I have always felt that it is better to do what is beautiful than what is 'right'" - Eliot Fisk
Wedding music and guitar lessons in Essex. Listen at: http://www.rollmopmusic.co.uk
My method is similar to Alans... but I'll fill in a couple more details:
The piano is written in actual pitch; the guitar is written one octave higher than it sounds. You'll need to transpose the piano part up one octave to put it in guitar notation - low E on the guitar is the first ledger line below the bass clef on piano.
I tackle the melody line first; that's where the most 'recognizable' elements lie. My first step is to look over the piano score and decide if the melody should be transposed to a new key. You want the treble part to lie on the first couple of strings - otherwise you don't have room to build a harmony below the melody - and you don't want to be struggling with the extreme upper frets, especially if you're doing counterpoint below it.
If the piano's treble part goes above A (first ledger line, 17th fret on a guitar), or below B (under the first ledger line beneath the treble staff, open B string), I'll have to decide how important harmony is at that point. If the excursions are on weak beats, or centered within phrases I may do them as single notes or simple intervals; if the outlying notes demand full harmony I'll probably transpose the melody to a more guitar-range-friendly key.
Next I do the bass. If the piano bass part goes beneath the first ledger line, I'll have to transpose that up an octave.
Then you've got to fill in the inside voices. Do NOT trust any chord symbols over the piano line for this - they're often dead wrong (last month I did an arrangement of 'Misty' with a student from a piano part, and I think the chord symbols were lifted from a big band chart; in a couple places, the piano was playing only one of the stated chord tones!)
For the inside voices, I focus on closed voicings first. Piano parts are easiest when the notes are a second or third apart... which makes them pretty tough on guitar. If the close voicing is essential to the tune (sometimes it is), I'll see if I can put one of the notes on an open string - which may mean another transposition.
If the close voicing isn't essential, but the tones are needed to imply the harmony, I'll usually invert them. A major 2nd is tough to play as inside tones on a guitar, but a minor 7th isn't.
At that point I can play through what I've written out, and the thing I'll look at is the phrasing. Piano parts tend to be 'busy' compared to the guitar. Playing it as a direct (or nearly direct) transposition often means playing an important note followed by a relatively unimportant note on the same string - do I really want to kill the first note at that point, or is there a way I can change the part to a different position, or alter the harmony? If I decide to alter it, I'll need to look at how that affects the feeling of the phrase, and I'll want to create the same feeling in similar phrases.
One thing that's often overlooked by folks arranging piano tunes for guitar: open strings are your friends. They allow you to do close voicings, alteration of notes with sustain, and smooth transitions from on position to another. If you're trying to do a piece in Db, it's a tough go. C and G are the easiest keys, followed by F, D, and A.
Oh, and if the piece is in D with a prominent bass line, consider arranging it for drop D tuning.
Guitar teacher offering lessons in Plainfield IL
Hi,
Thanks for the excellent answers! :D
Some for the "Keeper" file there. I'm currently trying to learn more about arranging, and how all the various parts fit together. Transposing a piano score looks like a good practical exercise that will help shed a lot of light on the reasons and possibilities underlying it all.
Cheers,
Chris
