Classical scales and general playing (Bach in particular)

Without dragging out sheetmusic... I believe he was fond of Dmaj, Gmaj, Amin, Dmin, and Emin. My personal favorite was done in Dmin: a piece known as the the Double Violin Concerto, or Concerto for Two Violins and Strings in D Minor. Though the piece is supposed to be Dmin, he breaks from the key a lot throughout the piece. What key he used really depended on the mood he was trying to achieve, and was also influenced by the period of his life; a lot of his cooler stuff was early-mid, his religious stuff came later (bleah).

A concept (that you may or may not want me to mention :lol: ) is melodic minor. If you don't know the scale it's the natural minor scale with a raised 6th and 7th by a half step. But, when you descend the scale it reverts back to natural minor. It's used a lot in classical music.

you're not going to get bach's sound just with scales. you have to familiarize yourself with the melodies he uses, and the fact that he's still the greatest counterpoint writer in history and harmonically as brilliant as anyone. one thing he does a lot is to have three or four voices, with one or two voices moving dynamically, while the others stay stationary or move by a step. actually all four of the voices often have a melodic component, and not just a harmonic one. another effect he uses is to have an idea in the one register, then mirroring it in a lower voice while the treble voice begins a new idea, and sometimes even with a seperate moving bassline. also, since there's no tremolo effect with a keyboard, the effect is done with quick trills. anyway, there is a CONSTANT sense of movement and tension and resolving that tension in most of his work(5-1, 7-1, 5 of 5 to 5 to 1).
it may be an oversimplification, but it's not an much of an exaggeration to say that almost all classical western music theory is trying to explain what bach did. it wasn't until the turn of the 20th century that major composers of western music began to try anything different, such as debussey or stravinsky.
i'd suggest learning a bunch of his pieces (you can find tab for probably 20 or more songs online), or developing a psychic connection with your bandmates.

for an example of bach on the guitar, check out the videos at http://adam.fulara.com/e.php?g=music

OMG! I may as well go back to banging pots with wooden spoons. I feel so unworthy.

I like the statement about music theory and Bach. Very true. The man was brilliant.

you're not going to get bach's sound just with scales. you have to familiarize yourself with the melodies he uses, and the fact that he's still the greatest counterpoint writer in history and harmonically as brilliant as anyone. one thing he does a lot is to have three or four voices, with one or two voices moving dynamically, while the others stay stationary or move by a step.

I've heard that Bach wrote music with over 5 voices in them (I want to say 10, but that sounds unbelievable), if you do end up picking up sheet music, have a look at some Baroque era music, since it sounds like that is what you're interested in.

Damn and I though the likes of Satriani and Van Halen had mastered tapping! That guy is seriously coordinated!

Anyway thanks for the replies (keep em comming). Think I will learn to play some Bach. Simple and most effective way of learning about a style...Any suggestions of peices?

Tocatta and Fugue in D minor is a cool one, that's about the only one i know :lol:

Very cool. I like most of his 'Brandenburg' concertos too. But his string stuff is what I like. Might be interesting to hear the Double played on two guitars.... Hmm... Mebbe a couple Baritone guitars and Basses for the rest of the Strings... Hmm...

Now I have to go find my sheet music...

holy crap. That guy in the link you posted is good. The first person I've seen to accurately render bach voices on a guitar...wow.

What you'll notice about Bach in particular is that not only is his work extremely hard to play in places, but that he modulates between keys any number of times in a single piece. Even the famous "Air on a G string" runs through several key changes in a very short space of time in the second half.

Bach was also a famour organist before he became a famous composer, and would have been used to playing three part scores. The man's a genius, but really hard to play.

Best,

A :-)

I've heard that Bach wrote music with over 5 voices in them (I want to say 10, but that sounds unbelievable), if you do end up picking up sheet music, have a look at some Baroque era music, since it sounds like that is what you're interested in.

He could've easily written for ten voices since he wrote many pieces for Orchestra. At any rate I personally prefer classical on a nylon string. The Neo Classical gig is a bit overdone.

As much as mister Fulara is quite impressive, remember that piano players have been playing counterpoint on a single instrument for centuries.

Yeah, but then again with piano you have two hands playing notes.

Not to be pedantic but anything written in the classical style is neo-classical but I agree with you in that the same old baroque licks played on the electric guitar get tiring after a while.

I think you're confusing 'voices' with 'parts'. Almost all large ensemble pieces, including full symphonies, are written in four part harmony. There might be a lot of stuff going on, and over 100 instruments playing at the same time, but you've only got four harmonic voices happening when you analyze the piece.

Bach wrote almost exclusively for two, three, or four voices. Many composers of his time wrote for eight - but treated eight as a double set of four. You've got eight singers (the literal 'voices') singing four-part harmony.

People get confused by the difference... so take a really complex piece: a motet called "Spem in Alium" by Thomas Tallis. There are forty independent voices in that piece - the highest number I know of. But it's really a set of eight five-voice choirs! Another composer of the same era, Alessandro Strigggio, wrote "Ecce beatam lucem" for forty voices, but his breaks down into ten four-part choirs. So even with all that stuff happening, you don't have more than five different vertical notes at once - it's four or five part harmony for forty voices.

Five part harmony is pretty rare. Some jazz is written in five parts, and a couple of motets and masses, but not much else. Four voices is plenty to keep track of at one time!

Ten part harmony isn't possible in practical terms; you can certainly have ten voices, but we hear harmony as chords - and the biggest chord is the 13th, with just seven different notes. Different parts converge on the same note at the same time, leading to fewer harmonic 'voices' than there are parts. It's a process called 'doubling'.

Ah, let me nip this is the bud before it wanders off somewhere.

The reason things get edited, some of them obvious, some of them not is because we have to make judgement calls on this stuff all day every day. We don't get paid for our time, so we don't dwell on it.

We try to be as light handed as possible. However I'd rather err on the side of a little too much than end up like HC or any of the other flame laden, hate spewing, anything but guitar related forums.

If the line in your post that was edited has no relevance to the topic, nor does it negatively affect your post to have it removed, then don't worry about it. It's nothing personal I assure you.

One of the negatives of posting here at guitarnoise is that sometimes things that seem harmless get deleted.
The big positive is that because of that you can get more information faster without having to weed through useless flames and anybody can ask even the most noobie question without being ridiculed for doing it.

I didn't edit your post, but the moderator who did has my full, unquestioning, unwavering support for doing so.

...and you never know, he may delete this post if he wishes.

Now please back to bach...