Etude's, Writing an Etude Options

[MyNinjaWay]

hello all,

Lately I have been really digging the Etude lessons i've been finding on the site and so I've come up with a few questions regarding them...

firstly, what exactly defines an Etude? I have noticed they always sound rather classical

and secondly... how would one go about writing their own.... ?... without it sounding too much like other ones or sound like your ripping anyone off....because they do tend to rely on certain patterns and notes yes?

oh well hope someone in this vast guitar knowledge base can sort me out :-)

cheers

-Tom

[DeepRoots]

Hey Tom-

Etude means study....so in regards to music it means a study of a certain musical idea or a technique for the instrument it is written on.

To write your own- you may want to look at a technique you aren't so great at- then try to compose a nice sounding tune that uses this technique. If you really like the sound of the etude- then practising the technique becomes less boring- and alot more enjoyable

Type in etude in youtube...you'll see the huge amount of etudes being practised.

But the thing is these etudes aren't just studies in technique- so often they are so well written that they are appreciated as great pieces of music and that's why there are many "famous" etudes that non musicians enjoy listening to.

Hope that helps a little.

[Tolek]

Our good old wiki explains you what an etude is.

When I write an etude, I normally just fool round with my guitar. When it sounds good, I keep it. Sometimes, I prefer however to open Guitar Pro and just start with a chord. I think about what could go next and still stay classic, I don´t intergrate any jazzy elements. I think that you need to have basic knowledge of theory to compose an etude or whatever. Cadences, chord positions on your guitar and so on.

I hope this helps.

Edit: DeepRoots finished first.

This post has been edited by Tolek: Oct 30 2008, 10:38 PM

[Dejan Farkas]

Hi Ninja

Etude, or Study is an instrumental musical piece made exclusively for practicing certain skill

And how to write it? Well you first have to know what you want with the etude, what skill you want to practice. And then you compose the etude strictly for that purpose.

[Guitar1969]

As mentioned above - But usually shorter than a full blown song, so it concentrates on the technique its trying to teach. I asked the same question a few months back.

mh

[DeepRoots]

Here's one of my favourite chopin etudes:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk1JQk90UbY

Enjoy!

[MyNinjaWay]

oh ok. thanks alot everyone! you have been most helpful :-) as you may have guessed i'm not down with all the lingo

but to be more precise on my first question... maybe I was meat to be asking more about writing a neo-classical style etude?

like the instructors such as emir hot and marcus lavendell seem to be so good at ;-)

[Ivan Milenkovic]

You can take a minor scale and a harmonic minor scale, and compose etude using these scales. Like Dejan and others already said, with etude it's all about what you wanna practice really. If you wanna do some arpeggios, then compose a small number of chords, and play arpeggios on top of them. This way you will compose a small arpeggio etude using some minor scale. Or you can for example practice alternate runs in harmonic minor scale, so you can make a progression, and play runs on top of it. This way you will make a alternate picking harmonic minor etude. These are all components that can help you later to make neoclassical songs, and I think you wanna make a neoclassical song/arrangement, not etude.

[MyNinjaWay]

Hey Ivan, cool... thanks alot for that... yeah I do want to start composing some neoclassical stuff... well, thats my goal
it's I just asked the whole Etude question because when someone posts neo-classical stuff they called it an etude... so I kinda paired the 2 together...my mistake, but now that i've got that sorted out and have a starting place... I can get into it yay!

thanks again to everyone!! this site rules!

[MikeRidenour]

Etudes are study pieces focusing mainly on technique. Most guitar etudes written in the 19th century, (since this period was the golden age of the guitar), centered on a technical right hand and/or left hand fingering pattern. Look at the Giuliani Right Hand Exercises Gerardo has been posting. Each one of these 120 short exercises focuses on a right hand fingering pattern. Villa-Lobos, a 20th century classical guitar composer, wrote twelve etudes for guitar. Many of his etudes concentrated on right hand fingering patterns as well.

If you wanted to write an electric guitar etude, you could possibly select a major and/or minor five-string arpeggio shape and compose a piece concentrating on the right hand sweeping across five strings. You could also compose an etude for the left hand that focused on playing thirds up and down a major scale – three notes per string. The possibilities are endless. You could really think of any technical issue guitar players are faced with and write an etude around it.

[Ivan Milenkovic]

Hey Ivan, cool... thanks alot for that... yeah I do want to start composing some neoclassical stuff... well, thats my goal
it's I just asked the whole Etude question because when someone posts neo-classical stuff they called it an etude... so I kinda paired the 2 together...my mistake, but now that i've got that sorted out and have a starting place... I can get into it yay!

thanks again to everyone!! this site rules!

No problem man, neo-classical composing can be really interesting, I hope you have fun, and post some stuff when you're done so we can discuss. Cheers