Revision as of 19:03, 4 February 2009

Four Bar Phrasing - Composition

SI Introduction

Hey GMC – I'm Matthew Craven.

I live in Menstrie, a village in Scotland. I'm 14 years old, and have played guitar for about 1½ years. Before that I taught myself to play a bit on the keyboard and my sister taught me some chord theory, which was very useful for the guitar. I also had lessons for the oboe, which taught me the basics of music, which was even more useful for playing the guitar. Soon after I started the guitar I gave both up, but I have started playing the keyboard again.

Some of my favourite guitarists are Joe Satriani, Buckethead and Andy McKee. I especially like Joe Satriani because of his fantastic phrasing and technique.

Some of my favourite bands are Dream Theater, Ozzy Osbourne/Randy Rhoads, Iron Maiden, and Rush. I also like quite a lot of modern metal bands, in particular Killswitch Engage. I also like odd songs by other bands of completely different styles. I am also a big fan of the Celtic style.

When I am not practising, I like to snowboard, compose, and play the keyboard.

Anyway, without further ado here's my lesson. I hope I can show you some cool phrasing tricks.

The Lesson

Introduction

Introduction

I am going to teach a little about a very important topic in this lesson: phrasing. Phrasing is what gives music a structure, and what stops it from being random melodies put together. If you compare music to writing, then notes are words, and licks are sentences. If you just put random licks together then it's the same as putting random sentences together; it doesn't make sense. Phrasing is being able to put licks together that do make sense, and relate to each other. In this lesson I am going to teach you a phrasing trick that Joe Satriani uses a lot, and that is used by many other musicians as well. It is quite simple when you get used to it, and can make your improvising sound better, as well as your composing. I have composed this lesson in an atmospheric, slightly spooky style. Even if you don't like this solo this phrasing concept is well worth learning as it is used in many other musical genres.

In this lesson we will be looking at:

• Compositional techniques
• Dynamics
• Modulation
• Phrasing

I have tried to include comments at different theory levels, so whatever you know, you can get something out of this lesson.

The Phrasing Idea In This Lesson

This phrasing technique, in the form I'm going to show you today, works over a 4 bar chord progression, with the chord changing every bar. The first bar and third bar chords must be the same, so you could use a chord progression like I-IV-I-V or, as we have in this lesson, I-VI-I-bV. Very simply it could even be something like I-V-I-V.

What we do is compose a melody over the first chord, then we compose a melody over the second chord that "answers" the first one. We then repeat the first melody in the third bar, and make up a completely different fourth melody to "answer" both melodies and finish off the phrase. So in the first bar we have our first melody. In the second bar we have a second melody that answers the first. In the third bar we repeat the first melody, and in the fourth bar we play a fourth melody that rounds off the whole four bars. We can also use this idea for riffing. If you don't understand this yet, don't worry, it should become clearer to you as you see it in practise throughout the lesson.

How I Made The Main Chord Progression

First I decided a key. I decided I wanted the lesson sort of spooky and atmospheric and so I chose Aeolian. I chose E as it is a key a lot of guitarists know well, so people are familiar with the intervals and notes of it.

I knew the chord progression was going to last four bars - because of the phrasing concept - and that the first and third bars were going to be the same. I also knew that to give the piece a strong feeling of Em tonality, which is what I wanted, I would have to start on Em. This meant my first and third bars would be Em. I already knew that using the minor sixth chord (Cmaj here) would sound good for the atmosphere I wanted and so I put that second. I chose Bb (the tritone) as the final chord as it sounds a little strange and contrasts with the rest of the progression. It also sounds quiet scary which is what I wanted. The tritone was actually banned for a while in olden times because they thought it was the "devil's note".

Details

Key: E Aeolian + F# Phrygian
Time Signature: 4/4
Tempo: 120bpm
Tuning: Standard E

Chord Progression:
Em-C-Em-Bbaug
Em-C-Em-Bbaug
Em-C-Em-Bbaug
Em-C-Em-Bbaug

F#m-G-F#m-Em
F#m-G-F#m-Em-F#m